Segregation of Jews and Arabs in 2010 Israel is almost absolute
For those of us who live here, it is something we take for granted. But visitors from abroad cannot believe their eyes.
By Amnon Be'eri-SulitzeanuUnder the guise of the deceptively mundane name "Amendment to the Cooperative Associations Bill," the Knesset's Constitution, Law and Justice Committee this week finalized a bill intended to bypass previous rulings of the High Court of Justice. If indeed this legislation is approved by the Knesset plenum, it will not be possible to describe it as anything other than an apartheid law.
Ten years ago, the High Court of Justice ordered the town of Katzir to accept the family of Adel and Iman Kaadan, Arab citizens of Israel, as members of the community. Seven years later, the court issued a similar ruling against the Galilee village of Rakefet, which, like Katzir, is Jewish. Now, however, the legislature has come up with a proper "Zionist" response to the justices: If it becomes law, the amendment will give acceptance committees of communal villages the authority to limit residence in their towns exclusively to Jews.
Using polished and sanitized language, the bill would allow such committees in small rural suburbs to reject applications from families that "are incompatible with the social-cultural fabric of the community, and where there are grounds to assume that they will disrupt this fabric."
In other words, if admissions committees were previously forced to exercise some degree of creativity if they wanted to hide their national-ethnic grounds for rejecting Arabs, now, as Rabbi Akiva said, "All is foreseen, and freedom of choice is granted" (Pirkei Avot 3 ). Arabs? Not here. Sorry, the law is with us on this.
Those who feign innocence, including some from the center of our political map, will say, "The bill is not intended to keep out Arabs. What's wrong with supporting the right of communities to protect their unique way of life?"
Indeed, what is wrong with that? There's no argument that the vegetarians of Moshav Amirim, in the Galilee, have a right to defend themselves against an invasion of carnivores, just as the practitioners of transcendental meditation at Hararit, in the Misgav region, need to be able to meditate without interruption, but those communities are genuinely unique in character. This is not the case for the dozens of yeshuvim kehilati'im (literally, "community settlements" ) all over Israel, whose principal cultural feature is the fact that their residents are Jewish and Zionist - hardly a population under imminent threat, whose unique way of life needs protection.
Several months ago, we were given a glimpse of just how quickly the new law will be implemented, when several such villages, anticipating the Knesset's action, hurriedly established bylaws that effectively barred Arabs. In the communities of Yuvalim and Manof, in the Misgav area, applicants are now required to declare their allegiance to the Zionist vision, while in Mitzpe Aviv, a bit to the south, applicants must declare their identification with the values of Zionism and the definition of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state.
It's not as if Arab families are standing in line to move to these gated communities, which were established mainly in the 1970s and '80s by Zionist organizations like the Jewish Agency and the Jewish National Fund for the purpose of "Judaizing" areas like the Negev and the Galilee. No one ever expected these towns to provide the answer to the horrendous housing shortage faced by Israel's Arab population. For them, not a single new town has been established since 1948, with the exception of a few impoverished Bedouin settlements in the Negev. Nor has the central government seen fit to assist or give approval to the existing Arab municipalities in the drawing up of master plans that would allow them to implement a program of growth and development to meet the needs of a growing population or mitigate their poor quality of life.
And this is without even mentioning cities like Upper Nazareth, Safed or Carmiel, where a variety of statements have been made - sometimes by the most senior municipal officials themselves - that are designed to push Arabs out or prevent their integration into these cities.
Segregation of Jews and Arabs in Israel of 2010 is almost absolute. For those of us who live here, it is something we take for granted. But visitors from abroad cannot believe their eyes: segregated education, segregated businesses, separate entertainment venues, different languages, separate political parties ... and of course, segregated housing. In many senses, this is the way members of both groups want things to be, but such separation only contributes to the growing mutual alienation of Jews and Arabs.
Several courageous attempts - particularly in mixed cities and regions - have been made to change the situation, bridge the rifts and promote integration. These range from efforts to develop mixed educational frameworks, to joint economic ventures and other interventions intended to foster good neighborly relations based on equal opportunity. Until now, these attempts addressed a situation of de facto segregation. From today, however, segregation will be de jure, to the shame of Israel.
Amnon Be'eri Sulitzeanu is the co-executive director of the Abraham Fund Initiatives, an organization that promotes coexistence and equality between Israel's Jewish and Arab citizens.
Why Facebook Connect?
Comment on Haaretz.com articles with your Facebook login, and share your thoughts on your own wall.
- Latest
- Most Viewed
- Most Rated
- Open all
You can jump of from the Empire State building , Arabs will not integrate . They want their tribal way of life , keeping woman out of workforce , live a primitive life . By the way , the Arabs of Israel are the most advanced Arabs in the world .
In many senses, this is the way members of both groups want things to be,.........says the article . I travel all over Israel and everywhere Arabs are mixed with Jews . Go to Tel Aviv , Haifa , Jerusalem ...and see there is no segregation in Israel . But the very religious Muslims will not integrate with others , as it is everywhere in the world they live in , see France , England , Sweden ...... To accuse exclusivity Israel , while she does much better then any other country in this regard , is plain unfair and untrue .
the original beautiful homes in Ba'aqa and Talbieh which were emptied of their original inhabitants in 1948 and never compensated will return and live in these homes their families built. Injustice and racism trotted out under the banner of a peaple's national liberation movement cannot and will not stand. They are bound to fail as systems build on rotten foundations always do.
