$Unique_ID{bob00261}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{Israel
Chapter 2D.   Other Jewish Groups and Arabic Groups}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Richard F. Nyrop}
$Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army}
$Subject{arab
arabs
government
percent
israel
jewish
israeli
druzes
community
sephardim
see
pictures
see
figures
}
$Date{1979}
$Log{See Jewish and Arab Settlements*0026101.scf
}
Title:       Israel
Book:        Israel, A Country Study
Author:      Richard F. Nyrop
Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army
Date:        1979

Chapter 2D.   Other Jewish Groups and Arabic Groups

The Sephardim: A Disadvantaged Majority

     In mid-1978 the Sephardim-also known as oriental Jews, the Edot
HaMizratra (Eastern Community), or occasionally as black Jews-constituted
the majority of the Jewish population. Nevertheless significant social,
education, and economic gaps remained between them and the economically and
politically dominant Ashkenazim (see Political Setting: Elite, Values, and
Orientations, ch. 3). The discontent on the part of the increasingly vocal
Sephardim was matched by the realization of Israeli scholars and bureaucrats
that, albeit unwittingly, a disadvantaged ethnic group had been created of
Jews in Israel.

     The problem has become more critical because of the certainty that this
group due to its high birthrate and low rate of emigration will become even
more greatly represented in Israel. Although in 1978 the Sephardim comprised
half of Israel's total population between the ages of eighteen and
twenty-four, only 13 percent attended university. More than 90 percent of all
children who were classed as "distressed" by the Prime Minister's Commission
on Children and Youth in Distress in 1973 were from families that had
emigrated from Asian, African, or Middle Eastern countries. This is partially
due to the fact that their per capita income is one-half that of the
Ashkenazim.

     The great waves of Sephardim immigrants after 1948 were not from
countries where a high state of technology prevailed. Although there were many
of advanced educational background, there were entire groupings, like those
from the Yemens, who were transported en masse from a society in the
revolutionary and chaotic throes of its first contact with the modern world.

     Although lacking contact with Western technology, the Sephardim
nevertheless possessed a rich culture deepened by the centuries-long
continuity of their religious communities. In most cases they had lived in
social but not economic isolation from the majority community. Their
assimilation into the predominant culture varied, but on the whole these
immigrants were similar in speech, dress, manners, and physiognomy to the
non-Jews of their lands. Their distinction had been chiefly in the retention
of Jewish identity and in the often scrupulous fulfillment of Judaic law.

     Some of the communities, such as the Falasha Jews of Ethiopia (who
thought that they might be the last Jews in the world) and the Bene Israel
of India, had been isolated for many centuries from contact with other Jewish
communities. These Jews practiced as much ritual as they had retained over
the centuries and were anxious for the renewal of relations with other Jews.
The Sephardim from the Middle East and North Africa were spurred in their
immigration by the hostilities that erupted between the Arab states and
Israel after the establishment of the state.

     Between 1948 and 1973 approximately 1.5 million Jews immigrated to
Israel, most of them Sephardim. The intellectual and politically alert
Israelis who formed the welcoming committees were astonished by and frequently
ambivalent about these new immigrants. Anthropologist Phyllis Palgi in her
description of the arrival in Israel of a group of Atlas Mountain cave
dwellers notes that the welcoming official "in almost one breath, welcomed
his returning brethren to the land of their forebears; whispered a warning
to representatives of the cooperative farm movement, who had come to recruit
candidates, not to destroy their villages by taking these 'barbarians'; and
shouted orders for immediate medical attention, since even his untrained eye
had quickly detected the symptoms of widespread trachoma."

     Like other new immigrants the Sephardim were dispersed according to
plan to rural and border development areas. Even in 1948 Israel was highly
urbanized with 84 percent of all Jews settled in urban centers. Despite
ideology, war, and the settling of new immigrants in rural areas, the rate
of urbanization had risen to 90 percent by 1970. As a general pattern, after
a few years in rural or development areas the Ashkenazic immigrants tended to
migrate to urban centers, while the Sephardim, encumbered by large families
and possessing limited job skills, tended to remain. As a result, the towns
of Kiryat Shemonah, Maalot, Mitzplk Ramon, and Shderot among others were in
1978 essentially Sephardic outposts.

