World Directory of Minorities and Indigenous Peoples - Israel

Environment

Israel is a long, narrow coastal state that extends along shores of the Mediterranean Sea, which forms its western border. It borders Lebanon in the north, Syria to the north-east, Jordan to the west and south-east, and Egypt to the south-west. Following the 1967 Six-Day War, Israel occupied all of East Jerusalem, as well as parts of Jordan (the West Bank), Syria and Egypt. For its size, Israel is geographically diverse. In addition to the coastal plain, it has desert in the south, central highlands, the Jordan River Valley in the east, and a mountainous north. Israel has few natural resources.

History

The State of Israel was established in May 1948 following the UN partition of Palestine (see Palestine) and the successful war fought between March and September that year to establish a Jewish state in the greater part of Palestine. This was the culmination of Jewish settler strategy, first to gain ascendancy over the economy of Palestine and then physically to take possession. In the final stage, the Jewish yishuv (or settlement) was spurred on by the Holocaust and by the international sympathy and support it engendered following World War II.

Before 1948, a Palestinian population of nearly one million formed a clear majority in the territory that became Israel. By the time the 1948 Arab-Israeli War was over only 160,000 Palestinian Arabs remained, largely in the Galilee; only a fraction of the Bedouin native to the Negev remained. By the 1960s the Arab share of the Israeli population had fallen to 11 per cent. The Jewish population numbered approximately 500,000 at the end of 1947, but between 1948 and 1972 Israel was flooded with some 600,000 immigrants from Europe and 700,000 from Africa and Asia.

Israel confiscated the land of the Arabs who had been expelled and also much of that from those who remained. Meanwhile, whilst those who remained in Israel after 1948 were granted citizenship, until 1966 they were subjected to travel restrictions and curfews amounting to martial law.

In 1967 Israel launched a pre-emptive strike against a planned attack by its Arab neighbours, who had the support of other Arab countries. At the end of the Six-Day War, Israel had expanded its borders to include parts of Egypt, Syria and Jordan, as well as all of East Jerusalem, creating new sources of Arab resentment that in turn served to propagate Israel's sense of vulnerability. Egypt and Syria attempted to regain lost territory through a surprise attack in October 1973, but where defeated by the Israeli military. A peace process begun in the wake of the 'Yom Kippur War' led to the 1978 Camp David Accords between Israel and Egypt that established a framework for peace negotiations and Palestinian self rule in the occupied territories. Israel and Egypt signed a formal peace treaty in 1979. Palestinian frustration grew with a weakening of support from Arab countries, and culminated in the first intifada (uprising) in the occupied territories from 1987 to 1991. Meanwhile the Cold War had ended, and in 1989 mass migration of Soviet Jews to Israel began in earnest.

A regional peace process launched in Madrid in 1991 led to the 1993 Oslo Accords, signed by Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yassir Arafat. The Palestinians recognized Israel's right to exist and Israel agreed to the creation of a Palestinian Authority to govern the occupied territories, the staged withdrawal of Israeli forces, and a process toward establishment of a Palestinian state. One year later, Israel and Jordan concluded a formal peace agreement.

Dissatisfaction with the Accords led a radical right-wing Israeli Jew to assassinate Rabin in November 1995. Amid Palestinian suicide terror attacks on Israel and Israeli military and political provocations, further negotiations between Palestinians and Israelis broke down. A second intifada erupted in the occupied territories in September 2000.

The so-called Orr Commission, named after the Israeli High Court justice that served as its chair, was established to investigate the causes of the second intifada and released its report in September 2003. Among its conclusions, the Orr Commission found neglect and discrimination by the Israeli government with regard to its Arab population. The government established a committee to oversee the Commission's recommendations on addressing the problems.

In July 2006, Israel invaded Lebanon in response to Lebanon-based Hezbollah militants' abduction of two Israeli soldiers. Israeli Jews and Arabs maintained fundamentally different views of the ensuing month-long conflict, as well as the continuing turmoil in the occupied territories. Israeli Palestinian antipathy towards the Israeli government's treatment of their ethnic kin spiked again at the end of 2008, as Israel launched air strikes on Gaza that paved the way for a land invasion in January 2009. Israel said it was responding to ongoing rocket attacks by Gaza's ruling militant group Hamas, but mounting civilian casualties have shocked the world. The offensive also threatened to defer prospects for a lasting political settlement even further, ensuring that tensions between Israeli Palestinians and their government would not abate in the near future.

Peoples

The population of Israel today stands roughly at 6.4 million. The main languages are Hebrew and Arabic (official) as well as English, Russian and Yiddish.

Main religions: Judaism (76%), Sunni Islam (16%), Christianity, Druze.

Main minority groups: Palestinians/Israeli Arabs (20%) 1.3 million, Bedouins (a subset of Israeli Arabs) 130,000 (2%), Druze 102,000 (1.6%), Christians (most of whom are Israeli Arab) 147,000 (2.3%), Circassians 3,000 (.05%).

