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Arab citizens of Israel

عرب ٤٨‎, المواطنون الفلسطينيين في إسرائيل‎ עֲרָבִים אֶזרָחֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל‎
Map of Arab localities in Israel, 2015
Total population
Green Line, 2023: 2,065,000 (21%)[1][2] East Jerusalem and Golan Heights, 2012: 278,000 (~3%)
Regions with significant populations
State of Israel
Languages
Arabic[a] and Hebrew
Religion
Islam (84%)[b] Christianity (8%)[c] Druze (8%)[3]
Related ethnic groups
Middle Eastern peoples

The Arab citizens of Israel (Arab Israelis or Israeli Arabs) are the country's largest ethnic minority.^[4][5] They are colloquially referred to in Arabic as either 48-Arabs (عرب ٤٨ ‘Arab Thamāniya wa-Arba‘īn) or 48-Palestinians (فلسطينيو ٤٨ Filasṭīniyyū Thamāniya wa-Arba‘īn),^[6] denoting the fact that they have remained in Israeli territory since the Green Line was agreed upon between Israel and the Arab countries as part of the 1949 Armistice Agreements.^[7] According to several sources, the majority of Arabs in Israel now prefer to be identified as Palestinian citizens of Israel.^[8][9][10] International media outlets often use the term "Arab-Israeli" or "Israeli-Arab" to distinguish Israel's Arab citizens from the Palestinian Arabs residing in the Israeli-occupied territories.^[11] They are formerly, or are descended from, those Arabs who belonged to the British Mandate for Palestine through Palestinian Citizenship Order 1925. Speakers of both Arabic and Hebrew, they self-identify in a wide range of intersectional civic (Israeli or "in Israel"), national (Arab, Palestinian, Israeli), and religious (Muslim, Christian, Druze) identities.^[12]

Following the 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight, the Arabs who remained within Israel came under Israeli citizenship law, whereas those who were in the Jordanian-annexed West Bank came under Jordanian citizenship law. Those who were in the Egyptian-occupied Gaza Strip did not come under Egyptian citizenship law and were instead bound by the All-Palestine Protectorate, which had been created by Egypt during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. This three-way split for Palestinian Arabs' citizenship remained in place until the 1967 Arab–Israeli War, which resulted in Israel's ongoing occupation of the Palestinian territories. In 1988, Jordan renounced the 1950 sovereignty claim that it had laid to the West Bank, effectively rendering over 750,000 of the territory's Palestinian residents stateless. Through the Jerusalem Law of 1980 and the Golan Heights Law of 1981, Israel has granted citizenship eligibility to Palestinians in East Jerusalem and to Syrians and other Arabs in the Golan Heights; this status has not been extended to non-Jerusalemite Arabs in the West Bank—that is, those who live in what Israel governs as the Judea and Samaria Area. As a result of the Palestinian Declaration of Independence in 1988, the stateless Arab residents in the Palestinian territories eventually became recognized as Palestinian citizens and have been issued the Palestinian Authority passport since 1995.

The traditional vernacular of most Arab citizens of Israel is Levantine Arabic, including Lebanese Arabic in northern Israel, Palestinian Arabic in central Israel, and Bedouin Arabic across the Negev. Because the modern Arabic dialects of Israel's Arabs have absorbed many Hebrew loanwords and phrases, it is sometimes called the Israeli Arabic dialect.^[13] More recently, there have been reports indicating that Arab Israelis are also increasingly feeling a sense of Israeli identity and are showing a desire for integration and shared future with mainstream Israeli society.^[14][15] By religious affiliation, the majority of Arab Israelis are Muslims, but there are significant Christian and Druze minorities, among others.^[16]

According to the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics, the Israeli Arab population stood at 2.1 million people in 2023, accounting for 21% of Israel's total population.^[1] The majority of these Arab citizens identify themselves as Arab or Palestinian by nationality and as Israeli by citizenship.^[17][18][19] They mostly live in Arab-majority towns and cities, some of which are among the poorest in the country, and generally attend schools that are separated to some degree from those attended by Jewish Israelis.^[20] Arab political parties traditionally did not join governing coalitions until 2021, when the United Arab List became the first to do so.^[21] In 2017, a survey reported by The Jerusalem Post showed that 60% of Arab Israelis viewed the country favourably, with this figure represented by 49% of Muslim Arabs, 61% of Christian Arabs, and 94% of Druze Arabs.^[22] The Druze and the Bedouin in the Negev and the Galilee have historically expressed the strongest non-Jewish affinity to Israel and are more likely to identify as Israelis than other Arab citizens.^{[23][24][25][26]}

