On a tightrope: Israel’s Arab citizens and the war with Hamas - opinion

The horrific events of October 7 were received in Arab society in Israel with complete shock. While initial responses were very similar to those of the Jewish public as many Arabs expressed their sincere sorrow and grief for the hundreds murdered by the Hamas terror attack (with the toll slowly rising to 1,400), Arab society entered a state of emergency, mainly out of fear of acts of revenge by extremist Jewish elements.

In the ensuing days, the country witnessed a “voluntary segregation” between Jews and Arabs. Many Arabs voluntarily confined themselves in their towns, and public and commercial movements almost completely stopped. Nevertheless, shared working places, such as medical centers and other healthcare services and mental health facilities where Arabs and Jews have long been used to working hand-in-hand in cases of emergency, continued to function and were almost unaffected by these exceptional circumstances.

The Arab political leadership quickly responded by warning against any act of revenge or physical or verbal harm by individuals from both communities.

MK Ayman Odeh, former chair of the Joint List and the current leader of the Hadash-Ta’al faction in the Knesset, was among the first political leaders who called upon Arab citizens to refrain from sharing any inflammatory material on their social media profiles.

Still, the tension between the two communities has overshadowed the public sphere.

It should be noted that Arab-Israeli society has also paid a heavy price in the current confrontation between Israel and Hamas. Twenty Arab citizens were murdered by Hamas terrorists during the attack on October 7 or by Hamas rocket launches in the ensuing days. Most of these victims are Bedouin residents who live in the South in “unrecognized villages” that were directly hit by Hamas’ rockets. These small communities lack basic infrastructure that includes, among other things, shelters against rocket attacks.

Moreover, several Bedouin have been abducted by Hamas and are still being held hostage in Gaza.

The Arab community's response to October 7

Although the political mainstream in Arab society identifies with the Palestinian cause, namely the struggle for a two-state solution, the vast majority of Arab citizens strongly criticize Hamas’s practices and completely reject Hamas’s militant approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Many Arab Israelis even consider the events of October 7 a severe blow to the Palestinian cause.

A poll among Arab citizens during the first week after the October 7 events found that 77% of the respondents opposed the terror attack and 85% opposed the kidnapping of civilians, including women and children. About 53% of the respondents said that the terror attack harmed the chances of reaching a settlement between Israel and the Palestinians.

A large portion of Arab society, which is predominantly Muslim, identifies with the Islamic movement in Israel. While Hamas and the Islamic movement, both Palestinian offshoots of the Muslim Brotherhood movement (established in the 1920s in Egypt) share similar social and religious values, MK Mansour Abbas, head of the United Arab List (a political party of the Islamic movement) explicitly condemned the Hamas attack.

In a televised interview, Abbas emphasized that the Hamas attack of October 7 stands in complete contrast with the religious principles and moral values of Islam.

The Islamic movement, one of the largest social and religious organizations in Arab society, also organized transport convoys for Arab-Israeli students from universities across the country to their homes to avoid any potential harm to those living in Jewish cities. The traumatic clashes between Arabs and Jews in May 2021 (when, among other violent incidents, a Jew was attacked with a brick in Lod and later died of his wounds) still resonate in the minds of all Israeli citizens. As a result, the Arab political leadership explicitly warned against any act of revenge, physical or verbal harm by Jews against Arabs or by Arabs against Jews.

There were a few cases in which individuals expressed sympathy for the Hamas terror attack on their personal social profiles, but these were rare incidents.

MANY ARAB citizens have expressed their solidarity in word and deed with the general Israeli society.

In Rahat, the largest Arab city in Israel with 79,000 inhabitants (all Bedouin), a joint Arab-Jewish operation room was opened to supply food packages for needy families who survived the October 7 terror attack.

Another Arab city, Kufr Qassem, located not far from Tel Aviv, offered shelter to Jewish families from small localities surrounding the Gaza border area who had to leave their destroyed homes during the war. Some young Arab volunteers went to communities that were severely damaged by the terror attack to help in their reconstruction.

Even while the predominant response in the Arab sector is one of solidarity with the Palestinian population in Gaza, this should not be interpreted as solidarity with Hamas. Rather, their main concern is for the well-being and safety of their relatives, as many Arab citizens have family there.

The Arab-Israeli public is also anxious about the potential consequences, should tensions in Jewish-Arab relations continue to deteriorate. The statement made by National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, warning of a potential re-run of 2021’s “Guardian of the Walls” (the uprising of Arab-Israelis against Jews in mixed cities leading to physical clashes between Arab Israelis and Jewish Israelis) increased levels of anxiety among the Arab citizens of Israel. Ben Gvir was subsequently rebuked across the political spectrum on Wednesday, with police sources accusing him of “fearmongering.”

A poll conducted by the Israel Democracy Institute in the last week of October 2023 found that 33% of the Arab public describe Jewish-Arab relations in Israel as “bad” while only 21% think that the relations are “good.” In contrast, an August 2021 poll taken during the Bennett-Lapid government that included, for the first time, an Arab party in the coalition (the United Arab List, headed by Mansour Abbas) found that only 16% of Arab citizens described Jewish-Arab relations as “bad” while 30% believed the relations were “good” at the time.

For now, no cases of physical harm between Arab and Jewish citizens inside Israel have been recorded. Police Commissioner Kobi Shabtai even praised the Arab sector for maintaining public order and respecting state laws. Nevertheless, many Arab citizens feel that they will pay a price for the escalation between Israel and Hamas, even after the fighting is over.

The writer is a researcher for the Israel Democracy Institute’s Arab Society in Israel Program.