Today, Israeli Arabs constitute around 20 per cent of the total population, a share that is growing due to its relative youth and higher birth rates. Israel remains 'the State of the Jewish people', not the state of its citizens, and Palestinian Arabs thus remain second-class citizens.

Jewish Israel was composed of immigrants from more than 100 countries, with their own languages, ethnicity, social and cultural practices and religious rites. In that sense it is difficult to talk of Jewish 'minorities'. Powerful cohesive forces, namely Arab hostility, Jewish faith and nationality and an impressively revived language and literature, all militated to forge the new nation. Nevertheless, two broad issues affect Jewish society: cultural origin and religious adherence.

Jewish cultural origin

Over half a century after the foundation of Israel, there is still a clear social division between Ashkenazi Jews of European or Western origin, whose numbers are currently sliding below 50 per cent of the Jewish community, and those from Africa and Asia, known as Sephardim but more properly as Oriental Jews or Mizrachim. (Sephardim, strictly speaking, are Jews of Spanish/Portuguese cultural and linguistic origin.) The division has not only been cultural but also about power. Yemeni Jews began immigrating to Israel in the late 19th century, facilitated by the opening of the Suez Canal, and encouraged by Zionist emissaries. But the real influx occurred after 1948 when the state of Israel was founded. As more Arab Jews arrived in Palestine with a significantly higher birth-rate and an Arab rather than European culture, the Ashkenazi community viewed Mizrachim as numerically threatening as well as culturally inferior, with attitudes that amounted in some cases to racism. Immigrant Mizrachim resented the discriminatory way they were settled in remote and inaccessible parts of Israel.

Although the tensions of the 1960s have abated, Mizrachim continue to occupy the lowest strata of Israeli Jewish society, in education, housing and employment, perpetuated in the second and third generations. However, with shifting demographics, Ashkenazi political dominance has eroded in light of Sephardic Jews' increased representation and power.

Jewish religion

The State of Israel was declared in May 1948 as a 'Jewish State'. However, its Laws of Return and Citizenship, granting any Jew the automatic right of residence and citizenship, beg the question of who is a Jew. Can one be a Jew by ethnicity (despite the manifestly varied ethnicity of the Jewish people) or only by religion? This has caused considerable controversy ever since 1948. In pure terms a Jew is one who performs the Mitsvot, the 613 religious injunctions of Judaism, but in practice the religious authorities of Israel insist that only someone who conforms to the requirements of religious law (halacha), and who, in addition, 'is a person who is born of a Jewish mother, or one converted to Judaism by a recognized orthodox authority', can be recognized as a Jew. The first definition requires performance of religious rites, whilst the second relies primarily on matriarchy - by implication ethnicity or at least descent. The debate is unlikely ever to be satisfactorily resolved.

Two important categories are not recognized as Jewish by the state, since they do not conform to Jewish orthodoxy: Conservative and Reform Judaism. Both are unacceptable because their conversion procedures do not satisfy Orthodox criteria, and Reform Judaism accepts as a Jew the child of a Jewish father and non-Jewish mother. In the early 1980s the Sephardic Chief Rabbi sought the symbolic conversion of Ethiopian Jewish refugees on their arrival in Israel because they were not deemed properly Orthodox. Thousands of recent Russian immigrants are also not considered truly Jewish by the religious authorities since they were not born of a Jewish mother.

That aside, a proportion of religiously observant Jews saw a contradiction between the religious requirement to glorify only God while awaiting messianic fulfilment and the Zionist aim to create a Jewish state. Strictly religious Jews, the Haredim, cover the whole political spectrum from fervent Zionist to anti-Zionist. However, a substantial number of ultra-Orthodox Jews believe the state of exile persists even in the Land of Israel until the arrival of the Redeemer. Significantly, the vote share of Haredi political parties grew from 5 to 11 per cent in the 1980s, even though many ultra-Orthodox do not vote. Holding the balance of votes, Haredi parties have been essential to most administrations, their price being control of the religious (and if possible education) portfolios. Tension between secular and Haredi Jews has increased considerably, partly because of the latter's growing demands in national life but also because they avoid conscription and appear to carry none of the national burdens. Haredim have a significantly higher birth rate than secular Jews. They are concentrated in Jerusalem, where they outnumber secular Jews.

Other minorities

There are about 20-25,000 Karaites in or near Ramla in central Israel. This movement began among Jews in what is today Iran and Iraq in the eighth century CE, rejecting oral tradition (the Talmud) as a source of divine law, and cleaving only to the Torah. Many Karaites came to Israel from Egypt after 1948.

Within Israel, there are about 3,000 Circassians with roots in the North Caucasus, concentrated in two Galilee villages, Kufr Kana and Rihaniya. Circassian is taught and used for broadcasting, and male Circassians are among the ethno-religious groups required to perform military service.