Under Israeli law, Arab residents of East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights have the right to become Israeli citizens, are entitled to municipal services, and have municipal voting rights.^[27] In tandem, citizenship acquisition is scarce: only 5% of Palestinians in East Jerusalem were Israeli citizens in 2022. Originally, the lack of applications for citizenship was largely due to Palestinian society's disapproval of naturalization as complicity with Israel's occupation. After the Second Intifada, this taboo began to fade, but the Israeli government re-configured the process to make it more difficult, approving only 34% of new Palestinian applications and giving a plethora of reasons for rejection. Non-citizen Palestinians cannot vote in Israel's legislative elections and must get a laissez-passer to travel abroad; many jobs are closed to them and Israel can revoke their residency status, whereby they may lose their health insurance and their right to enter Jerusalem.^[28]

Terminology and identity

The choice of terms to refer to Arab citizens of Israel is a highly politicized issue, and there is a broad range of labels that members of this community use to self-identity.^[29][30] Generally speaking, supporters of Israel tend to use Israeli Arab or Arab Israeli to refer to this population without mentioning Palestine, while critics of Israel (or supporters of Palestinians) tend to use Palestinian or Palestinian Arab without referencing Israel.^[31] According to The New York Times, most preferred to identify themselves as Palestinian citizens of Israel rather than as Israeli Arabs, as of 2012.^[32] The New York Times uses both 'Palestinian Israelis'^[33] and 'Israeli Arabs' to refer to the same population.

The relationship of Arab citizens to the State of Israel is often fraught with tension and can be regarded in the context of relations between minority populations and state authorities elsewhere in the world.^[34] Arab citizens consider themselves to be an indigenous people.^[35] The tension between their Palestinian Arab national identity and their identity as citizens of Israel was famously described by an Arab public figure as: "My state is at war with my nation".^[36]

List of demonyms

Arab/Palestinian citizens of Israel may refer to themselves by a wide range of terms. Each of these names, while referring to the same group of people, connotes a different balance in what is often a multilayered identity assigning varying levels of priority or emphasis to the various dimensions which may be historic-geographic ("Palestine (region)"), "national" or ethnoreligious (Palestinian, Arab, Israeli, Druze, Circassian), linguistic (Arabic-speaking), civic (feeling "Israeli" or not), etc.:^[37]

• Palestinian citizens of Israel^[37][38] is a term that most Arab citizens of Israel prefer to refer to themselves,^[9][8] and which some media (BBC, New York Times, Washington Post, NBC News)^[39] and other organizations use to refer to Israeli Arabs, either consistently or alternating the use of other terms for Israeli Arabs.
• Palestinian Arabs^[38]
• Palestinian Arabs in Israel^[17][40][41]
• Palestinian Israelis^[42]
• Palestinians in Israel^[38]
• Israeli Arabs^[42][38][37]
• Israeli Palestinian Arabs^[17][40][41]
• Israeli Palestinians^[37]
• Arab citizens of Israel^[42]
• Arab Israelis^[42]
• 48ers,^[42][37] '48 Arabs^[38]

Two appellations, among others listed above, are not applied to the East Jerusalem Arab population or the Druze in the Golan Heights, as these territories were occupied by Israel in 1967:

• the Arabs inside the Green Line^[17][40][41]
• the Arabs within (Arabic: عرب الداخل, romanized: ‘Arab al-Dākhil).^[17][40][41]

Demonym preferences

According to The New York Times, as of 2012, most Israeli Arabs preferred to identify themselves as Palestinian citizens of Israel rather than as Israeli Arabs.^[8] The Council on Foreign Relations also states that most members of the Israeli Arab community prefer this term.^[9] The Washington Post asserted in 2021 that "surveys showed" that Israeli Arabs preferred the term "Palestinian citizen of Israel" and that "for people who often feel caught between two worlds, however, the contours of what it means to be a Palestinian citizen of Israel remain a work in progress."^[10]

However, these findings conflict with a 2017 Tel Aviv University poll which showed most Israelis self-identify as either Arab-Israeli or simply Israeli.^[43]

Similar terms that Israeli Arabs, media and other organizations may use are Palestinian Arabs in Israel and Israeli Palestinian Arabs. Amnesty reports that “Arab citizens of Israel” is an inclusive term used by Israel that describes a number of different and primarily Arabic-speaking groups, including Muslim Arabs, Christian Arabs, Druze and Circassians. At the end of 2019, considering the number of those defined as Muslim Arabs and Christian Arabs together, the population of Palestinian citizens of Israel amounted to around 1.8 million.^[44]

There are at least two terms which specifically exclude the East Jerusalem Arab population and the Druze and other Arabs in the Golan Heights: the Arabs inside the Green Line, and the Arabs within (Arabic: عرب الداخل, romanized: ‘Arab al-Dākhil).^[17][40][41] These terms clarify that

• Although Israel annexed East Jerusalem in 1967, the vast majority of its Arab population does not have Israeli citizenship
• Although Israel annexed the Golan Heights, that area was originally part of Syria, not Mandatory Palestine.

