The Arab Israeli Identity is one of the most complicated identities to fully understand within the Arab world, with even the term “Arab Israeli” spurring debate among Palestinian circles. It is argued that calling Palestinians in Israel “Arab Israelis” serves Israel’s plan of erasing the Palestinian identity among this population by simply calling them Arab. This is one of the very subtle ways Israel works to diminish the two million Palestinians in Israel, with Israeli media pushing this narrative heavily. However, this is only one of the many ways Israel works to undermine and break up the Palestinian Arab identity within its borders.
Of course, the expulsion of Palestinians from their homes was already planned for before Israel was established in 1948 through Plan Dalet. However, the Dalet Plan did not end with the establishment of Israel, it continues today and includes the “resettlement” of the entire Bedouin population in the Negev/Naqab, which includes seven towns. Israeli historical documents reveal that as early as the 1950s, Israeli military leader Moshe Dayan wrote, “The transfer of Bedouins to new territories will nullify their right as landowners, and they will be [treated] as tenants of government lands.” A large part of the Bedouin identity revolves around being a nomadic tribe that dwells in the desert. In 2013, the Israeli government approved the Prawer-Begin Bill, a decision that would lead to the mass expulsion of the Arab Bedouin community in the Naqab. The plan would destroy their cultural lands and historic homes. However, this is not a new phenomenon when it comes to the Bedouin community being the victim of ethnic cleansing. In the late 1900s, Israel planned the removal of 120,000 Bedouins into displacement through urban-style towns, that not only contradict their nomadic culture but their economic needs would not be met in these settlements. Although Israel claims that these settlements are the only way to ensure “education, health care, and social welfare,” Israeli settlements are some of the most impoverished areas in the country where “Sixty-five percent (65%) of the population in these settlements live beneath the poverty line”. Bedouins who live in these “unrecognized villages” live without running water, electricity, and telephones, among other modern services. Additionally, these towns lack internal sources of employment, which causes 80% of the employed within these towns to need to leave and work in the center of the country. Israel is using the facade of economic progression to move the Bedouins out of their cultural home to minimize Palestinian presence within the Jewish state.
The Israeli government’s treatment of Bedouin Arabs in Israel provides a classic example of its segregation policies. It deliberately intensified ethnic differences between Bedouins and other Arabs in Israel to undermine the cultivation of a national identity shared by all of them. In addition to this attempt at cultural erasure of one of the oldest Arab communities in the area, the Israeli government targets Bedouins from other Arab groups in Israel. Israel has actively intensified cultural differences between Bedouins and other Arab minorities in an attempt to undermine the national identity shared by them. This is done through Israel’s particular policies behind Bedouins joining the Israeli defense forces as Israel encourages their recruitment. This created a special place for Bedouins within the social structure of Israel as they are “viewed within Jewish Israeli society as a separate, non-Arab minority group loyal to the state.”.
The ethnoreligious identity of the state of Israel psychologically causes the Arab identity not to have the presence it once had. Landau claims that Arabs saw their Jewish neighbors as role models to be imitated due to the new policies that cut them off from the rest of the Arab community in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. This disconnect between Palestinians in Israel persists today and worsens with the blockade on Gaza and checkpoints across the West Bank. In addition to the recent nation-state law that passed in 2018, stating both “The realization of the right to national self-determination in the State of Israel is exclusive to the Jewish People” and “Hebrew is the language of the State”. Both of these clauses within the Law aim to erase and diminish the Palestinian identity.
So what do these examples of an ethno-religious state being prioritized reveal about the Israeli state? From its inception, seen through Plan Dalet, Israel has been working on a purely Jewish state before its establishment in 1948. This goal of Jewish supremacy is continued through Israel’s multiple advances of moving the Bedouin community away from their ancestral lands as a way to strip them of their Arab identity, through the facade of humanitarianism. Recently, this goal towards Jewish supremacy is advanced through the nation-state law that further solidifies their goal to remove the Arab and Palestinian identity from the state. Therefore, Israel, as a state, is inherently connected to this goal of Jewish supremacy, makes peace impossible with Palestinians, and further entrenches settler-colonialism and apartheid.
This article has been written by George Lahoud, an intern at The Jerusalem Fund and a sophomore at the American University working towards his BA at the School of International Service. The views in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of The Jerusalem Fund.
