From Subjects to Citizens: On Educational Reforms and the Demarcation of the “Israeli-Arabs”

Abstract

Based on a critical analysis of the Arab educational policy, from Israel's independence in the 1970s, this article examines the pivotal role of the state in engendering the trends of Palestinianization and Israelization that arguably characterize the attitude of the Arab minority to the Israeli state. Exploring the educational reforms of the 1960s and 1970s, it shows the contingent relation between ethnicity and the state, and also, the interrelationship between the intra-Jewish and Jewish-Arab divides. Looking at the ethnicization of social relations not as a preordained upshot of primordial realities, the history of the reforms unravels the changing patterns of inclusion and exclusion that result in demarcating the Arab minority as both Israeli and Palestinian, and in constructing the oxymoronic category of “Israeli-Arabs”. Seen from the perspective of the goals for Arab and Jewish education, this category manifests the internalization of the “Arab Question” and the shift in educational policy from preclusion to incorporation, but also the limits of inclusion. These goals thus epitomize the ways in which the new discourse of meritocracy (resulting from the liberalizing of the economy and society) had determined civic equality between Arab and Jewish citizens, but equally important, the seclusion of the Arab minority from both the Jewish (ethnic) society and the Palestinian (national) collective. In this sense, I argue, neither Israelization nor Palestinianization were a matter of choice. Rather, both constitute the inevitable dual path for social and political inclusion, limited as it is.

Keywords:

• Citizenship
• ethnicity
• state universalism
• educational reform
• Palestinian minority in Israel

Acknowledgements

This article is partly based on the author's doctoral dissertation. Special thanks go to Yezid Sayigh whose comments on the dissertation led the author to think over the “Arab Question”. The author wishes to thank Brendan O'Leary and Erik Ringmar for their supportive guidance and the other colleagues and friends whose advice and support was of great value at the time. The author is also indebted to Erik for his useful comments on an earlier version of this article and to Orna Sasson-Levy and Zeev Emmerich for their valuable help, as well as the anonymous reader of CS for carefully commenting on the article, thus making the final product clearer.

Notes

 Throughout this article I use the terms Arabs and Palestinians interchangeably. This usage is a matter of a considerable political debate, to which this discussion refers (Rabinowitz, 1993; Rekhess, 1998).

 The only “legitimate” exception was the Communist Party of Israel, an Arab-Jewish party that channeled the vote of those Palestinians who refused to adhere to the rule of “traditional” elites (for example, Kaufman, 1997). On the legal status of the Arab minority, see Kretzmer (1987) and Sultany (2003).

 For initial formulations of these trends and their meaning, see Rekhess (1976) and Smooha (1983). These scholars, and many others, became engaged in a debate over the direction in which these identities had developed—either radicalization, that is growing of their Palestinian identification, or integration within the Israeli democratic structure (for example, Neuberger, 1995; Smooha, 1997; Rekhess, 1998; Ghanem, 2001). Recently this debate has taken a new turn, when various scholars are seeking explanations that offer less dichotomous a perception on these identities (for example, Rouhana, 1997; Amara & Schnell, 2004). However, this debate is not the main subject matter of the following analysis, and therefore I shall not delve into the specific versions of these positions.

 The term “minorities” was a euphemism that replaced, in official and unofficial language, the term Arabs.

 Being myself an Israeli-Jew, it is not my intention to present here an “Arab standpoint”. Hence, my concern is with the social category of “Israeli-Arabs” and its relation to other social categories, and not with the experience of being a Palestinian citizen of Israel.

 I prefer the term “non-essentialist” over “constructivist” for the latter remains somewhat misleading, as it suggests an intentional effort to manipulate ethnic identities. Employing a historical and structural perspective, I refer to these identities as being “constructed”, a term that similarly opposes an essentialist conception of ethnic identities, and yet refrains from suggesting that either their boundaries or content are the outcome of deliberate actions by social agents.

 Education was based on three principles: (a) the self-definition principle which allowed for Zionist, but also non-Zionist, Jewish parents to choose the appropriate educational stream for their children; (b) the proportional principle, a derivative of the peculiar features of the Zionist political organization which determined the principle of power sharing in case of dispute (Don-Yehia, 1977, p. 481). A derivative third principle was educational autonomy. These principles served the dual basis for legitimization and political inclusion in the Zionist polity.