     In 1974 Kiryat Shemonah and Maalot were attacked by terrorists. The
inhabitants used the media to bring their complaints to the Israeli public.
Unlike the nearby kibbutzniks, the Sephardim of the two towns had not come
to live in a danger zone by choice but by government assignment, yet the
kibbutz had wire fences, searchlights, and guards, which the towns lacked. A
Maalot spokesman said, "We are living in Casablanca, not Israel.... We
don't belong to Israeli society. The factory owners and the teachers live
miles away, in Haifa, in Nahariya. We are the proletariat."

     In the early years of the state many new immigrants were settled in
government housing with very low mortgage rates. These
forty-eight-square-meter quarters were not meant to be permanent dwellings,
but the largely insolvent Sephardim have found it impossible to catch up with
rampant inflation, aggravated for them by significantly lower incomes, higher
unemployment, and large families. The crowded conditions were not conducive to
study, and the children of the Sephardim appeared to be on their way to
unhappy emulation of their parent's situations. During the mid-1960s
statistical surveys had improved sufficiently to reveal the seriousness of
the problem. As Naomi Shepherd noted, "there was no heat under the national
melting pot." Many Israeli Jews were apparently shocked to discover that 75
percent of Shepardic children had dropped out of school by ninth grade. Since
these children constituted over 50 percent of their age group, it was
doubly alarming. According to data available in mid-1978, during the mid-1970s
only 6 percent of the Sephardic children completed high school compared to
35 percent for the Ashkenazim.

     The reaction of the government was to expand social welfare and
educational services. Academic standards and tuition costs were adjusted to
accommodate more Sephardic children. The costs of housing loans were lowered
to encourage the Sephardim to expand and improve their living quarters. Those
working most closely with the Sephardim claimed that the aid was vastly
insufficient. The Sephardic population was growing, and the second generation
of welfare recipients were adults. Sephardic wages for heads of families
remained at pproximately 67 percent of the national average in the 1970s, a
figure that had been relatively constant since 1959. Because Sephardic heads
of households have a higher than average number of children, their lower than
average wages are even less effective at promoting the upward mobility of the
offspring than might appear.

     Despite the grim potential, many individual Sephardim have prospered in
Israel. For them there is no economic gap, but they experience a cultural
disruption that is deeply disturbing. Many of the Sephardic young people
are more concerned with discrimination than neglect. They point out that the
ingathering of the exiles was not intended by anyone to perpetuate Diaspora
pluralism. Yet that had occurred because of the ideological orientation of
the political elite of the young state and the means by which they attempted
to bring about "the mixing of the exiles." The established socialist,
pioneering oriented and modern Ashkenazic Jews who comprised the leaders of
the state in 1948 naturally dictated the patterns of political, social,
economic and, most important, cultural organization that have continued to
prevail in Israel in the late 1970s. These institutions have presented
Western-oriented Ashkenazic culture as authentic modern culture and more
importantly, as Daniel Elazar notes, "as the only authentic Jewish
culture to boot."

     Elazar points to a series of myths that aggravated the situation. The
Sephardic Jews were described as "Eastern" while the Ashkenazic were
"Western," that is to say, they had acquired Western amenities such as
toothbrushes and modern plumbing and had been exposed to Western ideologies
two, or at the most three, generations before the Sephardim. Because of the
need to raise large sums of money abroad to facilitate the assimilation of the
Sephardim, this theme was exaggerated. All Sephardic Jews were presented as
a group that badly needed 'civilizing'.

     Among many examples, North African Jews who had learned French long
before their Ashkenazic counterparts in Poland had learned Polish, were
labeled "backward" along with those from isolated tribal societies. "In
the process," Elazar notes, "the indigenous culture-including, if not
especially, the Jewish dimension-brought by the Sephardim was undermined. As a
result they lost their self-respect and the respect of their children on the
grounds that they had brought nothing of real value to contribute to the
state." For some this had been made evident before they left their country of
origin. Elazar relates that many oriental immigrants were forced to bury
holy books and manuscripts that they had carefully preserved for generations
on the grounds that "they would have no need for such relics of the past in
the new Israeli society to which they were going."

