Arab citizens of Israel despair they’ll never be accepted

The Washington Post

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JERUSALEM — When Manal Diab and sisters Sonia and Wafa Khoury lived in an Arab neighborhood of East Jerusalem, men hassled them constantly for breaking tradition by having left their parents’ homes to seek education and careers. So, last summer, the three Israeli Arab women moved to Jewish West Jerusalem, rejoicing at the idea of living there quietly. There has been no quiet.

The women’s Jewish neighbors have harassed them and demanded they leave. Twice, firebombs have exploded at their entryway, leaving it a scorched, melted mess. And Israeli authorities, they say, have done little to defend them. Now, Diab wonders if there is any place in Israel for a 26-year-old Arab woman trying to build a career.

Her doubts reflect evidence that Israel’s Arab minority — about 1 million Muslims and Christians who form 17 percent of the population — continues to grow alienated. Over the past 20 years, opinion polls show, Arabs living in Israel have come to accept the existence of the Jewish state but conclude that it accords them no legitimate place in society.

In the past year, the breakdown of peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian leadership of the West Bank and Gaza Strip has accentuated the Israeli Arabs’ despair, according to Youssef Jabareen, an Israeli Arab civil rights lawyer.

After the Israeli-Palestinian peace process began in 1993, “we felt that Israelis’ attitudes toward us improved ... and that we had more of a chance to move toward an equal footing with Jews in this state,” said Jabareen. But since the talks stalled last spring, he said, “we have lost momentum.”

In 1948, when Jewish militia forces captured most of what had been British-ruled Palestine, more than three-quarters of the territory’s Arab residents fled as refugees. Those who stayed — most of them in villages in the north — were eventually given Israeli citizenship.

But, like blacks in America, Israel’s Arabs historically have faced chronic discrimination over education, jobs and housing, and, despite government measures designed to promote equality, they form a frustrated underclass. Their disaffection is deepened by Jewish suspicions that Israel’s Arabs form a disloyal fifth column in its confrontation with the Arab world.

Israeli Arabs work mostly in low-skilled jobs, often on construction projects, and live apart from the Jewish mainstream in tightly knit villages and neighborhoods. Many young Arabs, Diab said, “are moving to the cities to develop (their) lives, looking for opportunities,” because “there are too many limits” in Arab villages and towns.

How this transcription was made

Date confirmed on the page (folio-verified (the folio reads “[6 or 8]B The St. Augustine Record” at the left, “WORLD” centred, and “Friday, February 6, 1998” at the right. 6 February 1998 was a Friday. Paper ). Legibility fair; any passage that could not be read is omitted rather than reconstructed.

Context added by this archive

Also on the page and not transcribed: the paragraphs on the 1948 absorption of Beit Safafa, Jerusalem Mayor Ehud Olmert’s response, and a short passage on Arabic names defaced on the trilingual street signs.

Below the article, cut off at the foot of the scan, is the top of a separate item (a display head beginning “Bb ... t ... f ...” with a boxed element) which is not part of this story and is excluded.

Cite this clipping

"Arab citizens of Israel despair they’ll never be accepted," The St. Augustine Record, 6 February 1998, p. 6B or 8B — the leading digit will not resolve at 20x; see flags. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1998-030. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1998-030