Headlines, Human Rights, Middle East & North Africa | Analysis

MIDEAST: Israel No Place To Be An Arab

Analysis by Cherrie Heywood

RAMALLAH, West Bank, Oct 20 2008 (IPS) - The uneasy co-existence between Israel's Arabs and Jews has been further exacerbated by days of continuous rioting in the mixed city of Acre in northern Israel.

The violence a week back, some of the worst to be seen in Israel in many years, was inevitable according to human rights organisations which accuse Israel of treating Israeli-Arabs as second class citizens.

The Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) said in their report released last year that racism against Arab citizens had "dramatically increased in the past year, including a 26 percent rise in anti-Arab incidents."

Mohammed Barakeh, an Arab member of parliament, further accused the Israeli police of discrimination in their handling of Arab residents, and slammed Israeli politicians for "using racist language ahead of forthcoming municipal elections."

Seventy percent of Acre's population is Jewish and the remainder Arab. Acre is one of a number of Israeli cities with a mixed Jewish-Arab population. Israeli Arabs comprise approximately a fifth of Israel's total population of seven million.

The five-day orgy of violence saw Arab homes burnt down, ambulances attacked, Jewish property looted and vandalised, over 60 people arrested, and a number of people rushed to hospital for treatment.

The clashes between hundreds of Jewish and Israeli Arab (Israeli Arabs are of Palestinian descent) youths began after Tawfiq Jamal, an Arab, was attacked as he drove his car through a predominantly religious Jewish neighbourhood of Acre during the beginning of Yom Kippur.

Yom Kippur is considered one of the holiest days in Judaism, and even secular Jews tend to stay at home. A group of Orthodox Jews accused Jamal of being disrespectful.

Jamal's car was stoned, and he was beaten up. Rumour quickly spread in Arab neighbourhoods that he had been killed, prompting hundreds of young Arab men, armed with bats and knives, to rush to the scene where they were met by Jewish youths.

Police declared a state of emergency, and hundreds of riot police reinforcements were rushed to the city. The rioting was eventually brought under control but palpable anger and simmering tensions remained.

Meanwhile, as the city attempted to come to terms with the physical destruction and psychological damage wrought between the two warring communities, political analysts and politicians filled the pages of the Israeli media with theories on the underlying causes for the anarchy.

Discrimination was a major factor, they argued.

In theory, Israel's Arabs have exactly the same rights as Jewish Israelis. The Israeli government can point to a declaration of independence and a basic law that officially enshrines equality for all Israeli citizens, no matter what their religion. But this theory is not carried out in practice.

A number of Israeli polls conducted over the years show that a significant majority of Israelis would not live in the same building as Arabs, or invite them into their homes. Many Israelis also backed their expulsion.

Lucy Mair, the author of this year's Human Rights Watch report 'Off the Map: Land and Housing Rights Violations in Israel's Unrecognised Bedouin Villages' says one of the most marginalised groups in Israel was this former group of nomads.

She explained that even though Bedouin served in the army and practised law and medicine, they often returned to ramshackle homes lacking basic amenities including electricity and running water.

"The Israeli authorities deliberately drew up plans in the 1960s to ignore the Bedouin villages by rendering them illegal and therefore ineligible for basic services and building permits." Many of the homes were subsequently demolished for not having permits.

Higher unemployment amongst Israeli Arabs, in comparison to their Jewish counterparts, is a result of both job discrimination and an inequitable education system.

Several years ago HRW conducted a study on these differences based largely on official Israeli government statistics. The differences found included fewer facilities and overcrowded and understaffed classrooms for Arab students – when poorly built and badly maintained schools were at all available.

The educational standards and salaries received by many Arab teachers also paled in comparison to their Jewish counterparts.

The Israel Education Ministry acknowledged that it spent less per Arab student in the Arab school system than per Jewish student in the Jewish school system. Differences were blamed on cultural factors, and promises were made to establish a fairer system.

Israeli-Arabs also face discrimination in buying land, with the Jewish National Fund controlling most of Israel's land and stipulating that only Jews can purchase it.

Israeli-Arabs are also unable to live in Israel with spouses from the occupied Palestinian territories, while Jewish spouses from abroad are automatically entitled to live in Israel and become citizens, says Israeli rights group B'Tselem.

Palestinians in east Jerusalem who are deemed to have built homes illegally have their homes destroyed at a higher rate than illegal builders in Jewish west Jerusalem. They also face more difficulties obtaining the prerequisite building permits, according to Jeff Halper of the Israel Committee Against Home Demolitions.

"Israel is also carrying out a policy of Judaising East Jerusalem by making it harder for Palestinian residents to hold on to their residency status so as to create a Jewish majority," Suhail Khalilieh, head of the Applied Research Institute in the Jerusalem (ARIJ) Settlement Unit told IPS.

Several years ago the International Crisis Group (ICG), a non-partisan conflict resolution organisation, advised Israel in its report 'Identity Crisis: Israel and its Arab Citizens' to work towards eliminating this discrimination. Most of the recommendations have yet to be implemented.

While racial discrimination is a major factor of simmering discontent amongst Israeli Arabs, it is only part of the problem. Many Arabs feel politically and culturally alienated from the Zionist ethos, which is the basis of the country's raison d'etat.

Prof. Walid Sharaffa from Birzeit University's media and culture studies department warns of further rioting in Israel's mixed cities.

"The difference in levels of alienation between Israel's Arabs and Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza is just a matter of degrees," Sharaffa told IPS. "Unless more is done to bridge the cultural and ideological differences between Israel's Arab and Jewish populations, Israel could face an internal rebellion in the near future."

Akiva Elder, political commentator with the respected Israeli daily Haaretz, added that massive increases in social funding alone would never turn Israeli-Arabs and Palestinians into "lovers of Zion".

He further argued against the tough policies carried out against Palestinians in east Jerusalem. "The case of Jerusalem shows that land annexation and formal control over a population – including a tough policy incorporating the separation fence, administrative detention and immigration restrictions – are not a recipe for security, not to mention co-existence."

As Arabs in Haifa, another mixed city, took to the streets in protest at the events in Acre, many recalled the riots of October 2000, when 13 Arabs were shot dead by Israeli police.

The 2003 Israeli Or Commission, which investigated the events, slammed the excessive use of force by the police, and recommended that Israeli Arabs be given fair and equal treatment.