     The attack on Sephardic culture came from the religious sector as well
as from the secularist. Just as those from the Hashomer Hatzain kibbutz
taught Sephardic children Marxism, the Orthodox yeshivot demanded that
Sephardic children learn Yiddish to study the Talmud. In the state school
Sephardic children, most of whom came from Sabbath-observant homes, were
presented with images of gefilte fish and other Ashkenazic customs as examples
of Sabbath ritual and customs. Sephardic customs were touched on briefly
as deviations from the norm.

     Some observers note that the burden of negative stereotypes, low status,
and loss of self-esteem have caused some Sephardim to react against the
society. Moroccan Jews, for example, are notorious in Israeli society for
producing thieves and prostitutes. Yet the once large and prosperous community
in Morocco had produced very few in either category. While most observers feel
that the economic gap between the Sephardim and the Ashkenazim may soon begin
to narrow, they question whether any device can repair the damage to the
culture.

The Arab Minorities

[See Jewish and Arab Settlements: Hebron and Kiryat Arpa. Courtesy Israeli
Embassy, Washington DC.]

     Whereas the problem for Sephardic Jews continues to be mainly one of
their assimilation into the Ashkenazic-dominated Israeli society, the problem
for the Arabs has been and in 1978 remained one of integration. The Arab
community, about 574,000 in May 1978 (excluding the 1.1 million Arabs in the
occupied territories), has constituted between 12 and 15 percent of the total
population since statehood was achieved. The community is divided religiously
into three major groups: the Sunni Muslims, accounting for about 77 percent
of the Arab total; the Christians, about 15 percent; and the Druzes, about 8
percent. In 1978 there were six Arabs in the Knesset, roughly 5 percent of
the total; one Arab, a Druze, held the rank of deputy minister.

     As of 1977 a total of 650 Arabs had graduated from Israeli universities;
two-thirds of these graduates had been supported by their families, indicative
of the general increase in the standard of living experienced by the
truncated Arab community that remained in Israel after 1948. Generally
speaking, the wealthy and educated Arabs had been among the first to leave
in 1948, and for a long time the Arab community was leaderless, emptied of its
elite. As a result of the disappearance of the tenancy and landlord system
and of having fewer lands to cultivate due to land expropriations numerous
Arabs of the peasant class entered other occupations; most engaged in manual
labor in light industries. Of more significance, in the 1970s a small number
of young Arabs, largely of peasant origin, emerged as something of an
intelligentsia, providing a form of leadership-albeit sporadic and often
ineffectual-to a still largely passive and unorganized community.

     Arab citizens enjoy the same political rights as Jewish citizens under
the law, but they are, de facto, segregated from the majority population,
living and studying mostly in their own communities. Arabs are conspicuously
absent from top civil service positions. The great majority of the Arab work
force is engaged in manual labor, the majority of it in the Jewish economic
sector. Of the one-tenth of 1 percent of the Arab population that graduated
from the country's universities in 1971, 86 percent were eventually employed,
perforce, in the Arab community.

     The Arab population has one of the highest growth rates of any in the
world and, because the Arab rate of emigration is low, the result has been
startlingly large population increases of 4 percent per year. In 1970 the
Arab population increase was 39.1 per 1,000, compared to 16.9 for the Jewish
population. The rate of increase was highest among the Muslim Arabs (43.7 per
1,000), followed by the Druzes (37.5 per 1,000), and the Christians (19.7
per 1,000) (see Population and Vital Statistics, this ch.p).

     Approximately 75 percent of the Arabs live in rural areas, and they
are concentrated in three regions of the country: 60 percent live in
Galilee in the north of Israel; about 30 percent live in the Little Triangle
(actually rectangular in shape, the area is called the Triangle because it
was part of the Janin-Nabulus-Tulkarm triangle, which was outside the
boundaries of Israel until the ceasefire agreement with Jordan in 1949);
and 10 percent in the Negev Desert region. Urban Arabs are mostly located
in the Arab cities of Nazareth and Shafa Amr and in cities with mixed
populations: Acre, Haifa, Lod, Ramlah, Tel Aviv, and Jerusalem. The rural
Arabs reside in 104 Arab villages, most of them in the Little Triangle and
Galilee. There are approximately twenty-four beduin tribes, most of them in
the Negev and Galilee.