Governance

Israel is a parliamentary democracy with a largely ceremonial presidency. A series of basic laws serve as its constitution in lieu of one fundamental constitutional document. The 120-seat parliament, or Knesset, is elected by a system of proportional representation and party lists. Although there are currently three main Israeli parties, Labour, Likud, and Kadima, without a minimum hurdle for representation in parliament, many splinter factions and parties are also represented. Ultra-conservative religious parties in particular have been adept at using their few seats in parliament as leverage in broad, cobbled-together ruling coalitions to influence policy disproportionately to their numbers. The pressure on prime ministers and their cabinets to maintain unity among fractious parties has also been at the root of many Israeli corruption scandals.

Israeli media reporting on security matters is subject to military censorship, and the government has occasionally pressured journalists, especially those critical of the state's treatment of Palestinians.

The government delegates marriage, divorce and burial proceedings to religious authorities, and for Jews the Orthodox community has had a near monopoly on such proceedings and on defining Jewish identity. This has fuelled tension between religious and secular Jews, as well as adherents of Reform or Conservative Judaism, although in recent years Orthodox control in these areas has begun slipping.

Political arties that deny that Israel is a 'Jewish state' (as well as those that oppose the democratic order or incite racism) are banned by law, which is one of the causes of Israeli Arab under-representation. Although Arab members of the Knesset hold only about half of the seats commensurate with their share of the population, there have been small advances in Arab participation in government. The first Arab to hold a permanent appointment as a Supreme Court Justice in Israel was appointed in March 2004. In January 2007 the government of current Prime Minister Ehud Olmert tapped Labour MP Raleb Majadele as a minister without portfolio - the first Israeli Arab ever to sit in a government cabinet.

The government provides education, but resources for Israeli Arab education have been consistently lower, and its quality inferior. Likewise, discrimination in the provision of social services and government support for housing has been constant. In day-to-day life, Jewish and Israeli Arabs for the most part have few interactions.

Minorities

• Druze
• Palestinians

Resources

Minority based and advocacy organisations

Adalah: The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel.
Tel: (972)-4-950-1610
Website: www.adalah.org

Al-Lajnat al-Mubadira al-Durziya (Druze Initiative Committee)
Tel: 972 4 961 393

Amnesty International
Tel: 972 3 560 3357
Website: www.amnesty.org

Arab Association for Human Rights
Tel: 972 6 561 923

Association for the Defence of Bedouin Rights
Tel: 972 7 31687

Palestinian Centre for Peace and Democracy
Tel: 972 2 828 693
Website: www.pcpd.org

Musawa: Palestine Centre for the Independence of the Judiciary and the legal profession
Website: http://www.musawa.ps

Ittijah, the network for Palestinian non-govern-mental organizations (NGOs) in Israel
Tel: +972-4850-7110
Website: www.ittijah.org

Ta'ayush: Arab-Jewish Partnership
Website: www.taayush.org

Sources and further reading

Cohen, R., Strangers in Their Homeland: A Critical Study of Israel's Arab Citizens, Sussex Academy Press, 2008 (forthcoming).

Firro, K., A History of the Druzes, Leiden, New York and Cologne, E.J. Brill, 1992.

Friendly, A. and Silver, E., Israel's Oriental Immigrants and Druzes, London, MRG report, 1981.

Haj, M. et al., Education, Empowerment and Control: The Case of the Arabs in Israel, Ithaca, NY, State University of New York Press, 1995.

International Crisis Group, Identity Crisis: Israel and Its Arab Citizens, March 2004.

Kessler, D. and Parfitt, T., The Falashas: The Jews of Ethiopia, London, MRG report, 1985.

Kyle, K. and Peters, J., Whither Israel? The Domestic Challenges, London, Royal Institute for International Affairs and Tauris, 1993.

Lustick, I., Arabs in the Jewish State: Israel's Control of a National Minority, Austin, TX, University of Texas, 1980.

McDowall, D., The Palestinians, London, MRG report, 1987.

McDowall, D., The Palestinians: The Road to Nationhood, London, Minority Rights Publications, 1992.

Maddrell, P., The Bedouin of the Negev, London, MRG report, 1990.

Minns, A. and Hijab, N., Citizens Apart: A Portrait of Palestinians in Israel, London, Tauris, 1990.

Orr, A., The unJewish State: The Politics of Jewish Identity in Israel, London and Ithaca, NY, State University of New York Press, 1983.

Rouhana, N., Palestinian Citizens in an Ethnic Jewish State: Identities in Conflict, Yale University Press, 1997.

Swirsky, S., Israel: The Oriental Majority, London, Zed, 1989.

Shtendel, Uri, The Circassians in Israel, Am Hasefer Tel Aviv, 1973

http://www.circassianworld.com/links.html [providing a large bibliography]