Israel’s Domestic Policy on Islam-Related Issues: A Preliminary Appraisal

Abstract

Since its independence in 1948, Israel’s policy on Islam-related issues has long been subordinated to its Arab minority policy. Policy priorities that focused on land resource deprivation and security risk avoidance and its multiple mechanisms for policy implementation highlighted a strategy of securitisation and pragmatism. Since the 1990s, the ascendance of right-wing forces drove Israel’s Islam-related policy towards a tougher line, with its concerns shifting from material and security to cultural and ideological ones and resorting more frequently to coercive measures. In this process, the Islamic Movement in Israel became the main opposition force among the Arab community to respond to and challenge the government’s policy changes. The bilateral mobilisation of Jewish right-wing and hardline Islamist forces amplified the impact of religious issues on the interethnic relations in Israel, which further accelerated the trend of radicalisation, Palestinization, and Islamization among the Israeli Arab community.

Keywords:

• Israel
• Islam-related policy
• Islam
• Arabs
• Israeli-Palestinian conflict

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 At the end of 2020, the population of Israel stood at 9,289,760, including 1,957,270 Arabs, representing 21.1% of the total. This figure includes almost 362,000 Arab residents of East Jerusalem who hold ‘permanent resident’ status, but not full citizenship. Thus, the number of Arab citizens of Israel was 1,595,300 at the end of 2020, constituting some 17.2% of the total population. The large majority of Arab citizens of Israel are Muslim (82.9%), and the remainder are either Druze (9.2%) or Christian (7.9%). See Nasreen Haddad Haj-Yahya, Muhammad Khalaily, Arik Rudnitzky, Ben Fargeon, ‘Statistical Report on Arab Society in Israel: Executive Summary 2021’, Ministry for Social Equality & The Israel Democracy Institute (2021), pp. 6–9.

2 Sammy Smooha, Israel, Pluralism and Conflict (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978), pp. 13–15.

3 Ian Lustick, Arabs in a Jewish State: Israel’s Control of a National Minority, Austin (London: University of Texas Press, 1980), pp. 24–27.

4 Elia Zureik, The Palestinian in Israel: A Study in Internal Colonialism (London: Routledge & K.Paul, 1979), pp. 10–20, 26–28.

5 Nadim N. Rouhana, Palestinian Citizens in an Ethnic Jewish State: Identities in Conflict (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997), pp. 14–23; As‘ad Ghanem, The Palestinian-Arab Minority in Israel, 1948–2000: A Political Study (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001), pp. 7–9; Oren Yiftachel, Ethnocracy: Land and Identity Politics in Israel/Palestine (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006), pp. 11–20.

6 Alisa Rubin Peled, Debating Islam in the Jewish State: The Development of Policy toward Islamic Institutions in Israel (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001), pp. 10–14.

7 Ahmad Natour, ‘Israel’s Seizure of Islamic Endowments (Awqaf)’, in Nadim N. Rouhana and Areej Sabbagh-Khoury eds., ‘The Palestinians in Israel: Readings in History’, Politics and Society (Mada al-Carmel: Arab Center for Applied Social Research, 2018), p. 86.

8 Michael R.T. Dumper, ‘Muslim Institutions and the Israeli State: Muslim Religious Endowments (Waqfs) in Israel and the Occupied Territories, 1948–1987’, PhD dissertation, University of Exeter, 1991, pp. 152–153.

9 Moussa Abou Ramadan, ‘Notes on the Anomaly of the Shari’a Field in Israel’, Islamic Law and Society 15(1), (2008), pp. 102–104; Alisa Rubin Peled, Debating Islam in the Jewish State: The Development of Policy toward Islamic Institutions in Israel (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001), p. 136.

10 Michael R.T. Dumper, ‘Muslim Institutions and the Israeli State: Muslim Religious Endowments (Waqfs) in Israel and the Occupied Territories, 1948–1987’, PhD dissertation, University of Exeter, 1991, p. 149.

11 Alisa Rubin Peled, Debating Islam in the Jewish State: The Development of Policy toward Islamic Institutions in Israel (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001), p. 107.

12 Wang Yu, Arab Citizens of Israel: Legal Status, Identity and Their Relations with the State, 1948–2018 (Beijing: Social Sciences Academic Press, 2018), pp. 99–102.

13 Wang Yu, Arab Citizens of Israel: Legal Status, Identity and Their Relations with the State, 1948–2018 (Beijing: Social Sciences Academic Press, 2018), p. 75.

14 Michael Karayanni, ‘Control by Accommodation: Religious Jurisdiction among the Palestinian-Arab Minority in Israel’, in Leora Batnitzky and Hanoch Dagan, eds., Institutionalizing Rights and Religion: Competing Supremacies (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017), p. 101.

15 Michael R.T. Dumper, Muslim Institutions and the Israeli State: Muslim Religious Endowments (Waqfs) in Israel and the Occupied Territories, 1948–1987, PhD dissertation, University of Exeter, 1991, pp. 141–142.

16 Hillel Frisch, Israel’s Security and Its Arab Citizens (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp. 133–137.

