Totten on Israeli Arabs

Friday, Michael Totten put up a post on Israeli Arabs

The Palestinians of 1948

JAFFA and JERUSALEM - There are more Arabs in Israel than there are in Beirut. One Israeli in five is an Arab. They aren’t Israeli Jews. Nor are they the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza. They were born and raised in Israel. They carry Israeli passports. They have full rights of citizenship. They vote in Israeli elections, and they field their own candidates in Israel’s parliament, the Knesset. They don’t clamor for a state of their own, nor do most of them wish to join a Palestinian state once it is born. They hardly - ever - have anything to do with the terrorism campaigns waged by Yasser Arafat’s Fatah, Islamic Jihad, or Hamas. They are the lucky ones who were not driven out, who did not flee to the wretched refugee camps of Lebanon, Egypt, and Syria during the Naqba - the creation of Israel - the “catastrophe.” They are Israeli Arabs, the Palestinians of 1948. And they are almost completely invisible and forgotten outside of Israel.

It's another illuminating post where he talks to a number of Israeli Jews and finishes off with an interesting conversation with an Israeli Arab.

Totten concludes:

Israelis are not what I would call friends with the Palestinians of 1948. But they aren’t enemies either, though they once were. Making peace with the Palestinians of 1967 will not be easy, to say the least, especially when Hamas is the government in Ramallah. But there’s nothing eternal about Arabness and Jewishness that makes it forever impossible.

Go take a look at what Totten has found out about what Israeli Jews and Arabs say about each other.

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Technorati Tag: Israel and Israeli Arabs and Michael Totten.