Identification as Palestinian

While known officially by the Israeli government only as "Israeli Arabs" or "Arab Israelis", the development of Palestinian nationalism and identity in the 20th and 21st centuries has been met by a marked evolution in self-identification, reflecting a rising identification with Palestinian identity alongside Arab and Israeli signifiers.^[45][17][19] Many Palestinian citizens of Israel have family ties to Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip as well as to Palestinian refugees in Jordan, Syria and Lebanon.^[7]

Between 1948 and 1967, very few Arab citizens of Israel identified openly as "Palestinian", and an "Israeli-Arab" identity, the preferred phrase of the Israeli establishment and public, was predominant.^[31] Public expressions of Palestinian identity, such as displays of the Palestinian flag or the singing and reciting of nationalist songs or poetry were illegal.^[46] With the end of military administrative rule in 1966 and following the 1967 war, national consciousness and its expression among Israel's Arab citizens spread.^[31][46] A majority then self-identified as Palestinian, preferring this descriptor to Israeli Arab in numerous surveys over the years.^[31][47][46] In a 2017 telephone poll, 40% of Arab citizens of Israel identified as "Arab in Israel / Arab citizen of Israel", 15% identified as "Palestinian", 8.9% as "Palestinian in Israel / Palestinian citizen of Israel", and 8.7% as "Arab";^[43][48] the focus groups associated with the poll provided a different outcome, in which "there was consensus that Palestinian identity occupies a central place in their consciousness".^[43] A November 2023 poll asked respondents from this demographic what the most important "component in their personal identity" was to them; 33 percent answered "Israeli citizenship", 32 percent "Arab identity", 23 percent "religious affiliation", and 8 percent "Palestinian identity".^[49][50]

University of Haifa professor Sammy Smooha commented in 2019, "The largest now and the most growing identity is a hybrid identity, which is 'Palestinian in Israel' or a similar combination. I think that’s what’s going to take over."^[51]

Distinction of Druze and Circassian citizens

In the Amnesty International 2022 report "Israel's Apartheid against Palestinians: Cruel System of Domination and Crime against Humanity", the organization excludes the Israeli Arab Druze and non-Arab Circassians from the term Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel:

• The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs officially classifies the roughly 2.1 million Palestinian citizens of Israel as "Arab citizens of Israel", reflecting their attributing a racialized non-Jewish, Arab status to all of them
• The term "Arab citizens of Israel" includes Muslim Arabs including Bedouins, Christian Arabs, the 20-25,000 Druze, and even the 4-5,000 Circassians, whose origins are in the Caucasus but are mostly Muslim.
• According to Amnesty, the Israeli state views and treats Palestinian citizens of Israel differently from the Druze and Circassians, who must for example serve in the army while Palestinian citizens need not serve.
• Nonetheless, Israeli authorities and media refer to those who self-identify as Palestinians – as "Israeli Arabs".

The Washington Post included the Druze among the Palestinians.^[52] The Council of Foreign Relations stated:"The majority of Arab citizens are Sunni Muslims, though there are many Christians and also Druze, who more often embrace Israeli identity."^[53]

Identification as Arab Israeli

The question of Palestinian identity extends to representation in the Israeli Knesset. Journalist Ruth Margalit says of Mansour Abbas of the United Arab List, a member of the governing coalition, "The traditional term for this group, Arab Israelis, is increasingly controversial, but it's the one that Abbas prefers."^[54] Abbas gave an interview to Israeli media in November 2021 and said "My rights don't just come from my citizenship. My rights also come from being a member of the Palestinian people, a son of this Palestinian homeland. And whether we like it or not, the State of Israel, with its identity, was established inside the Palestinian homeland,"^[55] Sami Abu Shehadeh of Balad is "an outspoken advocate of Palestinian identity".^[56] He says, referring to the 2021 Israel–Palestine crisis, "... If the past weeks provided lessons for the international community, then a main one is that they cannot continue to ignore the Palestinian citizens of Israel. Any solution should include full equality for all citizens as well as the respect and recognition of our rights as a national minority."^[57] Zdroj:https://en.wikipedia.org?pojem=Arabs_In_Israel
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