Israel's Arab problem hits home

[Scurrilous]

Tensions are rising between Israel's Jewish and Arab citizens -- and could affect the chances for peace, or wider war, in the Middle East

<snip>

Jan. 29, 2007

"One evening in Jerusalem last February, after working late in the prime minister's office, I went outside and hailed a taxi. When I got in, I noticed that the driver, an Arab, was gripping the wheel tightly and his movements seemed labored. As we pulled into traffic, he slumped back in his seat, sighing.

"Hard day?" I asked clumsily in Hebrew, with a thick American accent.

He began to answer, but then -- apparently registering my poor excuse for the language -- asked, "Are you Jewish?"

"No," I lied, curious about what he had been about to say.

He was an Arab citizen of Israel from the town of Lod, in the country's center. He was not Jewish -- but of the two of us he was the one who spoke Hebrew fluently, his Arabic inflections only barely discernible. A few minutes earlier, he told me, he had picked up a group of religious American Jewish tourists. When they had realized that he was an Arab, they had promptly reopened the door and gotten out. Israeli Jews often did the same thing, he said. It happened frequently, but still always upset him.

We were driving through the area of Jerusalem where the government buildings are located, and he gestured at them as we passed. "I pay my taxes," he said. "I'm a citizen of the country -- even if it is the Jewish state."

I didn't tell him that I worked in one of those buildings.

"You know," he added, "we have a saying: 'My country is at war with my people.'"

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[Douglas Carpenter]

1. interesting article

snip:"The problem is that Israel defines itself as a "Jewish and democratic state" -- but has not reconciled the apparent contradiction in being both "Jewish" and "democratic." In reality, Israeli Arabs are in many ways seen and treated as second-class citizens. And now, there are signs that a long-simmering tension between Israeli Arabs and Jews may be rising to a boiling point. In December, a broad coalition of Israeli Arab leaders and intellectuals published a document titled "The Future Vision of Palestinian Arabs in Israel," which called for cultural autonomy and the right to veto government decisions concerning Israeli Arabs. It also declared a vision of Israel not as a Jewish state granting them full civil rights, but as a "state of all its citizens." Unsurprisingly, the document was denounced as dangerous and treacherous by many Israeli Jews. "

snip:"They are expected to be loyal citizens of a country whose flag and national anthem, steeped in Jewish imagery, explicitly exclude them. A country in which a recent poll found that 68 percent of Jews would refuse to live in the same building as an Arab. A country in which Israeli-Arab villages are often refused official permits by the government -- and then sometimes even demolished because they are deemed "unrecognized." In December, for example, a small riot ensued in the Bedouin Arab village of Al-Twayil in Israel's south, when Israeli Arabs protested a government decision to demolish some of the buildings in their village -- buildings they had just repaired after a demolition a few weeks earlier. "

link to full article:

http://salon.com/opinion/feature/2007/01/29/israeli_arabs/

[Name removed]

2. Deleted message

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[Anarcho-Socialist]

3. Your historical comparisons are warped

and not to mention anachronistic.

Your comparisons between Israel and southern state apartheid are nonsense.

Also in a recent poll, three quarters of Israeli Arabs said they are "proud to be Israeli." I am not surprised considering that Israel has universal suffrage and a liberal democracy.