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Israel
Minority Groups
The non-Jewish--almost entirely Arab--population of Israel in
the mid-1980s comprised 18 percent of the total population (these
figures refer to Arabs resident within the pre-1967 borders of
Israel). More than three-fourths were Sunni (see Glossary) Muslims.
Among Muslim Arabs the beduins, concentrated in the Negev, were
culturally and administratively distinctive. They numbered about
29,000, divided among about forty ethnically based factions. There
were approximately 2,500 (non-Arab) Sunni Muslim Circassians,
concentrated in two small villages in Galilee. Among non-Muslim
Arabs were Christians of various affiliations: Greek Orthodox,
Greek Catholics, Roman Catholics, Anglicans, and Protestants of
different sects; the Greek Orthodox community being the largest
of the Christian groups. In addition, there were Armenians who
belonged to several Christian churches (see Population , this
ch.).
Another tiny minority group was that of the Samaritans, of whom
about 500 remained in Israel in the late 1980s. The Samaritans
are thought to be descendants of the Jews who lived in the area
at the time of the Exile in Babylon beginning in 722 B.C. and
who intermarried with the local inhabitants. Their religion resembles
the form of ancient Judaism.
In addition, Israel contained a small number of adherents of
Bahaism, an offshoot of Shia Islam. They are followers of Mirza
Husayn Ali, known as Baha Ullah (the glory of God), who claimed
leadership of a community founded by an Iranian spiritual leader
known as the Bab (the way), in the 1850s, after the Bab was executed
as a heretic. Bahais have a syncretistic faith that incorporates
elements of Islam, Christianity, and universal ethical principles.
Their governing body, the Universal House of Justice, which consists
of elected representatives from various national spiritual assemblies,
acts as supreme administrative, legislative, and judicial body
for Bahais, and is located in Haifa.
As a result of a high birth rate and improved health and sanitation
conditions, the total number of Israeli Arabs in 1988 (exclusive
of those in the West Bank and Gaza Strip) was about equal to (and
was expected soon to surpass) what it was in 1947 Palestine under
the British Mandate. During and immediately after Israel's War
of Independence, approximately 600,000 Arabs left the country
of their own volition or were expelled; most went to Jordan's
West Bank or the Gaza Strip, and some to Lebanon and the Persian
Gulf states. In 1948 many had expected to return to their homes
(or to take over abandoned Jewish property) in the wake of victorious
Arab armies. Instead, they have come to constitute the Palestinian
diaspora, whose disposition has proved fateful to the history
of many states in the modern Middle East.
Israel's Arabs are guaranteed equal religious and civil rights
with Jews under the Declaration of the Establishment of the State
of Israel. They have voted in national elections and sent members
to the Knesset since 1949; following the 1984 elections, seven
Arabs sat in the Knesset. Nevertheless, until the end of 1966,
Israel's Arabs lived under a military jurisdiction that severely
limited their physical mobility and ranges of permissible political
expression. They have also lost much land to the Israeli government,
a good deal of it expropriated by the army for "security purposes,"
but much more turned over to Jewish settlements in attempts to
increase the Jewish presence in northern and western Galilee,
the centers of Arab population.
In social and economic terms, the state has sought to dominate
its Arab minority by encouraging dependence. This aim has been
achieved, for example, by providing funding for the separate Arab
(Muslim, Christian, and Druze) school systems, as well as access
to Jewish institutions of higher learning, and by providing funding
for health facilities, religious institutions, and courts. Many
of these institutions have encouraged the maintenance of Arab
spheres of interaction segregated from Jewish ones. But the real
dependency has resulted from the integration of Arab labor into
Israel's economy. This has entailed an acute deemphasis on agriculture
(abetted by government expropriations of arable land) and a funneling
of labor into industry, especially construction, and into services.
Under the British Mandate, for example, about two-thirds of all
Arabs worked in agriculture. By 1955, this figure dropped to 50
percent of Arab labor employed in the agricultural sector, 36
percent in industry and construction, and almost 14 percent in
services. By the early 1980s, less than 12 percent were engaged
in agriculture, 45 percent in industry and construction, and close
to 43 percent in the service sector. Along with this proletarianization
of Arab labor--the loss of its agrarian base--has come the urbanization
of its population. In 1948 less than one-fourth of the Arab population
lived in cities or towns; by the 1980s more than two-thirds did.
Yet another way in which the government has related to its Arab
minorities has been by encouraging internal segmentation, primarily
along religious lines, in the Arab communities. Thus Muslims,
Christians, and Druzes have been differentially treated. (So have
the beduins, who are Muslims but are culturally distinctive as
pastoralists from Muslim Arab village and town dwellers; and so
have the Circassians, who although Muslims are not Arabs. Like
Christians, beduins may volunteer for service in the army, and
some do; like the Druzes, Circassians are conscripted.) Differential
treatment almost always has favored Christians and Druzes over
Muslims; at least this has been the semi-official "policy." Some
ethnographic and sociological studies of Arab villages, however,
indicate that other Israeli policies have had the effect of weakening
the Christian and Druze position and strengthening that of Arab
Muslims.
In the past, Christian dominance, for example, was based on the
control of agrarian resources in villages. The dismantling of
the agrarian bases of the Arab economy and the proletarianization
of Arab labor led to Arab dependence on the Jewish economy. But
it did so at the expense of the wealth, and thus the political
standing, of Christians. Similarly, the building and support of
village and town schools open to all created an educated (and
underemployed) Muslim cadre whose intellectual energies have tended
to flow into antiestablishment politics.
Data as of December 1988
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