     As of 1978 very few Arab towns and villages had local government. There
were fewer than fifty village councils and fewer than ten municipal
governments. The remainder of Arab settlements have government-appointed
mukhtars, traditional shaykhs who were usually head of hamulas, the basic
Palestinian Arab village organization that is below a tribe but above a clan.
Mukhtars are chosen on the basis of their level of cooperation with government
policy and as such are resented by much of the Arab population.

     Arabs are subject to restrictions on freedom of movement. Until 1966 all
Arabs needed passes from the Office of Military Government to travel from one
village to another. With the abolishment of the military government, the
regular police force became responsible for the issuance of passes. In 1978
any Arab suspected of nationalist sympathies or belonging to the Rakah
(New Communist) party, together a large number, was required to obtain a pass
before leaving his village. Arab identity cards were specially marked with
a large letter B for quick identification.

     During the several decades before the establishment of the State of
Israel, the Jewish community developed several self-governing and
developmental institutions that were carried over into the new nation as
"national institutions" (see National Institutions, ch. 3). Not surprisingly,
scant consideration was given to the role of the Arabs within or as adjuncts
to the dominant Jewish society, and the continuation of these institutions
meant that the Arabs were automatically excluded from services originally
designed for the Yishuv. The Jewish National Fund, for example, either
owns outright or controls on behalf of the state most of the land in Israel;
the fund is forbidden by law from selling land to non-Jews, which effectively
bars Arabs from buying land. A similar situation exists with respect to
housing. There is no prohibition against Arabs living in development towns
such as Karmiel, which was built on Arab land and is surrounded by Arab
villages, but the apartment construction, there as elsewhere, is for the most
part financed and handled by the Jewish Agency, and only Jews are eligible
as tenants.

     Just as the Jews have virtually a second government in the form of such
national institutions, the Arabs also live under a separate and special
political system in the form of Arab departments in the cabinet ministries
that deal with the needs of the citizens at large, despite the fact that no
constitutional provision exists for such departments. Arthur Samuelson
describes as an example the work of the Arab Department in the Ministry of
Housing. The department is responsible for building apartments for Arabs
but, according to Samuelson, had built only "a miniscule number; apartments
built by the Ministry for Jewish settlements are not available to Arabs,
though, under law, they should be."

     In 1976 an Israeli newspaper published a secret government document
on the "Arab problem," thereby creating a scandal and sharp political
divisions. The document had been written by Yisrael Koening, a senior
official in the Ministry of Interior and the administrator for Galilee Area.
Koening warned that the increasing Arab population growth rate in the
area would result, in a few years, in an Arab majority in Galilee. Among
other things, he recommended that various steps be undertaken to encourage
Arab emigration from Israel.

     Yigal Allon, then the deputy prime minister, labeled the document
"miserable" and asserted that there was no connection between it and the
policies of the government. The Arabs in Galilee, however, were not persuaded
that Allon's disclaimer was entirely accurate. They noted that no elected Arab
council had ever been able to secure a loan for development projects. Only the
Ministry of Interior is empowered to approve and act as guarantor of such
loans, and their representative in Galilee is Koening. Samuelson suggests that
there were additional reasons that caused the Arabs to believe that the
Koening report did in fact reflect government policy:

They find it in the fact that, in 1971-72, local authorities received grants
from the Ministry totalling 1,580,000 Israeli Pounds of which Arab towns
received only 1.1 percent despite the fact that they account for 11 percent
of the population under the jurisdiction of local authorities. They find it
in the fact that the Ministry gave 60,897,000 Israeli Pounds to help local
towns pay back other debts, but that none of this money went to Arab towns.
Since Arab settlements do not receive government loans or government
guarantees for private loans, the Arabs assume that the government does not
want their towns to be developed and wants to keep the Arab sector
perpetually depressed.

     The Israeli Arabs have been remarkably quiescent since 1948. Leslie
notes that during the six-day war the Arabs remained at least outwardly
loyal, with not one case of sabotage. Between 1967 and 1978, fewer than 400
Arabs were arrested and tried in court for providing assistance to the
Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). Arab frustrations were expressed
primarily by the ballot box. In the 1973 Knesset elections more than one-third
of the Arab voters gave their vote to Rakah. In the 1977 elections 50 percent
of the Arab vote went to Rakah. Since the Arabs cannot form a political party
of their own, support for Rakah represents a form of nonviolent protest
against the government.

