There’s a common paradigm in Israel that has become a kind of ironclad rule, not to say policy. It holds that “Arabs only understand the language of force.” But my impression is that recently, Israeli governments have been the ones who only understand that language.
The country’s leaders have yet to grasp the magnitude of the discontent and anger that the Druze feel today. Or, alternatively, the government simply refuses to see this unhappy truth. Perhaps the leadership still thinks the Druze are just a peace-loving community, the good, loyal Arabs, Israeli patriots and excellent infantrymen who ought to give thanks night and day that they are servants and subjects of the Jewish people’s nation-state.
The leadership here thinks it’s possible to harass the Druze community and push it even further into a corner with racist legislation like the nation-state law. After that law passed, the Druze were left with a deep crisis of identity and consciousness and began rethinking everything related to their Israeliness and their contribution to the state’s revival.
The same was true of the despicable, Draconian Kaminitz Law, whose entire purpose was to make it harder to build in and expand Arab and Druze towns, and to enable administrative enforcement by way of sweeping demolition orders and fines totaling hundreds of millions of shekels. And all this was done while deliberately ignoring the difficult situation in these villages – including the lack of master plans, industry, commerce, infrastructure and education – and their low socioeconomic level.
I am writing here from the bottom of my heart as an Israeli patriot. I’m not a leader or a political wheeler-dealer with personal interests. I oppose violence and condemn it unequivocally. I also oppose breaking the law.
Nevertheless, it’s important to understand that the Druze have reached a boiling point and a dead end from which there is no return. They feel that the government despises them and their right to build on their own land and live in their homeland, the place where they lived for 1,000 years before the State of Israel was established.
They look at the Jewish communities around them, and they know what massive funding is given to Jewish settlements in the West Bank. Sometimes they even compare their situation to that of other Arab towns like Sakhnin or Umm al-Fahm, and conclude that their villages, whose situation is seemingly good, are actually bedroom communities devoid of any sign of wealth or progress.
This fact generates deep frustration and a feeling that there is no reciprocity or proportionality between what the Druze give the state and what they get from it. I seem to recall that Israel once had a prime minister who said, “If they give, they’ll get; if they don’t give, they won’t get.” That prime minister is still in power today, and he could apply a policy of affirmative action toward the Druze to solve the community’s grave problems.
I hope Israel’s decision makers come to their senses and understand that the Druze are a kind of indicator of the country’s moral and ethical health, and that they deserve fair and equal treatment. I hope the state won’t force me to use “improper” means to protect my home and my land.
With all due humility, I would advise our cabinet ministers to go back to their history books and read a little about the Druze community’s resistance to any government that sought to rule them unfairly. Perhaps they will then spare us and themselves the kind of incidents in which we have no desire to become entangled.
Anis Nasser al-Din is a businessman and social activist.