4 - Arabs in the Jewish State

Summary

As a result of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, Palestinian Arabs who had been the majority population became a minority and now amount to 20 percent of the Israeli population. Although discriminated against by the state, they also have found avenues for socioeconomic upward mobility, including recent trends of professionalization. Jews and Arabs live in separate towns and urban neighborhoods, and soccer teams and matches are a limited zone of ‘integration’. Overall, the pattern of majority–minority relationships is described as ‘coexistence’ with periodic outbursts of conflict.