When 20-year-old Aya Najame, an Arab Muslim, was a little girl growing up in the northern Israeli port city of Haifa, she would go on cultural exchange trips to Jewish schools to learn about the Jewish way of life. Jewish children would do the same, visiting Najame’s school to learn about her life.
Arab citizens and permanent residents in Israel make up just over 20% of the country’s population. The roughly 2 million people are distinct from Palestinians living in the occupied West Bank and Gaza – but they are far from a uniform group.
Most are Muslims, but there is also a large Christian Arab minority. And while around 1.5 million hold Israeli citizenship, many of those living in Jerusalem have only permanent residency status and are not full citizens. Some identify as Arabs, some as Palestinians, some as Druze, a religious sect spread throughout Israel, Lebanon and Syria.
Some speak fluent Hebrew and live in mixed communities such as Haifa, while others reside in segregated towns and say they feel like second-class citizens due to discrimination from Israeli authorities. Several hundred choose to serve in the Israeli military each year, even though they are exempt from compulsory service. Many have family in the West Bank and Gaza.
Haifa is not like the rest of Israel, Najame says.
“We live together here, Arab people and Jewish people. We work together, we go to the same places,” she told CNN.
The Hamas terror attacks, which Israeli officials say killed more than 1,400 people in Israel on October 7, and the subsequent heavy Israeli bombardment of Gaza, which Palestinian officials say has killed more than 4,100 in the enclave so far, have ramped up tensions at a time when relationships between some groups were already fraught.
Since December, Israel has been governed by the most right-wing government in its history. Last Wednesday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and some opposition leaders joined an emergency war cabinet to manage the war. The government’s national security minister Itamar Ben Gvir is an extremist who has been convicted for supporting terrorism and inciting anti-Arab racism. The finance minister is Bezalel Smotrich, who supports abolishing the Palestinian Authority and annexing the West Bank – neither are part of the war cabinet, although they are maintaining their ministerial roles.
:quality(70)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/tronc/6FKEISZSTRHQJEEUQCPETQ2NSY.jpg)
