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"When I am in Tel Aviv, they call me an Arab. When I am in Nablus [on the West Bank], they call me an Israeli."
So said the late Abdul Aziz Zuabi, Israel's onetime Deputy Minister of Health, in summing up the identity crisis that faces the largest minority living in the Jewish state. The one million Arabs of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank who suddenly found themselves under Israeli rule after the Six-Day War have no question about their identity; they are Palestinians. But for the Arabs living within Israel's pre-1967 borders as Israeli citizens—a community that has grown from 150,000 in 1948 to nearly half a million today—there has been a continual tug of loyalties that exploded last week in the Galilee riots.
For years, officials in Israel proudly pointed to the Arab community as an example of how two peoples can live together in harmony. That the Arabs remained loyal to Israel even during four Middle East wars was cited as proof that they were generally satisfied with their lot. As citizens of the state, the Israeli Arabs have the right to vote, own land, run their own schools and join labor unions. In the past 28 years, their illiteracy rate has plunged from over 80% to 15%, and their living standard has risen dramatically as the government brought paved roads, electricity, running water, technology and communications to once impoverished villages. Today the Israeli Arabs enjoy a standard of living that is not only considerably above that of the average Egyptian or Syrian but also higher than that of Israel's Oriental Jews.
Despite these material gains, Israel's Arabs remain, in certain respects, second-class citizens. Although there is no official apartheid, the Jewish and Arab communities seldom mix. The majority of Arabs live in 107 villages (most in Galilee) in which there are no Jews —and until 1966, these communities were under military rule. There are relatively few Arabs in top government jobs or in the military—partly for security reasons and partly to spare them a crisis of conscience during war. Although they comprise 13% of Israel's population, Arabs hold only six of the Knesset's 120 seats and constitute only 3% of the students at Israel's universities.
The frustrations bred by a sense of inequality remained dormant within the Arab community until Israel's 1967 military victory, which brought the Gaza Strip and the West Bank under Jerusalem's rule. The 19-year isolation of Israel's Arabs from the rest of the Middle East suddenly ended. Israeli Arabs were shocked to find that they spoke, dressed and reacted differently than did their Palestinian cousins in the occupied territories. They encountered militant, anti-Israeli West Bankers, who denounced them for being more Israeli than Arab. At the same time, the Israeli Jew looked upon his Arab fellow citizen with increasing suspicion. When sabotage or terrorist incidents occurred, for instance, the Israeli Arab had to submit to humiliating searches by military police.
Politically, the Israeli Arabs are divided. Some faithfully follow, their apolitical clan sheiks, who are primarily concerned about keeping their villages prosperous and cohesive. Others are strong supporters of Jordan's King Hussein. Since active supporters of the Palestine Liberation Organization are barred from campaigning in Israeli