 Meir Weil, the Histadrut Education Council (1948: LA IV-215–1529, p. 37).

 The minutes of the meeting in the Histadrut appear in the Labour Archive (LA IV-215–755). For reference to Mapai's committee, see Segev (1984). Similar initiatives for the labour market are discussed in Kaufman (1997, p. 73).

 The interest in Arab education was not theoretical so to speak, as indicated in a letter, dated 1 December 1947 (ZA S10046–25), which was sent out to Dr Hendel, who was a member in a working team on Arab education. This letter specified the rate of school attendance amongst Arabs, and pointed out the need to expand Arab education and to train more teachers, etc. It also raised the issue of teaching Hebrew in Arab schools and Arabic in Jewish schools. One interesting proposition concerning the shortage of qualified Arab teachers was to employ Jewish teachers, which has eventually happened. This, I propose, refutes the argument that the Zionist establishment was unprepared to face the “Arab Question” after statehood (for example, Rekhess, 1990, p. 291; see also Lustick, 1980).

 This term, which literally translated to kingdomship, is best understood as étatisme. It was at the time the main ideological vehicle of Ben-Gurion's quest for determining state supremacy over the sectorial character of the pre-state Zionist polity.

 This deal was designed when most of the Mizrahi newcomers were still residing in immigrant and transitory camps. Thus, those camps where the majority of the residents were Mizrahi were placed under the educational authority of the Zionist-Religious Stream (recall that this deal was reached before the stream system was abolished). In following years, it became “customary” to relegate children of non-European origin (for example, Moroccan Jews in the 1970s and Ethiopian Jews in the 1980s) to boarding schools under the control of the state religious educational system. In general, this policy only strengthened the identification of this populace as being essentially religious.

 The newly founded state schools, after the 1953 State Educational Act, were thus divided between religious and non-religious tracks. The former was a de facto extension of the pre-state Zionist-Religious Stream, while the latter, which addressed primarily the urban bourgeoisie, were comprised of the formerly General Stream schools and the urban segments of the Labour Stream. The more ideological segment of the Labour Stream, the kibbutz movement, had kept its autonomy in education, and so had the Haredi Stream (Levy, 2002).

 This term is a paraphrase on the term “racial thinking” and it is borrowed from Grosvenor (1997, p. 185), who uses it in the British context, where similar developments were evidenced in approximately the same time.

 These changes ranged from organizational (the forming of the Department of Education and Culture for Arabs as a coordinating body within the Ministry), through political changes (the inclusion of Arabs in policy-making), to curricular. Being concerned with the conditions that brought about the state interest in these changes, I shall not elaborate on their particularities (see Al-Haj, 1995).

 These feelings were substantiated in a survey that depicted the changing attitudes of the Arabs in Israel regarding their identity before and after the 1967 War (Peres & Yuval-Davis, 1969).

 All quotes are taken from the Peled Committee's intermediate report (1975, p. 13). For an English translation of the goals of education, see Al-Haj (1995, p. 142). I wish to thank Prof. Yoav Peled for allowing me access to the personal files of his late father, Prof. Matti Peled.

 Eventually, even the committee's modest demands to strengthen the aspect of the Arab cultural heritage in the curriculum were not fully implemented. Immanuel Kupelevitch, who headed in the 1980s the Arab education department and was the only Jewish member in a committee on the Arab literature curriculum, recently admitted that after this committee published its conclusions, he remained doubtful and, acting as chief inspector, ordered to remove from the anthology on Arab literature those pieces that were “on the margin of creating a bad atmosphere” (Barak, 2004).

 One exception is the work of Shlomo Swirski (1999) who offers a critical sociological history of education of both Arabs and Jews.

 It is beyond the scope of this article to examine this change. Suffice it to say that alongside Arab academics who offer critical assessments of the state of Arab education, the Follow-up Committee of the Arab Councils is active in issuing its own reports and policy papers on these issues.

 Consider in this regard the recent report of the commission of inquiry into the killing of 12 Israeli-Palestinians in October 2000, and the response of the Israeli PM who claimed that “The Arab citizens of Israel are entitled to equality as a matter of right, and not mercy—and we are still far from achieving this” (“The Government Principally Approved the Or Committee's Recommendations”, Ynet, 14 September 2003, available at http://www.ynet.co.il/articles/1,7340,L-2754956,00.html).