18th Jun 2008
Being Israeli Arab
Its the end of the night in Nazareth. Around 9 p.m. Badi closes down what must be the latest operating barbershop in all of Israel. For his last customer, a journalist of some repute, a special drape in honor of this Collegiate Times reporter.
But Badi and his customer’s still-strong attraction to many things American is informative of an interesting intersection between practicality and principle that defines the status of Israeli Arabs today.
For Israeli Arabs – those Arabs who remained in Israel after the 1948 war or who were offered citizenship after the 1967 clash – their life is a series of compromising situations.
To their Palestinian neighbors and family members they are viewed at least slightly askance, as if living in Israel was tantamount to collaboration with the government. To the Israeli government they are either non-factors or part of a “demographic problem” – every child they produce threatens Israel’s Jewish character. Overseas, they are often seen in a negative light by Western sympathizers with the Palestinian cause for the same reasons that Palestinians themselves are skeptical.
So what’s an Israeli Arab to do?
Most of them, however they disagree with the policies of Israel vis-à-vis Palestine, relish living in a largely functioning country.
“Do I want to be in the same country as Hamas? No thanks,” said Badi, a barber in Nazareth with whom I pressed some questions on to whom he felt loyal – the Palestinian people across the Green Line or his current national colleagues?
Badi, like many other Israeli Arab Christians I have spoken to, couched most of his allegiance in religious terms. “The Muslims,” as he calls them, “don’t have good heads.”
My personal translation of Badi’s sentiment is something like this: He likes his barbershop business, his day trips to Tiberias and his fully-stocked household bar more than he cares about political solidarity.
Yet facing pressure from all sides there are also many Israeli Arabs who feel exactly the opposite, who are annoyed by even having to spend Israeli Shekels, the national currency, rather than a hypothetical Palestinina Dinar.
It is obviously a broad generalization to cut these general groups of Israeli Arabs apart by practicality and principle. Yet when the United States enters the mix, I don’t think its entirely unfair to categorize the Israeli Arab relationship with America as defined by those two factors. There are those whose first question is, “Can you find me a job?” and others whose first words “Bush no good” have direct intellectual counterparts in every-day Arab Israeli life.
Leave a Reply