Why Have Jewish-Arab Relations Deteriorated in Israel? The View of Sikkuy's Ron Gerlitz, by Phyllis Bernstein

What follows is a summary of remarks delivered by Ron Gerlitz, co-executive director of Sikkuy: The Association for the Advancement of Civic Equality, at an Inter-Agency Task Force for Israeli Arab Issues meeting on November 6, 2014 in New York. 

"To hate Arabs isn't racism, it's having moral values! #Israeldemandsrevenge

By Phyllis Bernstein

This summer, and since the war in Gaza, we have witnessed a serious deterioration in relations between Jewish and Arab citizens in Israel.  Unlike the events which took place in 2000 between the police and Arab citizens, since the summer of 2014 we’ve seen civil clashes between Jewish and Arab citizens.

In most cases, Jews have attacked Arabs verbally or physically.  What’s new is the frequency and intensity of these incidents. This is something we’ve never seen before in Jewish-Arab relations in Israel.   A few examples:  shouting “death to Arabs” on the street, demonstrations demanding the firing of all Arab employees in some shopping malls, organized pressure on employers to fire Arab employees, death threats against people who expressed sympathy for Arabs, including former Defense Minister Amir Peretz, physical and verbal attacks against Arab citizens, racist incitement in social media, dismissal of Arab employees by mainstream Jewish employers, and incitement by politicians such as Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman who called on Jews to boycott Arab businesses.

The results:  Arabs have simply become afraid to go out in the street, speak Arabic in public, and go to work. The level of hate has increased significantly on both sides.   Extreme right-wing organizations have also incited hatred against Israeli Arabs through well-organized demonstrations and marches.

Some believe this has happened because of the war in Gaza.   But there have been three other wars in Gaza in recent years and these things did not happen before.    If we simply see these developments as an “unexplained outburst of racism" in Jewish society, we will be unable to find solutions.   What we are seeing is a backlash by the very extreme right to the strengthening of Arab society and its ever-increasing integration in the economy and society in Israel.

Arab society in Israel has gotten stronger – economically, socially and also in terms of political representation.  Many factors have driven this process, some due to Arab society itself, some to government efforts, and some to NGO’s working for equality. 

While growing up near Tira in the seventies, Ron saw Arabs working only as school janitors or as farmers. Today you can see Arabs working in pharmacies and in hospitals as doctors and nurses.  The symbol of success is the Arab Supreme Court judge who sent former President Katzav to jail.  Arab citizens of Israel have not only become better off, but they are also more visible and this has changed how the extreme Jewish right sees them.

The backlash began in the Knesset with a wave of legislation against Arab citizens.  But the politicians failed, and Arab society has continued to flourish.   This summer, people took to the streets to try to do what the politicians couldn’t do. 

The extreme right wing wanted to stop integration in employment, and the “Chuligans” in the street (similar to the KKK, but with different hats) descended on pharmacies to demand the dismissal of Arab employees. They cannot tolerate the strength and visibility of Arabs in public in Israel. They want to put them in the only place they’re willing to see them – back down at the bottom. 

During the summer, the assault against Arab citizens took place in the Knesset, within the government, on social networks, in the media and, of course, on the street.  This makes the situation much worse because it is harder to control.  And we have come very close to the point where things could spin out of control. 

What does all this mean for Israeli society?   In a word, it’s dangerous.    There is a real possibility that the largely non-violent relations between Arabs and Jews in Israel will deteriorate into serious violence. 

We must develop solutions for this new situation, because things have changed dramatically.   A few important lessons emerge.    First, we didn't expect the backlash from the right wing to the success of efforts to strengthen Arab society and especially to the strides made in integrating Arabs into the Israeli work place.  The process of economic development, integration and narrowing of gaps between Arabs and Jews is not linear.  There are people on the other side who want to stop it and we need to take this into account.  An example:  While Israeli and American Jewish philanthropists are giving microfinance to small Arab businesses, the foreign minister called on Jews not to buy from those very same businesses!   Philanthropic efforts must take this into account.  Otherwise, their efforts are at risk of failing.

There are more and more shared spaces in which Jews and Arabs mix on an equal basis, especially in work places and in the new mixed cities like Nazareth Illit.  And it is exactly in those places that we saw clashes between Jewish and Arab citizens.

If the Arab woman from Sakhnin hadn’t graduated university and worked as a pharmacist in Haifa, no one would have cared what she thought about the IDF during the Gaza war.   But she is a graduate of an Israeli college and she works in a pharmacy.   So right-wing hooligans demanded her dismissal because of what she wrote on Facebook during the war.   "Death to the Arabs" marches were not held in Baqa al-Gharbiya but in Nazareth Illit and Haifa.  The Arab doctor was fired and not the Arab hospital cleaner.

While we have worked hard and had success in narrowing gaps, for example through increased economic development in the Arab sector and creating more shared places, no one considered that those places could become focal points for tension between Jews and Arabs in times of war.   It is exactly in those places where the right wing will react. 

Perhaps the most important lesson is that economic development by itself simply isn’t enough.  The difference in narratives between Jews and Arabs dramatically affects the ability of these societies to live together.  NGOs and philanthropists cannot create a common narrative for both sides.   The Zionist and Palestinian narratives are very far apart.   That chasm will not be bridged in the next two generations.   But we must find ways to live together despite these different narratives.

We must be ready for the next escalation.   Every newly shared space could become the arena for the next escalation between Jews and Arabs.  It is important to develop and promote ideas that will enable those shared places:  for example, the workplace must become tolerant of the different narratives.  As an example, an Arab doctor should not be fired for Facebook posts in sympathy with the Palestinian children killed in Gaza.   

We should not stop pushing economic development forward, and we should continue to build a shared society.  But now we must also prepare for the reactions of those who find these unwelcome.   In addition to our investment in economic progress, we will also have to invest in preparing our response to the likely counterattack.   We will have to find ways that those shared spaces, especially places of employment, can accommodate the two differing and sometimes conflicting narratives of Jews and Arabs in Israel.

Phyllis Bernstein adds:   Israeli Arabs, and the Palestinians in the West Bank and in Gaza, all view themselves as part of the same “Palestinian people.”   Arab citizens want to remain in Israel as citizens, but in times of war they are unable to express dissenting views against the government’s policies or the IDF’s actions.   Israeli civil society really needs to start addressing the question of how to deal with the “Palestinian peoplehood narrative” of Israel’s Arab citizens.   In short, Israel needs to work much more on its democracy issues.

Phyllis Bernstein is co-chair of the Israeli Arab Committee of the Jewish Federation of Greater Metrowest New Jersey and serves on the executive board of Partners for Progressive Israel.  Her views are her own and not those of any organization with which she is affiliated. 

Here are links to three Op-eds by Ron Gerlitz with further analysis of the deterioration in Arab-Jewish relations in Israel this summer: 

1. Why Palestinian citizens of Israel are no longer safe, Ron Gerlitz | +972 Magazine  

2.  A short version of that op-ed appeared in Ha’aretz:   The backlash against Arab integration

 

3.  And a new op-ed about the firing of Arab employees during the war:   Dismissal for Narrative Reasons | Ron Gerlitz | The Times of Israel

A Day of Catastrophe in Israel, by Rachel Metz - Special to the Campaign for Bedouin-Jewish Justice

March 23rd was one hell of a day in Israel. Anyone following the news there probably saw the major stories, but experience in the Negev lends some insight into their implications for Bedouin–Jewish justice.

For residents of Beer Sheva and neighboring areas, Wednesday started bright and early with a siren and rocket at 5:30 a.m. Even living seven time zones away, when I read about the rocket, I felt like I was straight back during the 2008-2009 war. I can only imagine how palpably people still in the area experienced that as they felt the rush of adrenaline that comes with the siren and hurried to seek shelter. My heart goes out to the residents of Beer Sheva and the rest of the Negev as they're assaulted by rocket fire. Both during Cast Lead and today, though, when the Israeli news media report that a rocket hit an "open area" in the Negev, I can't help but wonder if that "open area" was an unrecognized Bedouin village. Is damage there excluded from the official news the way the villages are from the official map? As people in Beer Sheva justifiably complain about locked shelters, where are the complaints on behalf of their neighbors for whom the threat of home demolition precludes not just having shelters but even living in houses big enough to provide the relative protection of stairwells?

Elected in the wake of Cast Lead as people’s defensiveness manifested in a political shift to the right, the Knesset continued to add to the bad news on Wednesday for those Jews who support change towards improved human rights. It passed two highly problematic laws proposed by Avigdor Lieberman's Yisrael Beiteinu party. The first law bars public funding for groups that "undermine the foundations of the state and contradict its values." The potential for this bill to be used in a McCarthy-esque way is troubling, especially when coupled with Wednesday’s Knesset hearing that questioned whether J Street has the right to criticize Israeli policy while supporting Israel.

More immediately troubling for Bedouin-Jewish Justice is the second racist bill passed that same day, which allows Negev and Galilee communities with up to 400 families to screen potential applicants based on cultural characteristics.* Bedouin in Israel are stuck between a rock and a hard place. Those who have tried to move into predominately Jewish areas (including Beer Sheva) have long contended with de facto discrimination, and now in many places it will be de jure discrimination as well. They can move to one of the government-created Bedouin towns, where the legacy of decades of underfunding means they will face rundown roads and schools, minimal-at-best government services such as libraries, and, unsurprisingly given these other issues, the highest unemployment and poverty rates of all Israeli towns. Alternatively, they can remain on their land in unrecognized villages without water, electricity, roads, medical clinics, etc. and hope their homes aren’t destroyed nor their crops defoliated.

The biggest news story on Wednesday, however, was of course the bus stop bombing in Jerusalem. Violence against innocent people is never acceptable. But anyone concerned with that type of explosive physical violence should also be concerned with the disenfranchisement of Israel’s Bedouin citizens. It, too, leads to the loss of innocent lives.

*Israeli civil rights groups are also concerned about the potential of this being used to discriminate against Ethiopian-Israelis, foreign workers, same-sex couples, single-parent families, and other stigmatized groups.

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Rachel Metz lived in Beer Sheva, Israel from 2007 through 2009 while earning her master's degree in Middle East Studies from Ben Gurion University. Her experiences in the Negev included interning for BUSTAN, a Jewish/Bedouin environmental justice NGO. That same passion for social justice motivated her to combat U.S. poverty through AVODAH, the Jewish Service Corps, work on the largest reservation in the U.S., and write articles, opinion pieces and letters to the editor for publications including In These Times, The Jerusalem Post, and The Washington Post. She currently lives in the Washington, DC area where she works in environmental protection.

Meretz to JNF: Stop the racist policy at Al-Arakib!

The Meretz party this week condemned the actions of the Jewish National Fund (Keren Kayemet l'Yisrael) at the unrecognized Bedouin village of al-Arakib, north of Beersheva, branding them a "racist policy, arising from a viewpoint that regards the Bedouin in the Negev as a nuisance, rather than as citizens with equal rights."

Meretz called for the recognition of al-Arakib and for the provision of basic infrastructure there, and demanded that the JNF immediately suspend its plans to plant a forest at al-Arakib that would deny the villagers any chance of return.

Since last July, the Meretz Executive noted, the homes in al-Arakib have been demolished more than ten times by the Israel Land Administration and the Israel Police - first the permanent houses, and since then the tents and temporary structures that the residents have continually rebuilt.

Over the last few weeks, the situation has deteriorated further: The police had begun to use clubs, rubber bullets and teargas during the demolitions, while making arrests of villagers and other activists. In addition, the JNF had begun to prepare the ground for the planting of a forest atop al-Arakib's ruins so that the village could not be rebuilt.

The District Court in Beerhseva issued a temporary injunction against the JNF's actions, and although the injunction was not extended, the judge recommended that the JNF not continue its work so as not to create irreversible facts on the ground. The JNF rejected the judge's recommendation, however.

In light of these developments, the Meretz Executive resolved as follows:

1. The Meretz Executive regards the demolition of the al-Arakib village as a racist policy, arising from a viewpoint that regards the Bedouin in the Negev as a nuisance, rather than as citizens with equal rights.
2. Both law and justice require that al-Arakib be recognized, and that infrastructure be provided there for the welfare of its residents.
3. The Meretz Executive condemns the conduct of the JNF, which insists on entering village land and planting trees where the houses of the residents once stood. It calls on the JNF to cease all its activities in the al-Arakib area.

Meretz representatives on the JNF directorate, Micha Drori and Radi Sfuri, have approached JNF officials, demanding that its operations at al-Arakib cease.

For the report in Hebrew, click here.

Reprinted from the Meretz USA website.