Arabs in Israel: Once Hopeful, Now Wary

The day after a suicide bomber blew himself up outside a Tel Aviv mall, bringing the nine-day death toll from Hamas terrorism to 62, Palestinian graduate student Farid Hamdan made the mistake of saying “good morning” to a Jewish acquaintance at Tel Aviv University.

“There’s nothing good about it,” the woman snapped. “You see what you people have done?”

A few days later, several of Hamdan’s students at Jaffa High School No. 12 had a similar encounter while waiting to see President Clinton in Tel Aviv. A young Israeli heard the group of 16-year-olds chatting in Arabic and hissed, “We will kill Clinton and we will kill you too.”

Ashouag Khouny, who had gone to the meeting to express her sorrow over the bombings, was stunned.

“I wanted to say that we are not guilty,” the 11th-grader said. “But I was a little afraid he meant it, so I didn’t say anything.”

For Israel’s 800,000 or so Arab citizens, the deadly spate of suicide bombings by Islamic fundamentalists has been a double blow. Because three Palestinians were among those killed in the bombings in the past month, the blasts have sown fear among Arab commuters as well as among Jews.

On top of that, Palestinians in Israel say the bombings have dealt a dramatic setback to their hopes for gaining equal rights. Once again, they say, they are being blamed for the carnage carried out by a small group of Palestinian fanatics from the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and they have been subjected to a barrage of verbal and physical abuse.

In the face of such hostility, Arab Israelis are lying low. Some say they try not to “look Arab,” while others refrain from speaking their language in public. Still others stay at home.

Jaffa High School Principal Ghanem Yaacoubi called off a field trip to Jerusalem for his Arab Israeli students, a step he considered prudent--but unjust.

“You know, I totally disagree with terrorism and condemn acts of terrorism whether they are in Israel, Japan or Bangladesh. But what gives people the right to say that, just because we are Arabs, we must swear our loyalty morning and evening?” he asked.

The issue of loyalty is not new for Palestinians in Israel.

About 150,000 Arabs remained in the country after the war of independence in 1948. Since then, these natives and their offspring have straddled the border between warring worlds, living under the glare of suspicion from both sides.

The Arab world has found it difficult to accept their voluntary adherence to a state of Jews, while Jews have looked at their blood ties to Israel’s historical enemies and seen a fifth column in the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Certainly Palestinians in Israel supported their brothers’ struggle for an independent state of Palestine in the West Bank and Gaza.

During the seven-year intifada, or uprising against Israel, they gave food, clothing and money--anything they could do within the law--to help the fight for a Palestinian homeland.

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But as far as Palestinians in Israel were concerned, the peace accords between the Israeli government and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat had started the West Bank and Gaza down the road to independence.

With the recent Israeli troop redeployment from West Bank cities and the Palestinian elections, Palestinians in Israel believed that they saw an end to the conflict between their state and their people.

Most had no intention of leaving Israel or, more important, the land where they were born. Instead, they believed that they finally had a chance to focus on gaining the equal rights at home that long had been denied them in the name of national security.

To win those rights, they were looking not to Arafat but to Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres and other Jewish and Arab leaders running in the May 29 national elections.

Then the human bombs began to explode in rapid succession, starting Feb. 25.

“There is no doubt that every single act like this is a setback for the main issues for the Arab population of Israel,” Jaffa High’s Yaacoubi said.

The main issues, say Arabs in Israel, are getting equal access to jobs, education and government resources, and ending their status as second-class citizens.

Today, estimates of the number of Arabs in Israel, including Druze, Christian and Muslim Palestinians, range from 750,000 to more than 1 million--about 15% to 20% of the population.

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But their problems are disproportionately large.

Arabs make up more than 50% of Israelis below the poverty line, according to Taleb Sana, one of eight Palestinian and Druze members of the 120-seat Knesset.

The Arab unemployment rate is 30%, compared to less than 5% for the rest of the population, and there are no Arabs among the 80,000 Israelis employed in state companies, Sana said.

Moreover, there are no Arabs in the Cabinet, on the high court or at the top level of government ministries.

In a Gallup poll before the bombings, 47% of Israelis surveyed said they opposed the appointment of the first Arab minister in the next government, while 41% approved, and 12% were undecided.

Many advocates for Arab rights say that in the last four years the Labor Party government--first under Yitzhak Rabin and now under Peres--has tripled government funding to Arab municipalities, bringing it nearly up to the level of Jewish communities.

The government has built roads and schools and encouraged investments in business and tourism projects in Arab areas, particularly Nazareth, which is gearing up for the 2,000th anniversary of the birth of Jesus Christ.

