Israel has made many, many (many!) egregious errors in dealing with its Arab citizens. Unfortunately, the end result of these errors, combined with the latent hostility of an Arab community that has never fully accepted the legitimacy of Israel, is that any settlement that is ultimately reached with the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaze will also have to deal with the Palestinians in the “Arab triangle” in the Galilee. Palestinian Arabs (not including Bedouins and Druze) make up about 15% of Israel’s population. In some areas, like Haifa, they are reasonably well-integrated into Israeli society. In the Galilee, they are not. As I said, Israel has made many errors in dealing with this population (how much better India seems to have handled its own Muslim minority, despite hostilities with Pakistan, or am I wrong about that?), but I’m afraid it’s too late too do much about it. There is much talk about how Israeli Arabs, despite formal legal equality with the exception of an exemption from military service, are treated as second-class citizens. But really, if you were an Israeli Jew, regardless of the mistakes of the past would you be willing to give first-class citizenship to a population that mourns the death of mass murderer Sheikh Yassin? I understand the cause and effect situation here–one reason for the antipathy to Israel among Israeli Arabs is that they do not feel that they have not been treated as full first-class citizens–but we are talking about the present, not the past, and I don’t think a sudden openheartedness on the part of Israeli Jews to Israeli Arabs would do much to quell the nationalism and Islamic radicalism that is taking hold in the Galilee.
The vast majority of Israeli Arabs, even in the Triangle, wish to retain Israeli citizenship, in part because they want to retain the economic benefits of Israeli citizenship, in part because they know a future Palestinian regime is likely to be corrupt and dictatorial. But Israel cannot have its politics determined by a group that is not simply disloyal to the state, but who openly sympathize with its mortal enemies. Nazareth, Uhm Al Fahm, and other cities and towns of the Triangle will become the Sudetenland of Israel after any peace deal, the center of irredentist provocations, world “concern,” and binationalist schemes meant to destoy Israel. In exchange for for the Jewish settlement blocs of Judea and Samaria (West Bank), they must, at least for political purposes, be part of any new Palestinian state, though they can remain economically integrated with Israel.
As a postscript, I should note that Israeli Arabs, while not doing as well as Israeli Jews overall, have relative rates of literacy, life expectancy, higher education, infant mortality and quality of life variables far better than the relative quality of life of Europe’s Arab minorities compared to Europe’s majorities. Indeed, Israeli Arabs probably do better than some of Israel’s Jewish ethnic groups, though no one keeps statistics of that sort in Israel. But man, as they say, does not live by bread alone.
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