Although being pro-Palestinian in the sense of wanting the occupation of their territory to end I have never had a problem defending the right of Israel to exist within its 1948 borders. Increasingly though I am getting worried that Israel itself is becoming so intolerant that like the old South Africa it will literally become indefensible.
Or maybe these cities and towns don't belong to Israel? Why liberal media loves to rise hysteria like some old lady?
Yes and if you visited Northern Ireland you would not notice any segregation either - people mix freely in the town centres and the workplaces. They only live seperately, socialise in their own areas; support their own sports; live in their own areas; attend different schools; vote differently; name their children differently; sometimes even disown their children when they marry across the sectarian divide. But no - there is no noticeable segregation. And all this I am writing about exists now even after the legalised discrimination that promoted this divide has ended.
By the way Universities are giving special , preferential treatment , to Arabs to attract them . 20% of students in Haifa University are Arabs . Are there another country with such a statistics ???? Look at Europa's Arab situation .
Their constant demands that everyone else adhere to strict liberal theology while making sure that none of the "wrong people" live near them!
The no 1 problem in the diaspora is assimilation or more potently intermarriage. Why would we, in the one and only Jewish State, wish to expose or encourage this destructive phenomenon. Many Jews live in Israel specifically to avoid this problem. I realise that it's irrelevant, because Arab societies are different, but can you imagine a village of Houthis in Yemen, or Shia in southern Lebanon welcoming other Islamic strains, never mind Jews, as permanent residents in their communities, and perhaps end up intermarrying? Why dilute and further endanger the future of the Jewish people?
The problem comes when you want to promote "Jewishness", yet you have 20% of non-Jewish Arabs in the country, who are systematically discriminated because they don't fit into this "Jewishness-promoting" ideology. As this article well explains, only one new Arab town has been created in 62 years and the existing ones are denied permits to expand properly and suit their growing population. That's when segregation turns into something very ugly.
And those are fewer , but in israel very visible .
The only Jewish thing about anyone Jewish is that they are followers of a religion. And there is no Jewish people Aussie Michael. Religions are not a people, not a race, not a nation, not an ethnicity, not a nationality and not a homeland.
It fails otherwise. See Belgium, Ireland, Islam in the Western World, Jews and Palestinian in Israel. Western democracy cannot even fight organized crime nor terror without contradicting its own principles of privacy and freedom. Why should we turn mixing people of different cultural backgrounds, into a moral principle? The left is becoming the orthodox of the Western Democracy religion.
So what are you suggesting? No Constitution, no democracy, no rule of law? Better a good-old iron fisted dictatorship where those who don't agree with the ruler are harshly dealt with? At least Israel could be brave and make it official, then it would spare us the "beacon of democracy" sermons.
keep belgium out of your rhetorics. there's nothing segregated here and we are disgusted by your ethno-religious racism. discrimination based on religion is just as bad as discrimination based on ethnicity. i would think that jews of all people would understand this.
In Canada ethnic "minorities" are now the majority. We have a highly functional democracy, and an official policy of multiculturalism. Here there are people from every corner of the globe, and we are richer for it. It seems to me that Israel is letting itself be ruled by fear.
India is the best place on Earth to study violence, and I recall from reading a paper from and Indian violence researcher that mixed neighborhood, mixed businesses and NPO-s may feel uncomfortable but, in the end of the day, are much better than total segregation. If you work together, raise money together and your kids go to the same school then it is much, much harder to imagine your "enemies" to have all those horns and hooves and tails that people live in segregation take almost for granted…
You address something but do it half. Israel is a segregated country between the Jewish ethnic population too. Besides he stunning tolerant attitude of kibbutzim, always having been the jumping board for immigrants from various immigrant waves, Arab youth groups, Tzadal refugees, name me one place in Israel where people live truly mingled... maybe Neve Shalom haeavily sponsored by outside resources like a kind of parade horse of tolerance, believ me they have their tensions....So to present this segregation problem as something Jewish-Arab is just not the true picture. There is something in the human condition that wants people to live with their own, feel secure, when you need it there is a helping hand. and so forth.. Orthodox neighbourhoods, Russian neighbourhoods, Ethiopian neighbourhoods in cities, rural communities of Oriental immigrant founders, mainly Ashkenazi immigrants...This is not different from the USA and also in Europe there is a lot of segregation . What do you want from tiny Israel where anyways tensions are high, where many Israeli leaders, Arab and Jewish, leave no chance to put further distrust and fear in the people...in Israel where you do not know if tomorrow you and your loved ones live or die, have a job, in short: struggle for a living and look out for your own because thats what everyone does in a society which still doubts its own legit existence after more than 60 years.
And Israel still has the nerve to deny that it is an apartheid regime, just because it allows its Arabs to vote and participate in the Knesset. Democracy is more than voting.
AGAIN?
If you really want integration, that is.
Because those are illegal settlements built on land that did not belong to Israel and was illegally expropriated from its rightful owners. It's just a legal question, not racial or religious.
It should go without saying that a community just for Jews is wrong, racist, and in violation of every modern and democratic ethic that makes a country worth living in. No citizen should be denied the right to buy a home wherever he pleases in his own country. Furthermore, why does a country need an exclusively vegetarian or meditation-oriented community? What happened to freedom?
so why not take the final steps and make palestina a nation of its own with all the responsibilities ? israel has certainly experienced the difference between being refugees and having your own state to deal with ! mazel tov
Over time, Herzl's Zionist ideal has become so totally infested by racist and fascist values, that whatever glow it once radiated has dimmed to a dismal grey which grows darker ever day. He'd not recognize it as it is today, and there's little doubt that he'd shun what it's become.