Budgetary equality is an essential condition for the creation of a better reality. The Arab citizens and their leadership, together with Jewish partners and civil-society organizations – such as Sikkuy: The Association for the Advancement of Civic Equality, of which I am the co-director, together with Rawnak Natour – have for years waged a persistent struggle against budgetary discrimination. That struggle is not yet over, but the data show that even alongside the government’s discriminatory policy, and even in the shadow of the political attacks on and the inflammatory rhetoric used against Arab citizens – the effort to achieve material equality has scored considerable successes in recent decades. There’s been a slow, consistent process of narrowing the material disparities between Israel’s Jewish and Arab citizens. That’s good news, and if we wish to promote true equality, it’s better not to deny it. The road to equality is difficult and complicated, but with regard to material resources – budgets and land – it’s relatively easy to define what equality is. [...]
For Jews and Arabs to see this place as a joint homeland and to promote a shared society, a few things need to happen. First, increasing representations of a shared society and joint spaces must be created. Second, education for shared society and the teaching of both languages must be a significant part of the Hebrew and Arab educational systems, from kindergarten through high school. This is more important than mathematics, and it’s worth moving quickly in order to take advantage of the fact that Arabic is the mother tongue – or the mother tongue of one of the parents – of the majority of Israel’s citizens.
Third, the Arab citizens must become part of the decision-making process in Israel, including in the government. And fourth, it is impossible to advance a shared society while the occupation of the Palestinian people in the territories continues. A society in which the majority operates a military regime against members of the minority cannot be a shared society. [...]
But we must also not flinch from acknowledging the harsh truths: namely, that the primary challenge is to advance an equal, shared society amid a reality of inequality and discrimination in almost every sphere; the exclusion of Arab citizens; continuing governmental incitement against them; a deep dispute over how the state is to be defined; and the strengthening of the anti-Palestinian Jewish extreme right wing and of voices in the Arab community that oppose Arab-Jewish partnership. And then there’s the elephant in the room: the solid, stable Jewish majority that is unwilling to forgo prioritized national rights for Jews – in symbols, in the definition of the state and in immigration rights.
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