     In the mid-1970s there appeared to be a growing radicalization of the
Arab community. On March 30, 1976 the Arabs went on strike on what they called
Land Day. The strike was a response to the announcement that the government
planned to expropriate a further 632 hectares of Arab lands (see Israeli
Arabs, Arab Land, and Arab Refugees, ch. 1). Although Jewish land was also
to be expropriated, the Arabs doubted that the land seizures of Jewish
land would be more than symbolic, as turned out to be the case.

     The strong reaction of the Arabs resulted in part from what they
perceived as discriminatory treatment in the town of Karmiel in Galilee.
Arab land owners had sold and in the town to a Jewish development group on
receipt of the promise and understanding that the land would be used for
joint Arab-Jewish development. When the promise was reneged on, the Arabs
vowed that they would be less trusting in the future.

     Eventually the government decided that there were sufficient public
lands elsewhere in Galilee and that the private Arab lands were not
needed. The Arab affairs staff of the Public Council for Social Welfare
in the Office of the Prime Minister adopted the position taken by the agency.
After a lengthy study of the economic situation of the Arabs, the council
reported that previous expropriations of land and property and the high
Arab birthrate had resulted in severe overcrowding. The council discovered
that the Arabs, with less than 15 percent of the population, accounted for
over 48 percent of all Israelis living three to one room, creating a
politically as well as a physically unhealthy situation. (Only 9 percent
of the Jewish population lived in such crowded conditions.) The council
suggested that there be no more land and property expropriations. In
1978, however, there continued to be expropriations of Arab lands.

     Mark Segal, a political correspondent for the Israeli daily, the
Jerusalem Post, said in early 1978 that inadequate attention was being
paid to the growing radicalization of the Israeli Arabs and the fact that
the Arab elite, small and unorganized though it was, had become
ultranationalistic. He pointed to the formation during the mid- and late
1970s of ostensibly nonpolitical organizations (political organizations
are forbidden) among the Arabs, such as the national committee of Arab
local council chairmen, the national committee of Arab students, and the
national committee for land protection, an outgrowth of the Land Day strike.
Another group was attempting to gain control of awqaf, Muslim religious trust
lands. Segal attributed the mobilization of many in the Arab community to
unfulfilled expectations and the resurgence of a sense of identification
with the Palestinians of the occupied territories.

The Muslims

     The religion of the majority of the Arabs is Islam (meaning submission
to the will of God), which was articulated in seventh century Arabia by
Islam's chief and last prophet, Muhammad (see Introduction, ch. 1). Muslims
perceive Islam as the continuation and fulfillment of the Judeo-Christian
tradition. The central message of Islam is the singleness of God; it
repudiates all other claims to divinity. Muhammad is considered to be the
greatest of all the prophets, but Abraham, Moses, and Jesus-amony many Old and
New Testament figures-are claimed as part of the Islamic heritage.

     Muslims believe in angels, in heaven and hell, in a final day of
judgment, and in the immortal life of the soul. Islam's doctrine has been
little elaborated on in the course of the centuries. Rather, its greatest and
most colossal achievement has been in the development of a comprehensive legal
system designed to embrace all aspects of life. Institutionalized in the legal
system are values common to the Arabian ethos: there is a collective as
opposed to an individualistic orientation to society, a divine imperative to
generosity, and an ethical directive to avoid or avenge the shame visited
on one.

     There are no clergy in Islam to intervene between man and God. The imams
who lead the prayers and the qadis who are judges of the Muslim courts do so
by virtue of their superior knowledge and understanding of the law.

     The Israeli government has set up four courts of Islamic law, one
each in Nazareth, Acre, Jaffa, and Tayleh (Et Taiyiba). The first qadis of
these courts were appointed by the Ministry for Religious Affairs, despite
the objections of the Muslim community, whose members felt that they were
not given equal treatment with other religious groups because they had not
even been consulted on the choices. In 1961 the government passed the Law
of Sharia (Islamic Law) Qadis, which placed the appointment of judges in the
hands of a committee of nine, four of whom can be non-Muslims. The request
by the Muslim community that there be a high Muslim council overarching the
qadis was rejected by the government on the grounds that it represented
"a political rather than a religious aspiration."

