Israel’s Progress at Integrating Arab Citizens

by Robert Cherry and Dina Kupfer

While the most severe criticisms of Israel reflect its behavior towards Palestinians in the occupied territories, there is also concern for Israel’s treatment of the nearly 1.5 million Palestinians who are Israeli citizens (over 20 percent of the population). Large economic and social disparities exist between the Israeli Arab and Jewish communities, and these disparities reflect discriminatory practices. Many policies are being implemented, however, to ameliorate these inequities — and such policies should be noted and commended.

In a formal sense, the freedom and equality of Arab citizens are protected by law in Israel — a fact that has provided a foundation for the progress that we are about to report. The 1948 Declaration of Establishment of the State of Israel “ensures complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex,” and “full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its provisional and permanent institutions” to all ethnic and religious groups. Israeli law also protects gays, women, and other minorities, and defends freedoms of speech, press, assembly, and dissent. The state officially recognizes fifteen religions, including Islam, the Druze and Bảha’i faiths, and many Christian denominations. (Followers of Bảha’i, which is headquartered in Haifa, are persecuted in Muslim countries, while Christians are disappearing from the Middle East, except in Israel, where the Christian population quadrupled from 1948 to 1998.)

Education is perhaps the most revealing aspect of a society’s principles and ideology. In Israel, despite cultural, linguistic, and political challenges, the education system is increasingly striving to become bicultural. The public education system has seriously begun to implement its legislative mandate that every Israeli student be required to have Arabic-language instruction. After a successful pilot program in eight schools, the education superintendent has mandated Arab language instruction for all one hundred and eighty elementary schools in the Northern District, requiring the employment of an additional hundred Arab-language instructors. At Haifa University, Israeli Arabs now make up 20 percent of the student body and 10 percent of its faculty. While Israel has a long way to go towards educational integration, the progress is very real.

Dramatic changes in employment and police practices are underway as well. In October, 2000, Israeli police killed thirteen Israeli Arab demonstrators, and there was evidence that this heavy toll stemmed from the view that Israeli Arabs are “enemies to control,” not “citizens to protect.” In response, the U.S.-based Abraham Fund began to engage Israeli police in training programs that successfully transformed the approach during Israeli Arab demonstrations in 2008, including on the sixtieth anniversary of the Nakba (Israel Independence Day, known among Palestinians as the Catastrophe) and during the five days of Jewish-Arab conflict in Acre. This transformation has also led to the providing of community police units to over one hundred Arab towns, in contrast to only three towns a decade earlier. Each of these units is composed of both Jewish and Arab personnel, increasing the Arab share of Israeli police from 1 percent to 4.5 percent.

Substantial government and private-sector efforts over the past decade have increased the integration of Israeli Arabs into the mainstream of the Israeli economy. These have included initiatives to train Arab (and ultra-Orthodox Jewish) women to gain entry-level jobs and further their entrepreneurial ambitions. There have also been extensive efforts to prepare Arab teachers to be employed in Jewish schools, not only as language teachers but for a wide range of academic subjects. There have also been a number of training programs designed to increase the number of Arab workers who can succeed in Israel’s high-tech sector. There are programs to prepare promising Arab high school students for engineering and science-related programs at major Israeli universities, support services to guide them through their college years, and placement services to enhance their employment possibilities. Furthermore, there is increasing cooperation between Arab and Jewish towns, forming joint ventures, including industrial parks. Economic advancement will be further accelerated by a new, unprecedented government allocation of $240 million for industrial development in thirteen Arab towns.

Many of these efforts are partially funded by over seventy U.S. Jewish organizations, including the New York United Jewish Appeal (UJA); its Task Force on Economic Development (Robert Cherry is a member) allocates $600,000 annually to Israeli organizations that are furthering the goal of greater integration of Israeli Arabs into the Israeli economy. The projects funded in the last year include the Center for Jewish and Arab Economic Development (CJAED), to train Israeli Arab women for employment in the healthcare industry and to mount a trade show to enable Arab female entrepreneurs to market their products; Merchavim, to integrate Arab teachers into the public school system; and Tsofen, to develop a high tech employment center in Nazareth.

Interestingly, the major Israeli funders of these efforts are the industrial leaders of the high-tech boom, who realize that its continuation requires utilization of the labor potentials of the entire Israeli workforce. Such efforts have also been fueled by affirmative action initiatives of the last three Israeli prime ministers, beginning with Ariel Sharon. First rhetorically, then pragmatically, government agencies began funding initiatives and taking 
seriously the goal of increasing Israeli Arab 
government employment.

Whereas in 2006 Israeli Arabs constituted only about 6.6 percent of new hires by government, by 2009 the number was up to 11.7 percent. Most recently, the government has set up incentives packages for education and housing that make it more viable for Arab Israelis to relocate to Jerusalem for government employment.

Some of the universal principles governing the treatment of Israeli Arabs have even been extended to the West Bank and Gaza. Infant mortality rates there have been lowered from 6 percent to 1.5 percent thanks to Israeli medical programs, and childhood diseases (polio, whooping cough, measles, tetanus) have been eliminated through immunization programs. Life expectancy jumped from 48 in 1967 to 72 in 2000. There have also been dramatic improvements in living conditions through the extension of basic infrastructure: electricity for 92.8 percent of the population (up from 20.5 percent in 1967), running water for 85 percent (up from 16 percent), cooking ranges for 83.5 percent (up from 4 percent). And seven universities have existed in the occupied territories since the late 1990s, compared to none when Israel took over in 1967.

We can be confident that these efforts will be strengthened in the coming years, especially 
within Israel’s borders. There is a shortage of Jewish teachers in Israel, and many schools that witness the overwhelmingly positive results that neighboring schools have had by hiring Arab teachers in non-language positions will follow suit. In addition, Israel has a goal of joining the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) [Since this viewpoint was published in our Fall 2010 issue, Israel has become a member - Ed.], which has made reducing economic disparities one of its major conditions for membership. Already, therefore, there has been an intensification of planning efforts among Israeli government officials and industrial organizations.

Hopefully, as these policies become better known and move the Arab minority forward, attempts to associate Israel with racist policies will no longer have any credibility. Hopefully there will emerge more voices like Ishmael Khaldi, a Bedouin appointed as deputy consul of Israel for the Pacific Northwest in 2006, who wrote in the San Francisco Chronicle (March 4th, 2009):

I am a proud Israeli — along with many other non-Jewish Israelis such as Druze, Bảha’i, Bedouin, Christians, and Muslims, who live in one of the most culturally diversified societies and the only true democracy in the Middle East. Like America, Israeli society is far from perfect, but let us deal honestly. By any yardstick you choose — educational opportunity, economic development, women’s rights and gay rights, freedom of speech and assembly, legislative representation — Israel’s minorities fare far better than in any other country in the Middle East.

Khaldi compellingly concluded his article: “If Israel [were] an apartheid state, I would not have been appointed here, nor would I have chosen to take upon myself this duty. There are many Arabs, both within Israel and in the Palestinian territories who have taken great courage to walk the path of peace. You should stand with us, rather than against us.”

Robert Cherry is Broeklundian Professor of Economics at Brooklyn College. Dina Kupfer is a student in the graduate political science program at Brooklyn College.