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Of Enmity And Justice

S

uppose that a few years from now, a sud-
denly belligerent Mexico were to demand
the return of Texas and began lobbing mor-
tars across the Rio Grande to press the
claim. Further imagine that the Mexican
Americans of Texas united with in their
kinsmen's ultimatums and, while rioting
murderously at the Alamo, pledged to kill
or expel all Anglo-Texans.
What might the American Government and the
state of Texas do? Would they call out the militia to
knock some heads, blast a few missiles at the .mortar
emplacements, lock up the rebel leaders and strongly
invite its disaffected minority to move south? Or
would it call for the creation of a Kerner-type corn-
mission to study the roots of the disaffection and
combat the separate and unequal treatment that
fueled the Mexican-American passions?
That, roughly, is the situation 'hat Israel now
faces with its one million Arab Israeli citizens. Their
alienation from the majority is real and ominously
worsening, as their commemoration last week of "Al
Naqba," the "catastrophe" of Israel's founding in
1948, attests. The crisis that many have warned
about for years is here and now.
For all that, they are citizens of Israel. But the
Arabs ---= or Palestinian Israelis as they now call
themselves — have always felt apart from the Zion-
ist state, and many resented it bitterly. Their sympa-
thies were with their Arab cousins, and that often
drove them, like the Palestinians of today, to spurn
the hand offered in friendship that was repeatedly
extended to them by individu:-1 Israelis, by the gov-
ernment and by many American initiatives.
. Their sense of identity has grown in recent years,
fueled partially by pride in the intifada (latest Pales-
tinian uprising), Palestinian gains since Oslo and by
the growth of their own middle class that is better
able to articulate reasons for a separatist consensus.

Dry Bones

The Israeli majority never evolved policies to deal
with the disdain, and that contributed to the Arab
claims of victimhood. Under pressures from other
constituencies, the Israeli government usually spent
less for schools, roads, water and health in
Arab villages and neighborhoods than what
it spent on Jewish areas. Because Arabs
were exempt from military service, they
missed out on that great equalizer and
builder of social connections, the IDF. Even when
Arabs provided crucial votes for a winning prime
minister, they weren't in the cabinet.
The chickens of that twinned Arab disdain for
the Zionist state and Jewish neglect of their biggest
minority are now coming home to roost. And it is
urgent that Israel find ways to address the problem
because its Arab citizens are the best potential
pipeline it has to building a sustainable relationship
with its Arab neighbors. They are also the most
explosive danger to the internal stability of the
country.

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EDIT° RIAL

Striking A Balance

That Arab Israelis joined the new intifada was sick-
ening, almost indistinguishable from treason. Yet,
however misguided the Arabs were and are, the
majority cannot afford to continue doing nothing.
As America learned in the '60s, you can't wall off a
significant percentage of your citizens and expect
either domestic tranquility or sleep untroubled by
pangs of conscience.
Of course, the intifada, on both sides of the
Green Line, makes it almost unbearably difficult for
Jewish Israelis to contemplate what would be seen as
making concessions to the Arab minority. Yet if it
ever wants to have external peace, Israel will have to
craft social justice within its borders; will have to
prove itself smart enough and humane enough to
put the relationship onto a path that leads to mutual

respect.
Lacking a constitution and habituated to short-
term thinking, Israel will find it hard to look down
the road 10 or 20 years and devise methods that will
commit future governments, be they Labor, Likud
or a unity government like the present one, to deal-
ing with the issue. But that is exactly what must
happen.
At some point, the Palestinians of the West Bank
and Gaza are going to turn to the Arab Israelis and
ask: "Could we live with the Jews? Can you?" Israel
must think through — and actually carry out over
the coming decades — a coherent policy to make
sure that the answer is "Yes." ❑

Marching To A Different Drummer

T

he route was in sight of drivers along busy
and d of residents in diverse neighbor-
hoods. Yet as it turned out, Sunday's Soli-
darity March for Israel was not so
much to show others Detroit Jewry's support
for the Jewish homeland, but to reinforce
that support among ourselves.
That became clear as the three-mile march left
the Eugene and Marcia Applebaum Jewish Commu-
nity Campus in West Bloomfield and wended its
way along Drake and Maple before turning north-
ward into the surrounding subdivisions.
The march highlighted JerusaleMania, the
umbrella for the IsraelFest and the Culture Shuk,
two annual events hosted by the Jewish Federation,
of Metropolitan Detroit.

Related coverage: page 14

Most of the 500 marchers proudly wore T-shirts
promoting JerusaleMania. Many also toted Israeli
flags oi We Love Jerusalem or We Love Israel plac-
ards.
By all accounts, those who marched
were united in their concern about the
Mideast violence and in their desire for
lasting peace — whatever their political leanings.
Some said they were weary from a hard week at
work, but felt compelled to march because of a
newly aroused sense of urgency about Israel. The
march came on the eve of Yom Yerushalayim
(Jerusalem Day) and two days after a 20-year-old
Palestinian extremist blew himself up outside a
Netanya shopping mall and killed five Israelis.
Other marchers said they were moved by Israel's lag-
ging tourist economy and, though they couldn't steer
Clear to pay a visit any time soon, wanted to do some-

EDIT ORIAL

thing that made them feel good about the biblical land
of our forebears in a perilous region where much of the
Arab world would just as soon see it destroyed.
Still others said they were there to march with
their children and get them revved up about a sliver
of land half a world away that most have only read
about in religious school.
So it was more a march for Jews to do some serious
soul-searching than to rally awareness among non-Jews.
Sure, more people could have marched and the
energy level could have been higher. But what mat-
ters is that the Federation and other sponsors had
the wherewithal to pull us together for one after-
noon at a crucial time for Israel — our hectic per-
sonal lives notwithstanding.
It would be a mitzvah to at least remember Eretz
Yisrael, the Land of Israel, in your prayers if you
can't pay a visit there right now. ❑

JN

5/25

2001

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