     Part of the salaries of the qadis and money for the upkeep of mosques
are paid for by the Ministry for Religious Affairs from income from
expropriated awqaf. Financial decisions regarding the allocation of awqaf
funds are made by a committee with members from the Ministry of Religious
Affairs, the Custodian of Absentee Property, and the adviser on Arab affairs.
In 1978 there were neither Arabs nor Muslims on the committee.

     The intervention in the religious affairs of the Muslim community
derives in part from the fact that the Muslims are perceived by the
government as being "more Arab" that other Arabs and therefore a greater
security risk. Muslims are not conscripted into the army, nor are any
non-Jews except the Druzes. The strong association of "Arab" with "Islam" is
evident in many government publications in which Islam is viewed as a force
perenially hostile to the Jewish people. This attitude has permeated the
private sector as well. In an article in Maariv in 1955, the editor wrote,
"Islam is the enemy of all fruitful ideas, all well-intentioned initiatives
and all creative thought.... It has contributed nothing of value nor will
it do so in the future ... it represents darkness, reaction and the
imprisonment of five hundred million beings."

     Israeli Muslims feel that there has been little change in the general
attitude of Israelis about Islam since that time. They view this problem
as yet another hindrance to their acceptance and integration into Israeli
society.

The Christians

     By mid-1978 there appeared to have been a slight deterioration in
Christian-Jewish relations. The immediate cause was an anti-missionary
law passed by the Knesset that went into effect in April 1978. The law
imposes a five-year prison sentence on anyone who offers "material inducement"
to change religions and a three-year sentence on anyone who accepts.

     The United Christian Council of Israel, which represents twenty church
bodies, was assured by the government that the law would apply equally to
all religions. Nevertheless United Christian Council representatives felt
that the law was intended specifically for them, and to support their
contention they cited the anti-Christian speeches made and sentiments
expressed during the Knesset debate. In addition, only the Christians actively
proselytize. The Christian community expressed concern that such small
gestures as inviting a non-Christian to dinner or giving a Bible to someone
may be interpreted by the Jewish extremists as violations of the law.
Some prominent Jews, such as Rabbi Marc Tananbaum of the American Jewish
Committee, have criticized the law as a potential infringement on religious
liberty.

     On the whole, the Christian churches have maintained good relations
with the government. In 1966 the Ecumenical Theological Research Fraternity
was founded in Israel by the Christian churches. This organization was formed
to aid the churches in exploring and deepening their relations with Israeli
Jewry.

     In February 1978 the holy places on Mount Zion, including the Room
of the Last Supper and the Room of the Holy Spirit-two of the most important
Christian sites-became the legal possession of the Ministry for Religious
Affairs. This action occurred in the wake of a break-in of the Room of the
Holy Spirit by Diaspora Yeshiva students who also venerated the site and who
were hoping to obtain this room by contract from the government. This
added further strain to Christian-Jewish relations.

     There are more than thirty Christian denominations in Israel with a total
of about 200 churches and chapels. The two largest denominations are the Roman
Catholics and the Greek Catholics, each of which has about 24,000 adherents.
There are also about 3,000 Maronites and several hundred Armenian, Syrian, and
Chaldean Catholics. The head of the Latin hierarchy is the Patriarch of
Jerusalem, whose jurisdiction includes Jordan and Cyprus. The Roman Catholic
Church has custody or joint custody of the vast majority of churches,
hospices, and cultural and charitable institutions. There are over 400 priests
and some 1,200 nuns, chiefly of the Franciscan Order.

     The Greek Catholics have an archbishop as their spiritual leader.
Archbishop Georges Hakim, who held this position for nineteen years until
he was named Patriarch of the Greek Catholic Church for the Orient, was the
chief spokesman for the Christian Arabs in Israel. Of the orthodox churches,
the most important is the Greek Orthodox, headed by the Orthodox Patriarch
of Jerusalem. There are an estimated 40,000 Greek Orthodox in Israel and
the Israeli-occupied territories. For historic reasons the Greek Orthodox
patriarch has precedence over all other spiritual leaders. There are also
small congregations of two Russian Orthodox Churches.

