Jews and Arabs struggle to define an Israeli city
By ROBERT W. GEE
Monday, November 10, 2008

CARMIEL, Israel — This picturesque city founded more than 40 years ago among the rolling hills of the Lower Galilee was designed to attract Jews to a region with the largest concentration of Arabs in Israel.

In recent years, young Arab families, attracted by Carmiel's large, affordable homes and spacious parks, started moving in from nearby villages. Just 5 percent of the city's 50,000 residents are Arabs, but their presence has become a campaign issue in municipal elections scheduled for Tuesday [11/11].

The debate over the notion of a Jewish city confronts the freedoms inherent in Israel's democracy and comes in the wake of days-long riots and clashes between Arabs and Jews in the northern Israeli city of Acre during and after the Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur last month.

There are nearly 1.5 million Arab citizens of Israel, from the community that remained in Israel after the state was formed in 1948. Today, they make up 20 percent of the population. They speak Arabic and Hebrew and are represented in the Knesset, Israel's parliament, but face institutional, legal and societal discrimination.

"A mixed city is usually a failed city and there are many examples," said Oren Milstein, 37, who formed a local political party called, My Home, and is running for city council with the platform of keeping Carmiel Jewish. "In the name of democracy, they're desecrating the will of Jews to live on this land."

He called the 14 Arab families who moved onto his street in the past few years "high-quality people," and "very good neighbors." Most Arabs in the city are well-educated professionals — physicians, lawyers, engineers, teachers — both Jews and Arabs said.

"When they're a minority, it's not a problem," said Milstein, who was born in Carmiel and is father of four children and a supervisor at an insurance company. But he worries that as more Arab families move into the city, "they'll want a mosque. They'll want their own schools, and then it will lose its Jewish character ././. It's a feeling that your basic values are in danger."

He has collected 5,800 signatures supporting his candidacy, with the slogan, "My home is not for sale." He is promoting an agreement among residents not to sell or rent to Arabs, which, he conceded, would be discriminatory and illegal. "We don't have anything against anybody. We're for ourselves," he explains.

Arabs here call such attitudes racist and are rallying behind a candidate of their own for city council.

"Those who said, 'this is our city and you don't have the right to run for council here,' are racist and fascist. Any other name cheapens this kind of demagoguery," said Rabiya Jahshan, 38, a Christian Arab lawyer, who is the head of a new party, Carmiel For All of Us. "What we say is it's our legitimate right to live here and to participate in the municipal elections and if somebody has a problem with it, then it's their problem."

Jahshan is the first Arab to seek a seat on the city council. The party also has Jewish members, he said.

Traditionally, Arabs and Jews in Israel have lived in separate cities, towns and villages, with only a few exceptions. In mixed Jerusalem, tension often leads to violence, and recently, in the coastal city of Acre, riots caused extensive property damage and reverberated across the north of the country, where Arabs outnumber Jews.

In the wake of the Acre riots, Arab-Jewish coexistence is the focus of election campaigns in northern Israel. Municipal elections take place across the country on Tuesday. In Upper Nazareth, which like Carmiel was founded as a Jewish city but now has a mixed population, three Arab parties have united to form a single bloc that is expected to increase Arab representation on the city council.

"We're not here with the purpose of changing the character of the city," said Jahshan, who lives in Carmiel with his wife and two children. "I have neighbors and friends who are Jewish and we're on excellent terms. Our children play in our homes together."

State land policies, which Arabs consider discriminatory, limit building permits and changes to zoning laws in Arab villages, driving up property values. Homes are less expensive in Carmiel than in many of the Arab villages that surround it.

Many Israeli politicians from across the spectrum of mainstream political parties have considered Arabs, with higher birthrates than Jews, to constitute a demographic threat to the state's Jewish majority.

Carmiel was founded in 1964 as part of a government initiative called, "Finally in the Galilee," which sought to increase the Jewish population in the north. In recent years, Jewish religious schools and other groups have promoted Jewish migration to the Galilee as a counterbalance to the natural growth of Arabs there.

Still, the proportion of Arabs in northern Israel, excluding the port city of Haifa, increased to 52 percent last year from 46 percent in 1961, according to the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics.

Right-wing Israeli politicians have recently raised the specter of Arab residents of Israel — many of whom consider themselves to be Palestinian with Israeli citizenship — breaking from the Jewish state and declaring an independent country in the north.

"Whoever sees me or my children as a strategic threat is racist," Jahshan said. "In this country, there are Jews and Arabs, and we have no choice but to live together."

Many Jews, however, are wary of living beside Arabs, their historic enemies.

"I am concerned about the fact that it's more than one or two families who have moved into Carmiel," said Ariel Ben Tov, 26, who was sitting on the grass in a city park with her 15-month old son. "I wouldn't want to continue living in a place where it's more and more ././." Her voice trailed off.

Longtime residents of Carmiel say some Jews are leaving because of the Arab presence.

Former Deputy Mayor Rina Greenberg, who was once a member of the liberal Labor Party and recently allied herself with the right-wing Yisrael Beiteinu party, said her world view recently changed because of the "demographic situation" in Carmiel.

"I am not ashamed I want Carmiel to stay Jewish," said Greenberg, who is running for mayor. "We're always looking for cooperation, but we need to keep the Jewish character of Carmiel."

She called Jahshan's candidacy for city council a "provocation."

"By running, they're actually making it an issue that they're here," she said. "I want to live in peace, but each one in his own place."

She said her campaign's internal polling shows that 41 percent of Carmiel's residents are concerned about its Arab newcomers.

On a recent evening, Arab shoppers in Carmiel's main shopping center said they would boycott Jewish-owned stores if the city promoted efforts to restrict residency to Jews.

"I have only one request," said Sabhi Yahya Manaa, 62, "that everyone is treated as human beings. That everyone is treated the same."

I think the answer is quite clear.

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I think the answer is quite clear.

That second one was for me.

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1984 300TD

I like these quotes:

"A mixed city is usually a failed city and there are many examples,"

"When they're a minority, it's not a problem,"

"I wouldn't want to continue living in a place where it's more and more ././." Her voice trailed off.