It has also improved health services and launched an affirmative action program for Arabs, hiring 400 civil servants in the last three years, according to Alouph Hareven, co-director of the Arab rights group Sikkuy.

But even the government acknowledges that much remains to be done to narrow the social and economic gaps.

“The paradox,” government spokesman Uri Dromi said, “is that while this government has done unparalleled things for Arabs, this has only highlighted the awareness of so many years of neglect.”

And of continued inequities. In the Arab village of Bartaa, residents recently watched in frustration as Israeli workers installed lamp posts on the road from Highway 65 to the Jewish town of Katsir, but not on the short, right-hand fork to Bartaa.

Riad Kabha, the mukhtar, or clan leader, who acts as mayor of Bartaa, explains that Katsir is one of the Jewish settlements inside Israel’s Green Line, which former Defense Minister Ariel Sharon established in the 1980s to prevent Arab villages from expanding and merging into blocs.

In fact, the Green Line that divides Israel and the West Bank land it captured in the 1967 Mideast War runs right through the middle of Bartaa, putting half of the town inside Israel and half in the West Bank. All of the families on both sides are related and share the same last name.

Kabha has been fighting for years for an Arab town council in Israeli Bartaa to represent the village’s interests and receive government funds for community projects.

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“I want my school in the village to be like the school in Katsir. I want streets, parks for the young, factories. There is no work in Arab villages. They empty out in the morning when people go to work elsewhere,” Kabha said.

Now, in the aftermath of the suicide bombings, he fears that the only construction in store for Bartaa may be a fence along the Green Line--part of Peres’ new policy to physically separate Israel from the West Bank and try to keep terrorists out.

In Israel, hard-line opponents of the peace process dismiss the idea of separation along with Peres’ vision of a new Middle East of peace and cooperation. And one main reason they offer is the enemy within.

“More than 850,000 Arabs live within the Green Line,” the Jerusalem Post wrote in an editorial after the March 4 Tel Aviv bombing. “And to state that the vast majority are loyal to the state is as meaningless as the truism that most Palestinians are not terrorists. It takes no more than a few hundred activists to wreak the kind of havoc that Israel has just experienced.” radio talk shows with anti-Arab diatribes.

On television news, Israelis were heard shouting, “Death to Arabs.” Even the Labor Party’s Knesset leader, Raanan Cohen, urged Arab Israelis to do some soul-searching about their loyalties.

The arrest of an Arab Israeli truck driver, accused of having given the suicide bomber a lift from Gaza to Tel Aviv, made matters worse. Israeli police shut down the Islamic Salvation Board in Nazareth, saying that the welfare organization helped Hamas families.

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Suddenly, Palestinians felt as if all Arabs in Israel had been branded as accomplices to terror.

Arabs say anti-Arab sentiments also are reflected in daily life.

Many Jews refuse to rent or sell houses to them. In the cities where Arabs and Jews both live, Arabs are not welcome in Jewish apartment buildings or even Jewish neighborhoods.

Arabs acknowledge that Israeli society has opened up to them in the last 20 years. Many of the nation’s best-known actors and soccer players and one of its most famous Hebrew-language authors, Antoine Chamas, are Arabs.

Nonetheless, they say, there is a ceiling on advancement for Arab professors in universities and government.

Although Arabs have made it into the Knesset, their role there is questioned by much of the Jewish population.

Many Israelis believe that Arab Knesset members should not be allowed to vote on issues that involve national security--in the same way that Arabs are exempt from serving in the Israeli army because of a potential conflict of loyalty.

Many opponents of the Israeli-Palestinian accord have argued that it did not have a “real majority” because its approval by the Knesset depended on Arab votes.

Most Arabs are opposed to serving in the Israeli army, although many would like to have the option of a noncombat national service in order to win military benefits such as access to low-interest mortgages. But they do not want to be in the position of having to fight against Arab armies.

Otherwise, Arabs insist that their voice should be equal to that of Jews. And most are hoping to use their vote to achieve that goal.

According to a Tel Aviv University poll published before the bombings, an unprecedented 80% of Arab citizens are expected to turn out for the May national elections--up from 69% in 1992.

A majority of those were planning to vote for Jewish Zionist parties, which Israel’s Arab citizens said were in the best position to advance peace with the Arab world and Arab rights at home.

Many Israeli politicians have called on Israelis to refrain from blaming all Arabs for the suicide bombings, but Bartaa’s Kabha suspects that this is largely electoral politics.

“They still need our votes,” he said.