     The Monophysite churches are represented by the Armenian church with
2,000 communicants; the Coptic church, 1,000; the Ethiopian church, 100; and
the Syrian-Jacobite church, 1,000. There are some twenty-one Protestant
churches with a combined membership of over 2,000.

The Druzes

     The government maintains a separate relationship with the three major
Arab religious groups. The Druzes, a community of about 35,000, have, since
the establishment of the state, enjoyed the most favored status. They live,
for the most part, in twenty hilltop villages, eighteen in Upper Galilee
and two in the Mount Carmel-Haifa Bay area.

     Their religion is a tenth-century offshoot of Islam, and Muslims
view Druzes as heretical for accepting the divinity of Hakim, the third
Fatimid caliph of Egypt. By 1020 they had taken their name from Mohammad
Ben Ismail el Darazi, a Persian mystic. Druzes regard Jethro, Moses'
father-in-law, as their chief prophet and make annual pilgrimages to his
tomb in lower Galilee. They also revere Moses, Muhammad, and Jesus, the
three most important prophets of Islam.

     The doctrine and ritual of the Druze religion have always been kept
secret to avoid persecution in lands where they are considered heretics.
Only those who demonstrate extreme piety and devotion and who have the
correct demeanor are initiated into the mysteries. The initiated (uqqal;
sing., aqil), are a very small minority and may include women. Most Druzes
are juhhal, ignorant ones. Apparently the religion is most complex, involving
neo-Platonic thought, Sufi mysticism, and Persian religious traditions.
There are approximately 500,000 Druzes in the world, 150,000 of whom live
in Syria and Lebanon. The Israeli Druzes settled in the area about 400 years
ago. They soon developed a modus vivendi with the local government that
enabled them to live nearly autonomously in their traditional occupations
of farming and sheep herding.

     During the period of the British Mandate members of the Druze community
formed many personal links and mutually beneficial ties with individuals
and groups within the growing Jewish community, particularly in the region
around Haifa. In 1947 they hid Abba Hushi, later mayor of Haifa, from the
British security forces who were seeking to arrest and imprison him. In the
prestate period some 200 Druzes fought with the Haganah (see Glossary),
promoting the organization of the Minorities Unit, which was later
incorporated into the armed services of Israel. At their request Druzes are
conscripted into the army, the only minority group that is drafted. There are
also many Druzes in the Border Guard of the Israel Police.

     In exchange for their long-term loyalty, the Druzes were recognized
as a separate community in 1957. Whereas Christian and Muslim Arabs have
"Arab" on their identity cards under nationality, the Druzes have "Druze"
as both their religion and nationality, a separate status that has become
controversial. In other respects, however, the Druzes have been considered
with the other Arab minorities, particularly in political and administrative
matters.

     After once again proving their loyalty in the six-day war, the Druzes
were promised that they would be treated on an equal basis with Jewish
citizens. As of mid-1978 that promise had not been kept although there are
Druzes in the security forces and in the educational system. There are few
Druzes in the civil service, mostly in such highly visible positions as an
Israeli consul in New York and as the president's adviser on minority affairs.
Increasingly the Druzes view such appointments as tokenism, and their ensuing
discontent has been observable in their voting patterns. This has become
particularly noticeable among the younger generation, which feels that the
loyalty and support manifested by the older generation has neither been
appreciated nor rewarded in any tangible and meaningful way. Among the older
generation the Israel Labor Party alignment and its minority slates have
received the majority of the votes.

     Nearly 73 percent of the Druze population is under thirty years of age,
and in the 1977 Knesset election a majority of this age group reportedly cast
ballots for Rakah, which by the late 1970s was increasingly becoming the
party of protest for many Arabs. Also, because the vast majority of Druze
youth know little of their religion beyond its prohibition on partaking
of pork and alcohol and of smoking, they increasingly have come to identify
with the rest of the Arab population and its interests. Walter Zenner and
Leonard Kasdan noted in 1977 that "The strains and contradictions in Israeli
Government policy toward the Druzes and other minorities may be reaching a
critical stage."