It is difficult to find a more neglected story than the relative satisfaction of Palestinian Arabs living in Israel as is revealed from a recent Harvard Study. (Palestinians Arabs (including those living in greater Jerusalem) constitute 20% of the population). Aware of inconvenient polls which reveal that Palestinian living in Israel are vehemently opposed to becoming citizens of Palestine, the researchers did their best to lower the satisfaction number by phrasing the question so as to receive the most negative number. They asked Palestinian Arab if they would rather live in Israel or in any other country in the world.
Let yourselves go, dream away, they researchers seemed to be say. Fantasize. How about living in Dubai, in Britain or the US?
What a disappointment. Israel’s Arab citizens refused to play along. The vast majority of them insisted that like Israel best.
77% of the State of Israel’s Arab citizens would rather live in the Jewish state than in any other country in the world, according to a new study titled “Coexistence in Israel”. The study was aimed at examining the relations between Israel’s Jewish and Arab citizens on the State’s 60th anniversary, and included 1,721 respondents.
The findings also revealed that a great majority of Israel’s citizens (73% of the Jews and 94% of the Arabs) want to live in a society in which Arab and Jewish citizens have mutual respect and equal opportunities.
66% percent of Jewish citizens and 84% of Arab citizens believe the Israeli government investments should begin now, and not wait until the end of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.
The greater commitment of Israeli Arab to integration may be explained in their differing views of its benefits. 90.8% of the Arabs believe improved coexistence would be economically beneficial while only 48.1% of the Jews do. 88.7% of the Arabs but only 43.9% of the Jews see cultural benefits in coexistence.
Most significantly, both communities acknowledge the security risks posed by greater integration. Only 23.5% of the Jews and 70.7% of the Arabs believe that greater integration would increase Israel’s security.
The fact that 40% of Jewish citizens who believe greater integration to be a security risk are none the less supportive of such measures is quite remarkable as is the fact that a third of the Arab Israeli population are willing to acknowledge the risk involved.
Other polls similarly demonstrate that to achieve better integration, most of the Arab citizens of Israel support voluntary national service. They are not subject to compulsory military service though they may volunteer to serve and some do.
Yet a poll carried out by University of Haifa last month revealed that 75 percent of Israeli Arabs between the ages of 16 and 22 support voluntary national service. The poll also found that the vast majority of the Arab public is unaware of the national service. 77.4 percent overall and 79.6 percent of youth said they know little or nothing about the program. Moreover, the poll found that once given basic information about conditions in the national service and its goals, not only were Israeli Arab youth supportive of the idea, but so were 71.9 percent of all Arab men and 83.8 percent of all Arab women. In contrast, some 80 percent of members of Arab political parties opposed national service.
In other words, ideological diatribes aside, the attitudes of Israeli Arabs demonstrates that the Jewish state is doing a pretty good job accommodating it’s large Palestinian minority despite the trying circumstances under which she is forced to live.
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