View Mohammad Darawshe's lecture at the Helen Diller Institute here.
The tragic events of October 7, 2023, created a new challenge to Jewish-Arab relations inside Israel. This is not the first time that the cross-border, cross-greenline Israeli-Palestinian conflict has shaken the sensitive relationship between Jewish and Arab citizens of Israel. But as the war drags on, we are witnessing a growing rate of mutual fear and mistrust between these communities.
In the 1990s, the Oslo negotiations offered a path for peace in the shape of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict but did not address the Palestinian citizens of Israel, who today number about 1.7 million people. That has left them with two options: moving to a future Palestinian state or staying in Israel as an eternal minority.
Given how inhospitable the Middle East has been to Palestinians since 1948, the prospect of becoming refugees, even in a future Palestinian state, is not an appealing option to Israel’s Arab citizens. Indeed, more than 93% of them have said they would stay in their homes, in their towns, in their homeland — in the State of Israel.
This leaves integration into Israeli society as their only realistic option. Making this work hasn’t been easy, largely because Israel defines itself as the state of the Jewish people and refuses to see its Arab citizens as full equals. This negates the promise of Israel’s Declaration of Independence, which appealed to the “Arab inhabitants of the State of Israel to preserve peace and participate in the upbuilding of the State on the basis of full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its provisional and permanent institutions.”
The declaration also promised that Israel “will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture.”
Many laws have been enacted in recent decades with the cumulative effect of reducing the promise of equality: the citizenship law, the Nakba law, the acceptance committees law, land laws, municipal jurisdiction laws and budgeting laws. These culminated in a 2018 law declaring that Israel is the “nation-state of the Jewish people” — in other words, that Arab citizens are not equals. The law also downgraded Arabic from an official national language to one with only “special status.” Among Arabs in Israel, this has been perceived as a deep insult and sends a signal to the wider Arab world that, in Israel, Arab culture is inferior.
Even as the promise of political equality shrinks, islands of success in Jewish-Arab relations have emerged, pointing the way forward. The most visible among them is in the health care industry, where fully a third of Israel’s medical professionals are Arab citizens. Academia is another island of success: The percentage of Arab students in Israeli universities is now equivalent to their numbers in society. Recognizing the centrality of education in social mobility, Israel’s Arab citizens have taken their career paths into their own hands.
Their success has been enhanced by the board of higher education and the universities choosing to reduce obstacles and by socially conscious Israeli employers who see the value in diversity and inclusion. University entrance exams are now offered in Arabic, for example, and Arab students can defer exams scheduled while they are fasting for Ramadan. Certain government ministries have also played a positive role, establishing more high schools in Arab villages.
Yet parallel to the islands of success, we see many areas of failure, mostly resulting from conscious institutional discrimination by certain government agencies. Arab municipalities receive inadequate budgets, crime in the Arab sector is allowed to fester and Arab voices that speak out against the government are often silenced.
But it is in Israel’s national interest to create a truly shared society for Jews and Arabs. Doing so will demonstrate to the Arab world that Jews returned to the Middle East with good intentions. The burden of proof is on the government of Israel, but civil society plays a role too. Organizations like Givat Haviva, which focuses on building a “shared society” between Jewish and Arab citizens of Israel, are taking action to speed up the process through education and municipal partnerships.
By placing Jewish teachers in Arab schools and Arab teachers in Jewish schools, Givat Haviva proves that studying together reduces stereotypes and humanizes the other. Each year, we bring 18,000 Jewish and Arab young people to meet one another, fostering the formation of positive perspectives about the other’s culture. Hosting Jewish and Arab graduates of art schools for a joint residency allows the co-creation of joint art exhibits. Municipal cooperation between Jewish and Arab towns, funded and facilitated by Givat Haviva, have resulted in joint facilities that serve both communities.
For this work, Givat Haviva won the UNESCO prize for peace education in 2001. But for these efforts to make the large-scale impact that we believe they can, two things need to happen. First, we must train more teachers, facilitators, mayors, corporate leaders and government officials to understand the value of cooperation and to develop the skills to operate these programs. Second, the government must sponsor such programs nationwide.
Many feared that Oct. 7 would lead to massive confrontations between the two communities. Many tried to fuel the tensions resulting from the war to bring about clashes between the two sides. At the same time, many groups worked to consolidate the accumulated successes, helping to reduce tensions and limit disagreements to nonviolent dialogue. This success is critical to speed the healing process the day after the war.
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