Israeli Arab: Encyclopedia II - Israeli Arab - Discrimination

Israeli Arab - Discrimination

According to the 2004 U.S. State Department Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for Israel and the occupied territories, the Israeli government "did little to reduce institutional, legal, and societal discrimination against the country's Arab citizens."[15]

Examples of what the State Department report found include the following:

• According to the report, Muslims enjoy full freedom of religion and government "did not affect the rights of Muslims to practice their faith" according to "Legislation enacted in 1961 afforded the Muslim courts exclusive jurisdiction to rule in matters of personal status concerning Muslims. Secular courts have primacy over questions of inheritance, but parties, by mutual agreement, may bring cases to religious courts. Muslims, since 2001, also have the right to bring matters such as alimony and property division associated with divorce cases to civil courts in family-status matters."

• "According to a 2003 Haifa University study, a tendency existed to impose heavier prison terms to Arab citizens than to Jewish citizens. Human rights advocates claimed that Arab citizens were more likely to be convicted of murder and to have been denied bail."

• "government spending on children was proportionally lower in predominantly Arab areas than in Jewish areas. ... According to the Government's February 2002 report to the U.N., government investment per Arab pupil was approximately 60 percent of investment per Jewish pupil. ... According to Human Rights Watch, during the year, the Government provided 1 teacher for every 16 Jewish primary school children compared to 1 teacher for every 19.7 Arab children."

• "The Orr Commission of Inquiry's report ... stated that the 'Government handling of the Arab sector has been primarily neglectful and discriminatory,' that the Government 'did not show sufficient sensitivity to the needs of the Arab population, and did not take enough action to allocate state resources in an equal manner.' As a result, 'serious distress prevailed in the Arab sector in various areas. Evidence of distress included poverty, unemployment, a shortage of land, serious problems in the education system, and substantially defective infrastructure.'"

• "In November, the Israeli-Arab advocacy NGO Sikkuy's annual report stated that 45 percent of Arab families were poor, in contrast to 15 percent of Jewish families, and that the rate of infant mortality in the Arab sector was 8 out of 1,000 births--twice that of the Jewish population."

• "According to a report by Mossawa, racist violence against Arab citizens has increased, and the Government has not done enough to prevent this problem. The annual report cited 17 acts of violence by Jewish citizens against Arab citizens. ... A Haifa University poll released in June revealed that over 63 percent of Jews believed that the Government should encourage Israeli Arabs to emigrate."

• "Approximately 93 percent of land in the country was public domain, including that owned by the state and some 12.5 percent owned by the Jewish National Fund (JNF). All public land by law may only be leased, not sold. The JNF's statutes prohibit the sale or lease of land to non-Jews. In October, civil rights groups petitioned the High Court of Justice claiming that a bid announcement by the Israel Land Administration (ILA) involving JNF land was discriminatory in that it banned Arabs from bidding."

• "Israeli-Arab advocacy organizations have challenged the Government's policy of demolishing illegal buildings in the Arab sector, and claimed that the Government was more restrictive in issuing building permits in Arab communities than in Jewish communities, thereby not accommodating natural growth. In February, security forces demolished several homes allegedly built without authorization in the Arab village of Beineh."

• "In June, the Supreme Court ruled that omitting Arab towns from specific government social and economic plans is discriminatory. This judgment builds on previous assessments of disadvantages suffered by Arab Israelis."

• "Israeli-Arab organizations have challenged as discriminatory the 1996 "Master Plan for the Northern Areas of Israel," which listed as priority goals increasing the Galilee's Jewish population and blocking the territorial contiguity of Arab towns."

• "Israeli Arabs were underrepresented in the student bodies and faculties of most universities and in higher professional and business ranks. The Bureau of Statistics noted that the median number of school years for the Jewish population is 3 years more than for the Arab population. Well educated Arabs often were unable to find jobs commensurate with their level of education. According to Sikkuy, Arab citizens held approximately 60 to 70 of the country's 5,000 university faculty positions."

• "Israeli Arabs were not required to perform mandatory military service and, in practice, only a small percentage of Israeli Arabs served in the military. Those who did not serve in the army had less access than other citizens to social and economic benefits for which military service was a prerequisite or an advantage, such as housing, new-household subsidies, and employment, especially government or security-related industrial employment. Regarding the latter, for security reasons, Israeli Arabs generally were restricted from working in companies with defense contracts or in security-related fields. In December, the Ivri Committee on National Service issued official recommendations to the Government that Israel Arabs not be compelled to perform national or "civic" service, but be afforded an opportunity to perform such service".

Israeli Arab - Initial measures taken by the Israeli government

The Israeli-Arab population was subject to a number of controlling measures and, in particular, Israeli Arabs were subject to martial law ^[16], which required, inter alia, that they apply for permission from the military governor to travel more than a given distance from their registered residence. Martial law was lifted from the Arab population of predominantly-Jewish cities some years later, but remained in place in Arab areas until 1966.

A variety of legal measures facilitated the transfer of land abandoned by Arabs to state ownership. These included the Absentee Property Law of 1950 which allowed the state to take control of land belonging to land owners who emigrated to other countries and the Land Acquisition Law of 1953 which authorised the Ministry of Finance to transfer expropriated land to the state. Other common legal expedients included the use of emergency regulations to declare land a closed military zone, followed by the use of Ottoman legislation on abandoned land to take control of the land. ^[17].

Palestinians who had left their homes during the period of armed conflict but remained in what had become Israeli territory were considered to be "present absentees", and in some cases refused permission to return to their original homes, which were expropriated and turned over to state ownership as was the property of Palestinian refugees. Notable cases of "present absentees" included the residents of Sepphoris and the Galilee villages of Bir'am and Ekrit^[18]. The legal efforts by residents of Bir'am and Ekrit to be allowed to return to their homes continued into the twenty-first century.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Discrimination", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki