By Leyna Krow, Assistant Editor, JTNews
Dr. Maha Tahsin El-Taji is no stranger to the political challenges facing Palestinians and other Arabs living inside of Israel. Aside from having written her doctoral thesis on the subject, she also happens to be an Arab-Israeli herself. So, for University of Washington professor Gad Barzilai, El-Taji seemed a natural choice to wrap up the Jewish Studies department’s New Interpretations of Israel lecture series.
“For a long time, this discourse was quite dominated by Jewish scholars,” Barzilai said, noting that El-Taji’s voice is a refreshing addition to the dialogue of Arab-Israeli studies.
Born in Libya as a Palestinian refugee and raised in Egypt, El-Taji holds five degrees in three different disciplines, including a Ph.D. from the UW in Near and Middle Eastern Studies. She currently resides in Israel with her husband and two children.
Her talk, “Israeli Arab-Palestinians between Nationality and Locality,” which she gave at the UW on Tues., April 8 to a crowd of about 40 students, faculty and community members, centered on what Israeli citizenship means to the nation’s minority groups, specifically Israeli Arabs.
It is El-Taji’s contention that, despite being treated as second-class citizens, the majority of Arabs living in Israel still consider themselves full-fledged Israelis.
“I do not believe that there is any confusion in the identity of Israeli Arabs,” she said. “Arabs in Israel have no problem with being Israelis.”
Granted, most are displeased with their status in the country. But this is not a problem of nationality. Rather, for El-Taji, it is a problem of governmental neglect on both national and local levels.
El-Taji began her argument in familiar territory, citing the disparity between resources available to Arab communities in Israel in comparison with those available to Jewish communities.
She cited the vast difference in educational opportunities given to Arab students and those available to Jewish students as a prime example of this social segregation.
“Even in mixed cities there are Arab schools for Arab students and Jewish schools for Jewish students,” she said.
The Israeli government spends, on average, 4,935 shekels ($1,250 U.S.) per year per Jewish student, and 863 shekels per year per Arab student. Although Arabs comprise 20 percent of the Israeli population, they make up less than 10 percent of undergraduates at Israeli universities.
However, El-Taji is hesitant to blame the problem facing Israeli Arabs entirely on the neglect of the Israeli government.
“This is not the talk you would expect from a human rights person. Because a human rights person would stop here and say, ‘it’s the state’s fault,’” said El-Taji, who has also worked as an international human rights attorney.
Instead, El-Taji insists that part of the blame must be placed on the shoulders of Arab city officials.
According to El-Taji, politics in many Arab cities in Israel are dominated by hamoulas, or traditional kinship-based groups. In any given municipality, two or three hamoulas may vie for control of local politics. Whichever hamoula takes office is likely to favor other members of the group, giving them tax breaks and appointing them to governmental positions, whether they are qualified or not.
The result for many cities is a lack of accountability for civic and school officials, and massive debt from uncollected taxes and inappropriate spending.
“Of course, this does not absolve the state of its requirement to divide financial resources equally,” she said.
El-Taji cited research saying that although most people living in Arab cities in Israel realize the problems the hamoulas present, they continue to vote them into power year after year instead of supporting independent candidates or forming new political parties.
“This is puzzling, because Arabs criticize Israel for not being sufficiently democratic, but they continue to support the patronage system,” she said.
El-Taji added that, when asked, many younger Israeli Arabs claim they do not want to question the wisdom of hamoulas for fear of offending community elders. She also noted that, although all women in Israel have the right to vote, Arab women, by and large, cast identical votes to their husbands.
Though El-Taji did not propose any solutions to the issues she spoke about, she did note that protests and strikes have yielded more effective results for Arab Israelis than trying to bring about change through democratic channels. But, she said, these are not tactics most Arab Israelis would consider when working to improve their own local municipalities.
“They are wedged between the hammer of an uncommitted state and the anvil of the patronage system,” she said.