israel and its arab minority

8/7/2019 Israel and its Arab Minority

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a. ILA Decision No. 1015: The Central Bureau of Statistics in Israel defines approximately89% ofall towns and villages in the state as Jewish.41 Arabs are excluded from approximately 78%of thesetowns and villages, owing to the fact that Selection Committees monitor applications forhousing units,partly in order to filter out the Arab population. 51http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:qeIdrTYfzOcJ:www2.ohchr.org/engli

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Jewish+residents+are+excluded&hl=en&gl=ca&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESiNfMokzGhSG

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Israel and its Arab Minority

The Non-Jewish Populat ion The large non-Jewish minority in Israel is Arab, representing about one fifth of the countryspopulation. Most of Israels Arabs live in Arab settlements in the Galilee, on the easterncoastal plane and in the northern Negev. There are also large concentrations of Arabs inmixed cities such as Haifa, Jerusalem,Acre and Ramle.

The vast majority of Israels Arabs are Sunnite Moslems, with only about one tenth being

Christian (mostly members of the Greek-Orthodox Church). Among Israels Arabs are theBedouins, Moslem Arabs whose forefathers lived as nomads. Israels Bedouins have movedinto permanent settlements mainly in the northern Negev, but also in the Galilee. The Druze(see below), although a separate religious community, are also Arabs.

Israel has more ethnic and religious groups. Here are the main ones:

Druze: Members of a religion that developed from Shiite Islam in the 11th century, andwhose adherents are concentrated in Syria, Lebanon and Israel. Some 115,000 Druzecurrently live in Israel, in 17 settlements on Mount Carmel, in the Galilee and on the Golan

Heights.

Circassians: Members of a Moslem, non-Arab people whose came from the Caucasus. Whentheir country was captured by the Russians in the 19th century, many Circassiansimmigrated to the Ottoman Empire, and some arrived in the Land of Israel, where theyestablished the villages of Rikhaniya and Kafr Kama.


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Samaritans: Members of a national-religious community whose religion is very close toJudaism. The Samaritan community developed following the Assyrian conquest of theKingdom of Israel, when members of the Kingdom of Israel who remained in the landcombined with members of peoples exiled by the Assyrian kings to the region. In ancienttimes, the community was large and strong. However, unsuccessful rebellions during theByzantine Period along with pressure exerted by the Moslems on the Samaritans to convertto Islam gradually reduced their numbers. There now remain some 700 Samaritans, half ofwhom live in Nablus (Shkhem) and half in Holon (Kholon.)

Israel i Communit iesIsrael is a densely populated country (some 300 persons per square kilometer), most of

whose inhabitants live in towns and cities. However, the population distribution is notuniform: The majority is concentrated along the coastal plane, while the Negev, whichoccupies over half of the countrys total area, is thinly populated.

Some 91% of the inhabitants of Israel live in urban settlements with a population of over2,000. About a quarter live in one of the four major cities (Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Haifa, Rishonle-Tsiyon). Israels largest city is Jerusalem, with a population of some 746,300. Only some392,000 people live in Tel Aviv. However, over 1.6 million people live in its metropolitanarea, which extends up to Herzliya (Hertsiliya) in the north and down to Rishon le-Tsiyon inthe south.

The beginning of the 20th century saw the development of the kibbutz and the moshav, twotypes of agricultural settlement specific to Israel. The kibbutz is a community based oncommunal ownership of property, the means of production and consumption. The moshav(moshav ovdim) is an agricultural village combining elements of individual ownership withelements of a cooperative such as mutual aid and communal purchases and marketing. Inthe 1990s, following social changes in Israel and a farming crisis, many of the principles ofthe moshav were eroded, and most of the kibbutzim underwent massive reforms and haveundergone different degrees of privatization.

Over the years, other types of settlement, with unique names, were established in Israel:The Moshava was typical of the beginning of the new Jewish settlement in Israel. Moshavot,as they are called in the plural in Hebrew, were agricultural settlements of small farmers withprivate means of production. During the first years of its existence, Israel established urbansettlements called development towns, designed to provide a housing solution for new


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immigrants and to implement a policy of population dispersion. Most of the developmenttowns were established far from Israels urban centers.

Housing Segregation and Discrimination in Funding for Arab Communities- PalestinianIsraelis have been ghettoized in a small section of Israel. Most land in Israel must be leased.It is not privately owned. Until recently, Israeli Arabs were not permitted to lease land fromthe Israeli Land Administration, which controls 93% of the arable land in Israel. This land iseither state-owned (80%) or owned by the Jewish National Fund (13%). Much of it wasexpropriated from Arabs.While Jewish neighborhoods grow unchecked, segregatedPalestinian communities have not been allowed to expand. No new Arab areas have beencreated while hundreds of Jewish areas have been. 18,19- Institutional discrimination is in community development plans, where Palestinianneighborhoods are held to existing land allocations. In the Arab city of Nazareth, for

example, the population of 13,000 Palestinians in 1947 lived on 3,000 acres. In 2007, witha population of 70,000, the city occupies only 3,100 acres, with strict limitations on anyexpansion. 1- Israel's planning authorities continue to disregard the development needs of Arab towns.Due to lack of official planning procedures, thousands of houses have been built without thenecessary permit and face possible demolition. The families living in houses built withoutpermits are deprived of basic services by the state such as water, and electricity, and faceeviction and demolition, etc.

The presentat ion of Palest in ians in Israel i schoolbooks of History andGeography 1994-2003Israel i Palest in ian Arabs Poorest , Most Marginal ized Cit izens Jews vs. Non Jews www.ohio.edu/visualliteracy/JVL_ISSUE.../4_peled27(2)_179_208.pdf

http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:g2zqJahtb1YJ:www.cbs.gov. il /s tat is t ica l /arabju.pdf+geographic+dist r ibut ion+of+israe l i+arabs+in+israel&hl=en&gl=ca&pid=bl&src id=ADGEESg6hyP0-KPnzia3Rv11vPJ4Y5vHw6JC_I lorOepvEJpSdegsdPLNhjef tRT5xjkzV5szZtMFv1V2E7BUs4C17E2QalJUV1AMAveU9B5KczFCDXPTBZP4mhqGBegzgsiQTF1K_CL&sig=AHIEtbRl575vxyId1psLQVZ8f-N2_zhdfA


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http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2010/10/08/israel-grant-status- long-denied-arab-v i l lage-centra l - is rae lhttp://www.theisraelproject.org/site/apps/nlnet/content2.aspx?c=hsJPK0PIJpH&b=5118555&ct=6957359

Almost half of Israeli Arabs live primarily in the Western area of northern Israel. The majorityof Arab residents live in 116 predominantly Arab communities throughout Israel, while 24percent of Israeli Arabs live in Israels eight mixed towns:[23] Jerusalem, Tel Aviv-Yaffo,Haifa, Lod, Maalot-Tarshiha, Nazerat Illit, Akko and Ramla. [24] Arabs comprise asignificant percentage of the population in Jerusalem (32 percent) and Akko, Ramla, Lodand Maalot-Tarshiha (20 percent). [25]

http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Government/Facts+about+Israel-+The+State/A+Free+People+in+Our+Land-+The+Arab+Sector.htm

israel and its arab minority

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