Umm el-Fahm, For Example

A Prime Minister’s Office paper describing Israel’s Arab citizens as a potential strategic threat recently leaked to the press, causing a furore. As if on cue, rioting broke out last week in the Arab town of Umm el-Fahm when police broke up a protest against the IDF’s requisition of farmland for training areas.

Umm el-Fahm, pop. 23,000, is one of several Arab settlements in Wadi Ara, the valley through which the highway linking the coast to the Galilee and the Golan Heights passes. It is known as a stronghold of the Islamic movement. In the Lebanon War, youths from the town blocked the highway and held up troops moving north. Umm el-Fahm is also, reports Arnon Sofer ("Makor Rishon" October 2), the Arab township furthest from any economic center. Sofer summed up Umm el-Fahm’s inhabitants as "depressed and bitter, faithful Muslims with a militant leadership and a strong sense of a just cause, living in an extremely important strategic location."

Palestinisation

All commentators agreed that the riot was significant beyond its immediate cause. But do current developments vindicate claims that Israel’s 1.2 million Arabs represent a fifth column?

Amnon Shomron ("Makor Rishon" October 2) believes they do. "The Umm el-Fahm incident," he wrote, "is part of a nationalist revival among the Arabs of Israel. Along with cries of "death to the Jews" could be heard the Palestinian national anthem. President Weizman, who is convinced he represents the heart of the Israeli consensus, was ignominiously chased out of the place."

The same newspaper quoted a former Interior Ministry official with responsibility for the north as saying: "Israel’s Arabs behave like conditional citizens... the danger from them will grow when they feel they have enough strength."

According to Hagai Huberman ("Hatzofeh" October 2), the rise of the Palestinian Autonomy is making Israel’s Arab citizens restive. "Since the Palestinian Authority was established, links between the West Bank Palestinians and the Arabs within the Green Line have strengthened. Israel is seeing a rapid process of "Palestinisation" of the Israeli Arabs… their loyalty is no longer dual - it is a total loyalty to one side only: the Palestinian side."

Huberman gives details of meetings held between Israeli Arabs and Palestinians from the Territories, their theme being that both groups belong to the same struggle against occupation, whether resulting from the 1948 War of Independence or the 1967 Six Day War. This is an Israeli nightmare come true, involving as it does the spectre of the return of myriads of 1948 refugees, and Palestinian territorial claims extending to Israel proper.

Mishandling

But there are those who see matters in a quite different light. Liron Nagler-Cohen interviewed four Israeli Arabists in "Hatzofeh" (October 2). Though these academics stressed the economic and social importance of land for the Arabs, they agreed that, more than Palestinisation, Israel’s Arabs are undergoing Israelisation. Reuven Paz, an expert on the Islamic movements, said that, like most Israelis, the Arabs prefer "the pursuit of a higher standard of living, and their involvement in national political issues is diminishing." The interviewees did however warn that mishandling of Arab demands could precipitate a dangerous resurgence of nationalist feeling.

Mishandling by the authorities was pointed out by most commentators, whether of the land requisition that sparked the flare-up in Umm el-Fahm, or of relations with the Arab population in general. Yosef Lapid ("Ma’ariv" October 1) mentioned three factors that could cause "the delicate balance" of these relations to be upset: "Palestinian nationalism, Islamic fanaticism, and the bitterness of educated young people who fail to find a place under the Israeli sun." Speaking to Daniel Ben Simon ("Ha’aretz" October 9), Arabic newspaper editor Lutafi Mashur confirmed at least part of Lapid’s prognosis: "Our young people won’t accept less than the Jews. They won’t consent to undergoing the humiliations their parents underwent to demonstrate their loyalty to the State."

Inequality

Many commentators saw the notion of Arabs being conditional citizens as part of the Jewish rather than the Arab outlook. "Ha’aretz", in its September 29 editorial, said a compromise over the requisition issue could have been achieved without a violent clash, but that the violence stemmed from a rooted feeling that Israel’s Arabs constitute a threat. "The Jewish public and all of Israel’s governments have not so far managed to fulfill in any concrete way the promise in the Declaration of Independence of equality for all inhabitants of the country," said "Ha’aretz".

Both Rafi Man ("Ma’ariv" October 6) and Gidon Levy ("Ha’aretz" October 2) note a discrepancy between Attorney General Eliyakim Rubinstein’s ban on firing rubber bullets at Jewish demonstrators in the Territories, and the use of this weapon against Arab demonstrators at Umm el-Fahm. "If Israel continues to treat [the Arabs] like a population under occupation," wrote Levy, "Wadi Ara will eventually become occupied territory, and, some day… occupied territories are liberated."

Economic solution?

Efraim Reiner ("Ha’aretz" October 7) argued that greater integration of Israel’s Arab population into the general economy, with resources devoted to overcoming its economic deprivation, would be good for Israel both economically and politically. "Even wealthy Arabs can be religious nationalists," he admits, "but a national dispute which is at the same time an economic dispute? A sure recipe for an explosion

Geula Cohen however ("Ma’ariv" October 7), is sceptical about the power of economic paternalism to disarm Arab nationalist aspirations. Such notions, she says, result from the left wing’s contempt for the Arabs, which it sees as "a bunch of peasants whose dreams can be bought with money." The Arabs, says Cohen, should be told the truth about Jewish intentions regarding the Land of Israel.

But Meron Benenisti ("Ha’aretz October 1) thinks Arab intentions may be stronger. Jewish Israelis, he says, now see land in purely commercial terms. "The value of national land as a sacred asset has passed from the Jews to the Arabs, and this is the irony of the Wadi Ara incident: the Arabs have become the last Zionists"

Published by Israel's Business Arena on October 11, 1998

Responses to Press Cuttings are welcome. Please send comments to davidg@globes.co.il

The above figures are based on a survey carried out by the Israel Advertising Association in November 1996. The survey covered a sample of 2,500 people representing a cross-section of the population of Israel.

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