Ref. :  000012921
Date :  2004-07-05
langue :  Anglais
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With Israel and without


By Sammy Smooha

Monday, July 05, 2004


The division between Arabs and Jews in Israel within the pre-1967 borders is deep. The Arab-Israeli minority emerged in 1948 under the tragic circumstances of war, occupation, destruction and population transfers. In Israeli eyes, it became part of the enemy and was put under military administration for 18 years. Both Arabs and Jews see themselves as indigenous to Israel and demand exclusive rights to the same territory.

The Arabs are a disadvantaged, working-class community in a middle-class society. They are totally isolated from the Jews: 90 percent of them live in all-Arab communities and 10 percent in separate neighborhoods in Jewish cities. They do not enjoy power-sharing and suffer from discrimination in public budgets and appointments and in private-sector hiring.

Arab-Jewish relations are also marred by profound discord over three ideological issues: the Jewish-Zionist nature of the state; the narrative and solution to the Palestinian question; and the appropriate regional integration of Israel. To put the Arab predicament in blatant terms, Arab-Israeli citizens constitute a minority that is visible, ethnic-religious, linguistic-cultural, national, inassimilable, discriminated against, suspect of disloyalty and dissident. It is a minority that is highly mobilized and fighting to transform its status.

These features of the Arab minority underpin the "radicalization thesis," which is prevalent among the Israeli Jewish establishment, public, media and academics. Another version of it (the "resistance thesis") is widespread among Arabs. According to this thesis, the Arabs are becoming increasingly alienated from the Jews and Israel. Violent conflict is inevitable and imminent, as evidenced in the bloody October 2000 Arab uprising.

The historical forces propelling the Arabs in Israel include the "Palestinization" of their identity and the "Islamization" of their way of life and world outlook. The Arabs reject their position as a minority and regard themselves as part of the regional Muslim Arab majority. Their partial modernization disables them from fulfilling their rising aspirations. They feel deprived compared to the Jews. They are angry at the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and at the continued humiliation of their people. Jewish state negligence and discrimination and growing Jewish ethnocentrism and intransigence are exacerbating this anger.

This view of the Arab minority is so compelling that few dare challenge it. In the late 1970s, I formulated the counter "politicization thesis." It posits that the forces of radicalization have been counterbalanced by stronger processes that make Arab citizens more politicized in their national consciousness, keenly impatient with discrimination and exclusion, and militant in their struggle for equality and peace. They are undergoing an "Israelization" that links them in various ways to Israeli society. They are getting used to, and finding, numerous advantages in life in Israel: modern lifestyles, welfare state benefits, the rule of law and democracy. They dearly cherish Israeli citizenship.

The growing democratization of the Jewish state expands and protects Arabs' individual and group rights. Peacemaking with the Arab world and the Palestinians since 1977, notwithstanding severe setbacks, has made Israel more acceptable and legitimate in the eyes of Arab-Israelis. The Jewish majority is gradually resigning itself to the existence of an Arab minority with equal rights.

Which thesis is more scientifically valid? I believe that politicization, rather than radicalization, squares better with the hard facts: the intense Arab struggle is largely democratic and peaceful; the Arabs have not participated in the two intifadas; they continue to take part in parliamentary politics, despite its limited gains; they believe in a two-state solution; and they vehemently reject any intimation to cede the "Arab little triangle" (an Arab populated part of Israel west of the green line) to a new Palestinian state. They have developed as a separate segment of the Palestinian people with the destiny of remaining in Israel and playing the patriotic role, approved by both Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organization, of a pro-Palestinian lobby.

The Palestinization of their identity, culture and ties is moderated by their pervasive Israelization. Even their Islamization is restrained by the realization that as a Muslim minority in a Jewish state, they cannot and must not try to take over and Islamize the state, in contradistinction to the main thrust of fundamentalist Islamic movements in Muslim countries.

Public opinion surveys that I have been conducting since 1976 provide ample attitudinal evidence for these incontrovertible facts: 21.5 percent of Arab-Israelis rejected Israel's right to exist in 1976; 6.8 percent in 1995; and 10.2 percent in 2003; 17.9 percent, 6.0 percent and 3.1 percent, respectively, supported the use of violence in order to improve their condition in Israel; 32.9 percent, 10.3 percent and 5.6 percent, respectively, defined their identity as Palestinian, devoid of an Israeli component. These are only several highlights to illustrate that the data do not confirm the radicalization thesis.

New surveys, launched in 2003 as "The Arab-Jewish Relations Index," shed more light on the Israeli-Arab orientation. To cite some findings: 82.4 percent of the Arabs favor the inclusion of Arab parties in coalition governments; 70.7 percent fear state violence; 74.1 percent agree that Palestinian refugees should be compensated and settled in Palestine only; 54.6 percent think that, culturally, Israel should integrate more into Europe-America than into the Middle East; 72.1 percent consider Israel, as a Zionist state, to be racist; 53.3 percent feel estranged and rejected as citizens of Israel; and 68.7 percent approve of the solution that "the Arab minority (must) enjoy democratic rights, receive its proportional share of the budget and run its religious, educational, and cultural institutions."

These and many other results reveal a complex picture, neither black nor white, of Arabs who tie their life and future with Israel, seek integration without assimilation, and wish to fulfill their national aspirations through a separate Palestinian state or through Arab cultural autonomy within Israel.

The point of departure for change requires abandoning the radicalization perspective and conceding that the present version of a Jewish and democratic state does not work anymore. Since the Jewish-Zionist character of Israel is hegemonic in favor of Jews and the option of a binational state desired by the Arabs is unfeasible, the only just and workable dispensation for the Arab-Israeli minority is a new formula of a Jewish and democratic state that both sides can tolerate and that can revitalize and rebuild Arab-Jewish coexistence.


Sammy Smooha is professor of sociology and director of the Arab-Jewish Relations Index project in the Jewish-Arab Center at the University of Haifa, Israel. This commentary is taken from bitterlemons-international.org


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