THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume XIV, Issue # 52, March 22, 2012
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
ISRAEL'S ARABS: LIVING A PARADOX
By Dr. Daniel Pipes
ARABIC-SPEAKING CITIZENS OF THE STATE OF ISRAEL: CAN ARABS, WHO MAKE UP ONE-FIFTH OF ISRAEL'S POPULATION, BE LOYAL CITIZENS OF THE
JEWISH STATE? ARABS' APPRECIATION OF ISRAEL'S ECONOMIC SUCCESS, STANDARD OF HEALTH CARE, RULE OF LAW & FUNCTIONING CONSTITUTIONAL
DEMOCRACY, BUT RESENTMENT OF JUDAISM AS THE COUNTRY'S PRIVILEGED RELIGION, THE LAW OF RETURN THAT PERMITS ONLY JEWS TO IMMIGRATE AT
WILL, HEBREW AS THE PRIMARY LANGUAGE OF STATE, THE STAR OF DAVID IN THE FLAG, & MENTION OF "JEWISH SOUL" IN THE ANTHEM -- THE TWO
PARADOXES IN WHICH ISRAELI ARABS LIVE -- WHAT CAN BE DONE -- THE GREATEST IMPEDIMENT TO A LONGTERM SOLUTION TO THE PROBLEM OF ISRAELI
NATIONAL UNITY & IDENTITY
FULL STORY:
Can Arabs, who make up one-fifth of Israel's population, be loyal citizens of the Jewish state?
With this question in mind, I recently visited several Arab-inhabited regions of Israel (Jaffa, Baqa al-Gharbiya, Umm al-Fahm, Haifa, Acre, Nazareth, the Golan
Heights, Jerusalem) and held discussions with mainstream Arab and Jewish Israelis.
I found most Arabic-speaking citizens to be intensely conflicted about living in a Jewish polity. On the one hand, they resent Judaism as the country's privileged
religion, the Law of Return that permits only Jews to immigrate at will, Hebrew as the primary language of state, the Star of David in the flag, and mention of the
"Jewish soul" in the anthem. On the other hand, they appreciate the country's economic success, standard of health care, rule of law, and functioning democracy.
These conflicts find many expressions. The small, uneducated, and defeated Israeli Arab population of 1949 has grown ten-fold, acquired modern skills, and
recovered its confidence. Some from this community have acquired positions of prestige and responsibility, including Supreme Court Justice Salim Joubran, former
Ambassador Ali Yahya, former government minister Raleb Majadele, and journalist Khaled Abu Toameh.
But these assimilated few pale beside the discontented masses who identify with Land Day, Nakba Day, and the Future Vision report. Revealingly, most Israeli
Arab parliamentarians, such as Ahmed Tibi and Haneen Zuabi, are hotheads spewing rank anti-Zionism. Israeli Arabs have increasingly resorted to violence
against their Jewish co-nationals.
Indeed, Israeli Arabs live two paradoxes. Although they suffer discrimination within Israel, they enjoy more rights and greater stability than any Arab populace
living in their own sovereign countries (think Egypt or Syria). Second, they hold citizenship in a country that their fellow Arabs malign and threaten with
annihilation.
My conversations in Israel led me to conclude that these complexities impede robust discussion, by Jews and Arabs alike, of the full implications of Israeli Arabs'
anomalous existence. Extremist parliamentarians and violent youth get dismissed as an unrepresentative fringe. Instead, one hears that, if only Israeli Arabs
received more respect and more municipal aid from the central government, current discontents would be eased; that one must distinguish between (the good)
Arabs of Israel and (the bad) Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza; and a warning that Israeli Arabs will metastasize into Palestinians unless Israel treats them better.
My interlocutors generally brushed aside questions about Islam. It almost felt impolite to mention the Islamic imperative that Muslims (who make up 84 percent of
the Israeli Arab population) rule themselves. Discussing the Islamic drive for application of Islamic law drew blank looks and a shift to more immediate topics.
This avoidance reminded me of Turkey before 2002, when mainstream Turks assumed that Atatürk's revolution was permanent and assumed Islamists would
remain a fringe phenomenon. They were proved to be very wrong: a decade after Islamists democratically rode to power in late 2002, the elected government
steadily applied more Islamic laws and built a neo-Ottoman regional power.
I predict a similar evolution in Israel, as Israeli Arab paradoxes grow more acute. Muslim citizens of Israel will continue to grow in numbers, skills and confidence,
becoming simultaneously more integral to the country's life and more ambitious to throw off Jewish sovereignty. This suggests that, as Israel overcomes external
threats, Israeli Arabs will emerge as an ever-greater concern. Indeed, I predict they represent the ultimate obstacle to establishing the Jewish homeland
anticipated by Theodor Herzl and Lord Balfour.
