The Palestinian-Arab Minority in Israel, 1948-2000 (review)

In July 2002, just a few months after the publication of this book as part of SUNY's series in Israeli studies, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's cabinet endorsed legislation that would allow Jewish communities to bar Israeli Arabs from buying and moving into land reserved exclusively for Jews. The legislation triggered an acrimonious debate about the principles of democracy, equality, and the racist nature of the "Zionist ideal," which perceives Israel as the "state for the Jewish people, not the state for all its citizens."

Although the legislation was later called off under the pressure of international criticism for its potential legalization of an apartheid regime, it can be taken as an emblematic summary for As'ad Ghanem's book. Its content, targets, and far-reaching implications constitute, to a large extent, the subject matter of the book as the timing of its endorsement underlines the distress under which Israeli Arabs live and dramatizes their need for a just solution.

The book is divided into three parts in which As'ad Ghanem, a professor of political science at the University of Haifa, deals with the dilemmas of Israeli Arabs, the development of their political consciousness, and their methods of struggle to realize their aspirations in egalitarian coexistence in the state that excludes a prioriby its raison d'êtretheir equal rights.

The first part comprises the introduction and historical background for the development of the Palestinian minority in Israel. The author maintains that there are many factors that have influenced that development and prevented it from taking a "normal" course. Of the most important ones are the Israeli authorities' policies toward the Palestinian minority, which were guided by the three major considerations of "security" (viewing Israeli Arabs as a security threat), of "ethnicity" (viewing Israel as the state for the Jewish people), and of "liberal democracy" (viewing Israel as a democratic state which must see to the welfare of all its citizens including the Arabs). In practice, the first two considerations take priority over the third one with the ultimate result of leaving the Palestinian minority to develop in "distress."

The second part, which constitutes more than half of the book, essentially represents the gist of Ghanem's political study. It begins with chapter two, which serves as a framework for the study, and includes six out of the nine chapters of the book. Ghanem gives particular attention to the classification of the ideological and political streams among the Arabs in Israel. He rejects the prevalent patterns of the political classification (dichotomy, three-part, and four-part classifications), and introduces his own five-part classification for characterizing the ideological groups. The criterion consists of the "broad ideology," "the organizational basis," "the degree of radicalism in the change advocated," "the tone of the political discourse," and "the motifs of the internal logic." On the basis of these five elements, the Arabs in Israel fall into four streams: the Israeli-Arab stream, the Communists, the Nationals, and the Islamists.

Ghanem analyzes the politics and ideology of these streams, each in a separate chapter, on the basis of their positions on the key questions of equality, identity, the settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict, and the appropriate methods for realizing the aspirations of the Palestinian minority in Israel.

Regarding the Israeli-Arab stream, there has been an intensification of struggle for equality and the desire for full integration in the state. It advocates the two-part compound identity—Arab-Palestinian national and Israeli civic. It only adopts the "legal means of struggle," parliamentary and extraparliamentary, to advance the interests of the minority.

The communist stream is the oldest, the most organized, the most experienced, and historically, the most influential in the political development of the Arabs in Israel. Perceiving of Zionism as a "colonialist and racist movement," it rejects the Zionist character of the state, focusing on achieving equality between Arabs and Jews and peace between Israel and the Palestinians. As to identity, the communists...