JERUSALEM: According to a poll published at the beginning of the month, 56 percent of Jewish high school students in Israel believe Arabs cannot be elected to the Knesset (Israeli parliament) and 46 percent do not support civil equality for Arabs. This is yet another manifestation of how problematic it is to reconcile the internal contradiction between Israel s declared Jewish identity on the one hand, and its desire to be a democratic country with civil equality for all its citizens, on the other. Although the issue has been repeatedly addressed over the years, no workable formula for squaring this circle has yet been found and no adequate solution has been offered that would solve the problem of the Arab-Palestinian community s status in Israel.
Since the founding of the state and the declaration of independence which stated Israel s aim for civil equality, the theoretical and practical discussion of the concept of equality has undergone many transformations. Nowadays, there is a strong demand by the Arabs in Israel to be recognized as a national minority and granted the collective rights that such recognition would entail. This is based on the fact that Israel s Arabs are a native, indigenous or original minority, which according to international law, is entitled to rights to land, natural resources and the preservation of its heritage. In that sense, the struggle of Israel s Arabs for recognition is similar to the struggle by other ethnic minorities around the world, who find it difficult to practice their culture in conditions of numerical and economic inferiority.
Following the events of October 2000 in which clashes between the police and Arab protesters left 12 Arab citizens dead, an investigation committee called the Or Commission was set up to investigate the events. It published a report which addressed, among other things, the collective rights demanded by the Arab minority in the areas of education, language, culture and religion. In its conclusions it emphasized the gap between demands for collective equality as opposed to the right to equality, as it appears in Israeli law, which is granted on an individual basis. The committee did not express an opinion on this matter, but prominent Jewish scholars and legal experts such as Yitzhak Zamir and Ruth Gavison think that there is no necessary contradiction between the Jewish identity of the state and granting collective rights to the Arab population. Moreover, various Supreme Court rulings throughout the years have strengthened Arab collective rights in relation to language, culture and education without these having undermined the Jewish character of the state.
In documents nicknamed the vision papers published by Arab civil society groups in 2007, a clear demand was articulated to recognize the Arabs in Israel as a national minority and grant them collective rights. These include independent management of their education system, religious affairs and the media, adequate representation in decision making centers and state symbols, and a recognition of the historical injustice they suffered in areas such as land, internal refugees and the assets which once belonged to the Waqf. The documents also included demands which would inevitably entail changing the Jewish character of the state and turning it into a con-socionational democracy whereby the rights of the minority are secured by law; or a bi-lingual and bi-cultural democracy as proposed by the organization Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel.
These demands are considered by the majority of the Jewish public to be extreme and unacceptable and tantamount to a desire by the Arab population to isolate themselves and break away from the state, or turn it into a bi-national state. But a closer look at these demands shows that they represent a new phase in the struggle for real civil equality by the Arabs citizens within the framework of the state and not a desire to break away from it. All the documents take the existence of Israel within the green line as a given, alongside a Palestinian state, and clearly represent a desire to remain citizens of Israel, not citizens of a future Palestinian state. In my opinion, this is a clear indication of a serious attitude by the Arabs towards their Israeli citizenship and a desire to enter into a dialogue with the state on improving their status within it.
In my opinion, recognizing the Arabs as a national minority does not contradict the state of Israel s interest to preserve its Jewish identity. Quite the contrary, a state that defines itself in national terms and repeatedly emphasizes its Jewish national character could benefit from recognizing the Palestinian Arab group as a different national minority. Were the state to recognize this, it could in return demand that the Arab minority recognize the right of the Jewish majority to define its state as Jewish.
Of course, beyond the academic and legal debate we would have to deal seriously with the long-term implications of realizing collective rights on the status of the Arab minority within the state, and its relationship with the state and the Jewish majority. But this must take place with mutual respect and not in an atmosphere of fear and hysteria. We are in the midst of a dangerous process whereby the expectations of the Arab minority in Israel are growing increasingly higher – both in terms of their demands for individual equality as well as for collective and national rights. Simultaneously, Israeli democracy has been growing weaker in general and most obviously in relation to the Arabs as citizens, as the abovementioned poll so clearly demonstrates. This is a recipe for a serious conflagration and the demands of the Arab citizens of Israel must be dealt with.
In light of this, in order to maintain social and political stability, a real and thorough discussion about these issues must take place sooner rather than later so that we may reach compromises and agreements which would be acceptable to both sides.
Dr. Sarah Ozacky-Lazar is a research fellow at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute and a researcher on the Arab community in Israel. This article is based on a lecture given at the Jaffa Conference on Jewish-Arab relations, 2010. This article was written for the Common Ground News Service (CGNews).