What can be done? Lebanon's Christians lost power because they incorporated too many Muslims and became too small a proportion of the country's population
to rule it. Recalling this lesson, Israel's identity and security require minimizing the number of Arab citizens – not by reducing their democratic rights, much less
by deporting them, but by such steps as adjusting Israel's borders, building fences along the frontiers, implementing stringent family reunification policies,
changing pro-natalist policies, and carefully scrutinizing refugee applications.
Ironically, the greatest impediment to these actions will be that most Israeli Arabs emphatically wish to remain disloyal citizens of the Jewish state (as opposed to
loyal citizens of a Palestinian state). Further, many other Middle Eastern Muslims aspire to become Israelis (a phenomenon I call Muslim aliyah). These
preferences, I predict, will stymie the government of Israel, which will not develop adequate responses, thereby turning today's relative quiet into tomorrow's
crisis.
© 2012 by Daniel Pipes. All rights reserved.
Republished with the Permission of Daniel Pipes
Reprinted from DanielPipes.org, March 22, 2012
URL: http://www.danielpipes.org/10873/israel-arabs-paradox
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
Israel, Arabs, & the Islamic Middle East -- The Israeli-Arab Conflict;
Israeli Politics, Government, & Public Policy -- Public Issues & Controversies;
The State of Israel in War & Peace -- Israel's Role in International Relations;
Israeli Military Defense & National Security -- The Israeli Economy
The Middle East -- Arabs, Arab States, & Their Regional Neighbors
American Foreign Policy -- The Middle East
Islamism & Jihadism -- Radical Islam & Islamic Terrorism
Page Three
Page Two
Page One
International Politics & World Disorder:
War, Peace, & Geopolitics in the Real World:
Foreign Affairs & U.S. National Security
Page Two
Page One
Islamist Terrorist Attacks on the U.S.A.
Osama bin Laden & the Islamist Declaration of War
Against the U.S.A. & Western Civilization
Islamist International Terrorism &
U.S. Intelligence Agencies
U.S. National Security Strategy
Dr. Daniel Pipes, a Ph.D. in Islamic History (Harvard University, 1978), is Founder and President of the Middle East Forum,
Publisher of Middle East Quarterly,
Founder of Campus Watch, Taube Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University, a
signatory of the Project for the New American Century, a former board member of the U.S. Institute of Peace, a former
adjunct scholar at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a Golden Circle supporter of the U.S. Committee for a Free
Lebanon, a former member of the U.S. Department of Defense Special Task Force on Terrorism and Technology, and a
former lecturer at the U.S. Naval War College, Harvard University, the University of Chicago, and the University of
Pennsylvania. Dr. Pipes was the Director of the Foreign Policy Research Institute from 1986 to 1993.
Author or co-author of eighteen books, Dr. Pipes is a regular columnist for National Review Online, Front Page
Magazine, the New York Sun, and the Jerusalem Post. His analyses of world trends and of forces and
developments in the Middle East have appeared in numerous North American newspapers, including the Washington
Post, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal. He frequently appears on American network
television, as well as at universities and think tanks, to discuss the Middle East, Islam, and the Islamist threat to the
U.S.A. and the West. He also has appeared on BBC and Al Jazeera, and has lectured in approximately
twenty-five countries.
Dr. Pipes is a Polish-American Jew whose parents fled Poland in 1939, immigrated to the U.S.A., and assimilated well into
American society and culture. His father is Richard Pipes, an American historian specializing in Russian and Soviet history
and serving as Professor of History at Harvard University from 1950 until his retirement in 1996. During the Cold War, the
worldview of Richard Pipes was strongly anti-Soviet and anti-Communist.
Return to Top of Page
Go to the WEBSITE INDEX
Return to Beginning of
THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA,
Public Issues & Political Controversies
Return to Beginning of
THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
Most Recent Articles
Return to Beginning of
THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA,
Volume XIV, 2011
Return to Beginning of
THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA,
Subject Matter Highlights
Return to POLITICAL EDUCATION Homepage
CONTACT & ACCESS INFORMATION
This is not a commercial website. The sole purpose of the website is to share with interested persons information regarding civics,
civic and social education, political science, government, politics, law, constitutional law and history, public policy and political
philosophy and history, as well as current and recent political developments, public issues, and political controversies.
POLITICAL EDUCATION, CONSERVATIVE ANALYSIS
POLITICS, SOCIETY, & THE SOVEREIGN STATE
Website of Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr.
Government, Politics, Public Policy, Legal Issues, Constitutional Law, Government & the Economy, Cultural Values, Foreign Affairs,
International Relations, Military Defense & National Security, Geopolitics, Terrorism & Homeland Security, American National Interests,
Political Systems & Processes, Political Institutions, Political Ideologies, & Political Philosophy
INDEX FOR THE ENTIRE WEBSITE
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
Q
R
S
T
U
V
W
X
Y
Z
THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Conservative & Free-Market Analysis of Government, Politics & Public Policy, Covering Political, Legal, Constitutional, Economic,
Cultural, Military, International, Strategic, & Geopolitical Issues
Conservative Government Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity