The Fate of Israel's Arabs
BY EDWIN SAMUEL IN this article I have set myself to answer a question recently posed to me. 'What does a Palestinian old-timer like yourself feel about the Arabs in Israel today?' To formulate my reply I have had first to go backwards through time to recapture Arab life as I once knew it; then to compare What used to be with what is now left.
During the Mandatory period I lived much among the Arabs and loved them for being primitive and picturesque. Once I lived for a whole year at Ramallah, in the Samarian Hills, riding on horseback round my sixty hill villages as district officer and magistrate, the only Jew among 30,000 Moslems. Another year I spent at Nazareth as the assistant district commissioner in charge of Galilee—from ,the Lebanese frontier to the Emek and from the .Jordan River to Nahalal. (It was then that I started the Peasant House in Nazareth to sell Arab handicrafts; from Nazareth I transferred the peasant costumes to the Citadel in Jerusalem and so became a co-founder of the Folk Museum.) To deal with the peasants I had to learn Arabic; but with the more erudite I could Speak English or French. I knew King Abdullah of Jordan; the Mufti of Jerusalem; his arch-enemy, Ragheb Bey Nashashibi, the Mayor of Jerusalem, and a host of Arab colleagues in the Palestine Civil Service, several of whom subsequently became Cabinet Ministers or civil servants in Jordan or other Arab States.
Do I miss them? I do; and, in spite of the bitter racial struggle that went on around me, I miss them very much indeed. For two years I was on the Mufti's list of British officials to be assassinated and had to take very careful Precautions to remain alive. In the free-for-all at the very end of the Mandatory period, I was wounded by the Arab bomb that exploded with many fatalities in the courtyard of the Jewish Agency in Jerusalem (nothing personal, of course); and three weeks later was fired on (and missed) three times by a group of armed Arabs who had been sent to take me as a hostage.
Today, my wife and I live in the split city of Jerusalem, on the Israel side of the line. I do not like being cut off from the Old City—not so much because I am a Jew as because I am an ex-Palestinian and (I hope) a civilised man. I feel Just the same about my exclusion from Bethlehem. I do not like closed frontiers anywhere; I merely accept them as Political realities.
Yet I am sad—and I have no doubt many other Jews in Israel are too—to see so few Arabs walking about today in Israel. Most are in their own villages in Galilee, or in the town of Nazareth itself. There are small groups still in Jaffa, Haifa and even Jerusalem. You still can see an occasional. peasant woman from the hill village of Abu Ghosh (fifteen miles away) unconcernedly walking in Jerusalem, bearing on her proud head a straw basket full of eggs or figs. But the lawyers and the doctors, the landlords and the teachers have all fled. Their ghosts still haunt the fine stone town houses that they built and in which they once lived. The problem of internal racial conflict now hardly exists; there is practically no competition, as those Arabs who could compete have withdrawn and have left the field almost wholly to the Jews. The leaderless peasantry in the north are ruled largely by the Jewish Military Government in Nazareth; the Bedouin in the south by the Jewish Military Governor in Beersheba. Apart from Arab Communist activity in Nazareth itself, the Arabs of Israel give little trouble.
Their situation, however, is an unhappy one. The attitude of the Israel Government (and public opinion generally) towards the Arab in Israel is ambivalent. There is little rancour or fear; but at the same time there is little confidence. That is the unfortunate position of most strong governments faced with disaffected minorities. The Arabs in Palestine felt little affection towards the Jews—except perhaps in 'the good old days' before the First World War when both Arab and Jew were equally despised and oppressed by their common Turkish master. Then they hardly knew each other; for the next thirty years they were locked in a struggle for Palestine; now the victorious Jews face a defeated and sullen Arab minority of their own. To integrate them into the Jewish majority in Israel calls for the highest arts of government.
In its handling of its own Arab minority, the Israel Govern- ment is not doing so badly. It has the right ideas. The Ministry of the Minorities (largely Arab), established in 1948, was soon abolished, as it was felt that, as citizens of Israel, Arabs in Israel should, like other citizens, deal direct with the several ministries and not through a 'consulate' of their own. The 120,000 Arabs remaining in Israel were enfranchised and are now (nearly 200,000 strong) represented in the Knesset by seven members (of which five appear on wholly Arab lists and two on mixed lists). For the first six years of the new State, Arab young men were not liable for military service; but that discriminatory rule has now been rescinded (not without objection from some Arab leaders, however).* The travel restrictions within Israel imposed on Arabs have now been lifted except for those in the frontier areas, who still require military permits. But it is perhaps in matters of health and education that most advance has been made. The pro- portion of Arab boys—and above all, girls—now at school, is higher today than under the British Mandate (and in other Arab countries, too, with the possible exception of Lebanon). An Arab teachers' training school is run by the Israel Ministry of Education—but not, of course, on the same scale as the Arab College maintained in Jerusalem under the previous administration. Hebrew is taught in Arab schools as the first foreign language. Nevertheless, it will take decades before the Arabs of Israel are completely integrated. There are already mixed trade unions; but Arabs are not full voting members yet of the Histadrut; while labour exchanges in Jewish areas do not provide work for Arabs—they have their own exchanges.
What do we want our Israeli Arabs to become? Do we want them to become good Israelis, speaking Hebrew and indistinguishable from their Jewish fellow-citizens? Or do we want to keep them on as a racial minority, speaking Arabic and wearing distinctive Arab dress? This question was raised in the late 1920s by the Brit Shalom Society, of which I was a founder member. The late Dr. Judah Magnes was our spiritual guide; we were supported by several other leading figures in the Hebrew University. We then believed that Palestine could contain two separate cultures—one Jewish and the other Arab—twin yolks in a single egg. Dr. Magnes envisaged a constitution so delicately balanced that neither Arab nor Jew could ever dominate the other. Even before the Mandate it became clear that such a scheme would have been an organised deadlock and that it would have been difficult to maintain such a delicate balance even if it were found desirable.
The situation in Israel today is much simpler. With an overwhelming Jewish majority, it is extremely doubtful whether a separate Arab culture can be maintained. It seems more than probable that the Arabs will become rapidly assimilated to the prevailing Jewish culture of Israel.
Since 1948, about 650,000 Arabs have moved out of Israel and about 750,000 more Jews have moved in to take their place. Many of these are themselves from the Middle East, speaking Arabic. wearing `Oriental' clothes on festive occa- sions (for example, the Yemenites) and eating `Arab' food. Even the Western Jew likes 'Arab' food for a change; and the many Oriental restaurants formerly run by Arabs for Arabs and patronised occasionally by Jews have been replaced by an increasing number of restaurants run by Oriental Jews for Oriental Jews and patronised occasionally by Western Jews. Jewish music in Israel has a strong Oriental flavour; several of its most popular radio singers are Yemenites. Israel has the problem of integrating its own Oriental Jews and its Western Jews into one community, quite apart from inte- grating its Arabs.
`The good old days' are gone for ever and we have largely lost the savour of the East. More and more of the Arabs of Israel will wear 'Western' clothing; more and more will speak fluent Hebrew (very easy for an Arab to learn). They will play their part in the civil service and in the police. And it will be a matter of surprise to find that the man you are talking to is an Arab, not a Jew. Arab culture will flourish in Arab lands; even there it is becoming rapidly westernised. In Israel the Arab has little chance of maintaining his identity.
Previous page
