Inter-Communal Relations in the 21st Century

This study reviews past and recent developments, until early 2012, affecting the economic, legal and political status of the Palestinians as Arab national minority and citizens of Israel. Their denomination by the de-facto bi-national State of Israel as ‘minorities’, ‘non- Jewish’, ‘Arab citizens of Israel’, ‘Arab Israeli sector’, ‘Muslim Arabs’, ‘Christian Arabs’, including ‘Bedouins’, ‘Circassians’ for instance, and distinguishing them from the ‘Druze’ as a separate political category, will be questioned. This official Zionist categorization will be examined and contrasted with the self-definition by the ‘Palestinians/Arabs’, citizens of Israel, who constitute around 20% of Israel’s total population and of ‘the Palestinian people’, at large, mainly living in the ‘occupied territories’ and in the Diaspora. Most of the diverse ‘Arab’ population of Israel was living in ‘Palestine’ before the establishment of the state of Israel and many of their descendants still live there. Although the Palestinian/Arab population of Israel represents nearly 1/5 of its total inhabitants, the government allocates less than 7% of the Ministries' budgets to these ‘Israeli Arabs’. Lack of development in the Arab local councils is exemplified dramatically, for a population residing mainly in towns and villages, by insufficient educational facilities, poor public transportation, outdated infrastructures, and a low level of industrialization. Poverty, unemployment, and underdevelopment are becoming the hallmark of the ‘Arab community’. It is common knowledge that approximately one-half of Arab Children in Israel lives below the poverty line. However, when it comes to the civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights of the Arab minority, the Israeli western-centric establishment…