Israeli Arabs are people of Arab ethnicity residing within the borders of the state of Israel. That figure includes several hundred thousand Arab residents of eastern Jerusalem who do not possess Israeli citizenship but have residency rights and can generally move around the country freely. The remaining Israeli Arabs are full citizens of the state. The vast majority of Israeli Arabs are descendants of Palestinians who remained within Israel following the War of Independence.
Over 80 percent of Israeli-Arabs are Muslims. The remainder are Christian or Druze. And on paper, Israeli Arabas do enjoy the same civil and political rights as Israeli Jews, with the exception that they are not subject to compulsory military service. Israeli Arabs serve in parliament, as Supreme Court judges and foreign envoys. By some measures, Arab citizens of Israel have greater political and civic freedom than most Arabs living in the Middle East, which the nonprofit Freedom House consistently ranks as among the least free regions of the world.
Arabs in Israel enjoy a robust free press and can organize and criticize the government with less fear and greater freedom than Arabs elsewhere in the Middle East. But in practice, Israeli Arabs are subject to a range of discriminatory practices, as attested to not only by local and international human rights groups, but also Israeli government sources.
Israeli Arabs have also held various government posts. One Arab currently serves on the Supreme Court. The Israel Central Bureau of Statistics monitors the gaps between Arabs and Jews by 62 objective and subjective indicators that cover 11 areas of life: Employment, personal safety, health, housing and infrastructures, education, personal and social welfare, environment, civic involvement, material standard of living, leisure, and use of Information and Communication Technology.
In , the situation of Jews was better than the situation of Arabs for 50 of the 62 indicators, in three the situation of Arabs and Jews was equal, and in nine the situation of Arabs was better. While there is no institutional segregation, Jews and Arabs have chosen to live separately in all but a handful of cities.
Israelis all recognize that Arab villages have historically received less funding than Jewish areas and this has affected the quality of Arab schools, infrastructure and social services. Arabs are also underrepresented in higher education and most industries. Israeli Arabs integrate in workplaces, shops and public spaces yet have surprisingly little contact with Israeli Jews.
Most young people study at different elementary and secondary schools and may not come into contact with one another until college; by then, many preconceived opinions have been formed. This lack of interaction exacerbates tensions between the two communities. Israeli Arabs also face their own conflicts as Palestinians in a Jewish state. They have adopted Hebrew as a second language and Israeli culture as an extra layer in their lives.
At the same time, they strive to attain a higher degree of participation in national life, greater integration into the economy and more benefits for their own towns and villages. Although Israeli Arabs have occasionally been involved in terrorist activities, they have generally behaved as loyal citizens. In some instances, Arabs volunteered to take over civilian functions for reservists.
There are twenty employment centers established around Israel to help the Arab, Druze, and Circassian minorities find employment and receive assistance. According to the Israeli Ministry of the Economy statistics for , 8, new Arab, Druze, and Circassian participants sought help or assistance from these employment centers.
These centers have helped 13, members of Israeli minority groups find employment, and have provided assistance for more than 24, individuals. Uthmani was nominated to be the spokesperson for the Israeli Embassy in Turkey , and has previously served as part of an Israeli delegation to the United Nations.
Muslim men have served as Israeli ambassadors, but never a Muslim woman. He will represent the country in Eritrea. Israeli Arabs look to jobs in the healthcare industry because it allows them to find work outside of the normal confines of Arab society in Israel. Most Arabs attend these schools. Arab schoolchildren learn Arabic, Hebrew and English, but often graduate mastering none, and as a result they experience difficulty in studying at a Hebrew-speaking university there is no Arab university and in entering senior positions in the state bureaucracy and private economy.
In , the government initiated a program to make higher education more accessible to the Arab public. A study released in January by the Council for Higher Education found that the total number of Arab-Israeli students pursuing all forms of higher-education in Israel rose by In , Arab-Israelis accounted for A report by the Council in found that 6. The number of Arab Ph. Most study at University of Haifa. The gap between Jewish and Arab enrollment overall is the greatest at private colleges, where tuition is most expensive.
The Yad Sarah volunteer organization launched a car-safety to address the disparity in death and injuries to Arab and Bedouin children stemming from auto accidents.
As part of the program, Yad Sarah has loaned more than car seats to Arab and Bedouin citizens of Israel. They have also provided educational materials and sessions on how to safely install the seats and other means of keeping children safe when riding in a vehicle.
In , 89 Israeli Arabs were murdered, compared with 36 Jews. In Umm al-Fahm, I hear how an Arab doctor was shot dead driving his wife and newborn baby home from hospital. In the Galilee, a man and woman were killed along with their teenage daughter in a drive-by shooting.
Their nine-year-old daughter was wounded. Experts say that as police have cracked down on big Jewish Israeli mobsters in the past decade or so, organised crime has increasingly moved into Arab areas. Heavily-armed gangs run protection rackets and act as loan sharks, threatening and blackmailing people. The current Israeli coalition government - which includes for the first time, an Islamist Arab party - has promised to act.
Many say that must include tackling Israeli Arabs' relative poverty. Meanwhile, as politicians plan reforms, activists demand action, and police plead for co-operation, the stakes surrounding Israel's Arab crime wave are getting higher.
In May, feelings of discrimination melded with a new round of conflict between Israel and Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip, to erupt in violent inter-communal clashes. Mobs of Arab and Jewish extremists went on the rampage in Israel's mixed cities. There were lynchings, properties were vandalised and religious sites desecrated. Some even warned of impending civil war. With a sense that Israel's inter-communal bonds are under threat, Maisam Jaljuli - the activist and friend of the late Suha Mansour - is calling on Jews and Arab citizens to unite to deal with the crime and killings.
It's the whole Israeli problem," she says. We all the time said that if you think that the violence and the murders will be only inside the Arab society, you are wrong: It soon will be also in the Jewish society.
Why an Israeli mayor is warning of civil war. Image source, Quique Kierszenbaum. Only a minority of killings among Israeli Arabs have been solved.
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