Arab citizens of Israel

Arab Israelis, Arabs of Israel, Israeli Arabs and Palestinians in Israel refer to Israeli citizens of Arab Palestinian origin who are not Jews and whose ethnic and cultural identity is Arab and who speak Arabic as their mother tongue.

There are 1,271,000 Arab Israelis living in Israel; they make up just under 20% of Israeli citizens. The Israel Central Bureau of Statistics includes East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights in its surveys. This brings the proportion of Arab Israelis to just over 20% of the Israeli population (2008). Jews of Arab descent, i.e. those who themselves or whose ancestors come from Arab countries, are not considered Arab Israelis.

Arab Israelis, regardless of their religion, speak Arabic, mostly in the form of a Palestinian Arabic dialect. The administrative and school language is usually High Arabic. Most Arab Israelis speak modern Hebrew as a second language. About 84% are Sunni Muslims, about 8% Druze and 8% Christian. The latter are mainly members of the Greek Orthodox Church of Jerusalem, but also include Maronites, Melkites, Roman and Syrian Catholics, and Protestants. The language of the church is also usually Arabic. Most Arab Israelis consider themselves Palestinians or Arabs, but in terms of citizenship they consider themselves Israelis (see "Terminology").

The more than 278,000 Arabs in East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, which unlike the West Bank and the Gaza Strip were annexed by Israel, have a special status as "permanent residents". East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights were captured by Israel in the Six-Day War (1967). Afterwards, most of the Arabs living there renounced Israeli citizenship in protest against the occupation, although a pragmatically motivated change in thinking can now be observed in this regard.

Terminology

The Arab citizens of Israel are referred to by various appellations.

They are usually called "Israeli Arabs" or "Arabs of Israel" by Jewish-Israeli society; the designations "minorities" and "Arab sector" are also used.

According to a 2020 poll by the Jewish Policy Institute (JPPI), only 7 percent of Israeli Arabs self-identify as Palestinian. Half identify themselves as Arab-Israeli and 23 percent as "primarily Israeli."

Palestinians in the occupied territories (West Bank and Gaza Strip) refer to this population group as "Palestinians in Israel", or also as "forty-eighters" and "Arabs of the landlocked" (Arabic عرب الداخل, DMG ʿarab ad-dāḫil). i.e. as Arabs who lived on Israeli territory (including the Arab territories gained by Israel in the 1948 Middle East War) after the founding of the Israeli state.

Other terms include "Arab Israelis", "Israeli Palestinians", "Palestinian Arabs in Israel", "Palestinian Arabs" and "Israeli Palestinian Arabs".

Jews born in Palestine with Arabic as their mother tongue, who formed a large part of the Jewish population of Palestine until the onset of Zionist immigration from Europe and assimilated into the country's newly emerging Hebrew culture in the course of the 20th century, were referred to as Sephardic or Oriental Jews and as members of the ancient Yishuv, but rarely as Jewish Arabs. Jews who immigrated from Arab countries are generalized in Israel as members of the "communities of the Orient" or are called Iraqi or Babylonian Jews (or simply Iraqis), Moroccan Jews (or Moroccans), etc., according to their or their parents' or grandparents' country of origin; sometimes the terms "Arab Jews" and - rarely - "Jewish Arabs" are also applied to them.

Politics and society: overview

Arab Israelis are equal citizens under the law. They often have more extensive civil rights than Palestinians in surrounding states such as Lebanon and Syria, including the right to vote and other democratic social freedoms. This is especially true for Arab-Israeli women.

The more than 278,000 Arabs living in East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights have a special status of "permanent residents". East Jerusalem's Arab residents often have close ties to the West Bank, and few applied for and received Israeli citizenship. They can, however, vote in Jerusalem municipal council elections. The Golan Heights were effectively annexed by Israel under a 1981 law. The vast majority of residents have rejected Israeli citizenship, choosing to retain Syrian citizenship.

The majority (52 percent) of Israel's Arab population considers itself Israeli Arabs, Israelis, or Arab citizens of Israel, while a minority (23 percent) prefers the designation Palestinian, Palestinians in Israel, or Palestinian citizens of Israel. Many nevertheless have family ties to the West Bank and Gaza Strip, as well as to Palestinian refugees in Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. The Bedouin of the Negev identify more strongly with Israel than other Arab Israelis. Druze men, unlike other Arab Israelis, are conscripted into military service. The non-Druze Arabs of Israel can volunteer for military service. By comparison, Palestinian refugees in Israel's neighboring states usually do not have citizenship there; nevertheless, in some countries, such as Syria, they are required to perform military service.

After the elections to the 20th Knesset (Israeli parliament) in 2015, 13 of the 120 members of parliament were Arab Israelis. They are members of the United Arab List, Chadash and Balad parties, which appeared as the United List on the occasion of the election, and see themselves as representing the interests of Israeli Arabs. In 2007, Raleb Madschadele was the first Arab to be appointed to a ministerial post.

Since the Arab population is particularly child-rich compared to the rest of Israel's population, the proportion of Israeli Arabs in Israel's total population is expected to rise well above 20 percent in the coming decades.

Many Arab Israelis feel like second-class citizens in everyday Israeli life and complain of being disadvantaged compared to Jewish Israelis. Land ownership issues in the Israeli-occupied West Bank are particularly contentious. Moreover, until 2006, the term terrorist attack was defined solely as an attack by organizations directed against the existence of the State of Israel; Arab victims of attacks by radical Israeli settlers were not covered by the Terror Compensation Law. After protests, the relevant law was generalized and expanded to cover general terrorist attacks. There are repeated complaints about the lower level of state investment in the infrastructure of Arab residential areas (road construction, education, health care, etc.) compared to Jewish cities and municipalities.