A National Minority in Ethnic Democracy

This book deals with the history of the Arab minority in Israel in the aftermath of the 1967 War. Having incorporated a variety of primary and secondary sources, most notably the recently declassified files of the Advisor on Arab Affairs of the Israeli prime-minister, Dr. Wang Yu presents a complex picture of the interaction between the Arab citizens and the State. While the Arab minority benefitted from the relative relaxation of political control and from the overall economic and educational improvement, the policy of discrimination in such spheres as land and resource allocation, housing and employment remained intact. The increasing tension between the political emancipation of the Arab minority and its status as "second-ranked" citizens exploded with the unprecedented protests of the "Land Day," 1976, and then with the crushing defeat of pro-establishment Arab political parties in the 1977 parliamentary elections. Wang Yu concludes that insofar as Israeli democracy remains ethnic in its nature, this creates an impasse, which rules out long-term accommodation of the Arab minority in the Jewish state.