17 Michael R.T. Dumper, Muslim Institutions and the Israeli State: Muslim Religious Endowments (Waqfs) in Israel and the Occupied Territories, 1948–1987, PhD dissertation, University of Exeter, 1991, pp. 184–188.

18 Qadi Ahmad Natour, ‘The Battle over the Muslim Cemeteries in Israel’, in Marshall J. Breger, Yitzhak Reiter and Leonard Hammer, eds., Sacred Space in Israel and Palestine: Religion and Politics (London: Routledge, 2012), pp. 93–95.

19 This article adopts the more neutral term of ‘the Holy Esplanade’ to refer to the part of the Old City of Jerusalem commonly venerated by Judaism, Islam, and Christianity as a holy site, instead of other frequently used but disputed terms such as Temple Mount, Haram al-Sharif, Al-Aqsa compound, etc.

20 Alisa Rubin Peled, Debating Islam in the Jewish State: The Development of Policy toward Islamic Institutions in Israel (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001), p. 128; Tilde Rosmer, The Islamic Movement in Israel (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2022), pp. 30–34.

21 Ahmad Natour, ‘Israel’s Seizure of Islamic Endowments (Awqaf)’, in Nadim N. Rouhana and Areej Sabbagh-Khoury, eds., The Palestinians in Israel: Readings in History, Politics and Society (Mada al-Carmel: Arab Center for Applied Social Research, 2018), pp. 93–95.

22 Tilde Rosmer, The Islamic Movement in Israel (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2022), pp. 33–35, 53–59, 61.

23 Alisa Rubin Peled, Debating Islam in the Jewish State: The Development of Policy toward Islamic Institutions in Israel (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001), pp. 139–142; Jacob M. Landau, The Arab Minority in Israel, 1967–1991: Political Aspects (Oxford: Clarendon Press; New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), pp. 38–39.

24 Aharon Kampinsky and Shmuel Sandler, ‘The Religious Parties in the Netanyahu Era: The Politics of Israelization’, in Robert O. Freedman ed., Israel under Netanyahu: Domestic Politics and Foreign Policy, London (New York: Routledge, 2020), pp. 75–81; Buy Ben Porat and Dani Filc, ‘Remember to be Jewish: Religious Populism in Israel’, Politics and Religion 15(1), (2022), pp. 74–75.

25 Elie Rekhess, ‘Netanyahu’s Policies toward the Arabs in Israel’, in Robert O. Freedman ed., Israel under Netanyahu: Domestic Politics and Foreign Policy (London: Routledge, 2020), pp. 94–97; Dani Filc, ‘Political Radicalization in Israel: From a Populist Habitus to Radical Right Populism in Government’, in Kristian Steiner & Andreas Önnerfors eds., Expressions of Radicalization: Global Politics, Processes and Practices (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), pp. 126–127, 133, 135.

26 Office of International Religious Freedom, U.S. Department of State, Israel (Including West Bank and Gaza) 2021 International Religious Freedom Report, pp. 7–8.

27 Nasreen Haddad Haj-Yahya, Muhammad Khalaily, Arik Rudnitzky, Ben Fargeon, Statistical Report on Arab Society in Israel: Executive Summary 2021, Ministry for Social Equality & The Israel Democracy Institute (2021), p. 40.

28 Michael Dumper, Jerusalem Unbound: Geography, History, and the Future of the Holy City (New York: Columbia University Press), pp. 130–131.

29 Raphael Greenberg, ‘Extreme Exposure: Archaeology in Jerusalem 1967–2007’, Conservation and Management of Archaeological Sites 11(3–4), (2009), pp. 272–275; Eldad Brin, ‘Politically-oriented Tourism in Jerusalem’, Tourist Studies 6(3), (2006), pp. 123–131.

30 International Crisis Group, ‘The Status of the Status Quo at Jerusalem’s Holy Esplanade’, Middle East Report N°159, (30 June 2015), pp. 4–16.

31 Yitzhak Reiter, Jerusalem and Its Role in Islamic Solidarity (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), pp. 99–107.

32 Tilde Rosmer, The Islamic Movement in Israel (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2022), pp. 94–99.

33 Sammy Smooha, ‘Still Playing by the Rules: Index of Arab-Jewish Relations in Israel 2019’, University of Haifa (2020), pp. 226–227.

34 Muhammad Al-Atawneh and Nohad Ali, Islam in Israel: Muslim Communities in Non-Muslim States (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018), p. 103.

35 Tilde Rosmer, The Islamic Movement in Israel (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2022), pp. 75–78.

36 Eliyahu Freedman, ‘Not just Israel’s Ben-Gvir: A new Al-Aqsa provocation is rising’, Aljazeera (May 29, 2023).

37 Steve Hendrix and Shira Rubin, ‘In turnabout, Netanyahu courts Arab voters he once called a threat’, The Washington Post, (18 March 2021); Jack Mukand, ‘Campaigning among Arabs, Netanyahu may be trying to pare down votes, not win them’, The Times of Israel, (27 October 2022).

38 Elie Rekhess, ‘Netanyahu’s Policies toward the Arabs in Israel’, in Robert O. Freedman ed., Israel under Netanyahu: Domestic Politics and Foreign Policy (London: Routledge, 2020), pp. 97–100.