When Aya Najame was a young girl in Haifa, Israel, she would visit Jewish schools to learn about Jewish culture. Jewish kids would also visit Najame’s school to learn about her life.
Around one-fifth of the people living in Israel are Arab citizens or permanent residents. The around 2 million individuals are different from Palestinians who live in the occupied areas of the West Bank and Gaza, but they are not all the same.
Most of the people living in this area follow the Muslim religion, but there is also a significant group of Christian Arabs. Around 15 million people hold Israeli citizenship, but many who live in Jerusalem only have permanent residency and are not full citizens. Some people say they are Arabs, some say they are Palestinians, and some say they are Druze, which is a religious group found in Israel, Lebanon, and Syria.
Some people can speak Hebrew well and live in communities where people from different backgrounds live together, like Haifa. But there are also people who live in towns where only certain types of people live and they feel like they are treated as less important than others because Israeli authorities discriminate against them. Every year, hundreds of people decide to join the Israeli military even though they don’t have to. A lot of people have relatives in the West Bank and Gaza.
According to Najame, Haifa is different from the rest of Israel.
We all live together here, Arabs and Jews. “We collaborate and visit the same locations,” she said to CNN.
“Najame said that Haifa is the most comfortable place. ” When you leave Haifa, you begin to feel uncomfortable. It’s difficult to explain, but it’s just a feeling of discomfort.
Ashraf Ashkar is a 35-year-old Arab Israeli. He has a job at a restaurant in the Arab Wadi Nisnas neighborhood in Haifa. He mentioned that he knows people who are part of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and people who were in the places in Israel that were violently attacked by the Palestinian militant group Hamas recently. “I talk to them a lot. I have a friend who is Arab and just joined the reserves last week,” said Ashkar. He also mentioned that Israel is where he lives.
However, he is also very conscious of his own family background. His family had to leave their village, called Iqrit, which is located north of Haifa. The Israeli army made them go away during the war in 1948. They were promised they could return in a few weeks, but in the end they weren’t allowed to, according to Ashkar. Israel’s highest court decided that the eviction of the families from Igrit was against the law and stated that they should be able to go back to their land. However, before they could go back, the Israeli Defense Forces destroyed the entire village in the 1950s.
“It’s confusing when you feel unsure about where you fit in. ” I try not to think about it too much, Ashkar said.
The Hamas attacks in Israel and the Israeli bombings in Gaza have made tensions worse between different groups. Israeli officials claim that over 1,400 people were killed in the attacks, while Palestinian officials say that more than 4,100 people have been killed in the bombings.
Israel has had a very conservative government since December, which is the most conservative government it has ever had. On Wednesday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and some opposition leaders formed an emergency war cabinet to handle the war. The person in charge of national security, Itamar Ben Gvir, is someone who supports terrorism and encourages racism against Arabs. The finance minister is Bezalel Smotrich. He wants to get rid of the Palestinian Authority and take over the West Bank, but he’s not part of the war cabinet. However, he is still performing his duties as a minister.
B’Tselem, an organization in Israel that advocates for human rights in the occupied territories, stated that the strong words used by Gvir and Smotrich have encouraged radical individuals and caused more violence towards Palestinians. This violence is mainly carried out by right-wing groups and Israeli settlers. In September, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said that Israeli settlers harmed Palestinians in the West Bank in 216 attacks, causing injuries. There were also 582 incidents where their belongings were damaged.
CNN has requested a response from the IDF about the increase in violence, but they have not been given a reply.
The people who came to live here are showing that they want to harm us. The overall setting is one where we always feel like we will be targeted next. Diane Buttu, a Palestinian-Canadian lawyer residing in Haifa, shared that she believes Palestinians are the next group that could be harmed. She has worked as a legal advisor for the Palestinian side in peace negotiations.
She said that after the Hamas attacks, people started talking very badly about Palestinians. She said that people say things like “people are like animals and they should be killed. ”
Buttu explained that as a Palestinian living in Israel, she often feels like people automatically think she is dangerous. The only way I’m not part of the group of human beings is if I first denounce terrorism. I need to show them that I am a human, but I never ask Jewish people to speak out against the settlers’ violence and those attacks, she said. I never tell them to show proof that they are not settlers.
Naim Khoury knows what it feels like to be constantly watched and not trusted by others. The lawyer, who is 39 years old and lives in Haifa, said that even in their city, which is usually seen as a good example of people living together well, they are feeling the negative effects of the violence that happened in October.
Some people are suspicious of us now because we are Arabs. He told CNN that being an Arab often gets associated with being a terrorist. “We strongly dislike terrorists, we strongly dislike all the things they have done, and we feel sad for every life that has been lost. ”
Khoury said he knows lots of people in the military and the police who are his friends. But, they also sometimes experience the same distrust.
“In Haifa, we make an effort to maintain positive relationships and live peacefully together. It’s unfortunate that whenever there’s a security issue, Jews assume that as an Arab, I must have a specific opinion about it. This makes me feel saddened. ”
Abu Nader has been running a small cafe in the ancient part of Jerusalem for almost 50 years. He was born and still lives in the same building where his cafe is located.
Like many Palestinians who live here, he has the right to stay in Israel permanently, but he is not considered a citizen. He said to CNN that he never wanted to become a citizen. “Why do we need rights. ” he said to CNN.
Nader has seven kids – five girls and two boys – and 24 grandkids. Some of the grandkids live in different areas of the city so they can’t always visit him. Sometimes, when there are a lot of problems and disagreements in Jerusalem, the Israeli police limit people from going to the Old City. They only let Palestinians in if they live there or are older than a certain age.
Buttu said that limiting the movements of people who live in a place permanently is one form of unfair treatment. She also mentioned that even individuals who have citizenship can be singled out and mistreated.
She said that there are laws that discriminate against Palestinians with Israeli citizenship. These laws include ones that prevent her and others from moving into certain towns. This is because of an Israeli law that allows admission committees in certain regions to decide who can move into the community. They can reject people if they are seen as not fitting in with the community.
This year, the law was changed to include more households. Now, it applies to settlements with 700 households, instead of the previous 400 households. Adalah, an organization that cares about the rights of the Arab minority in Israel, stated that the new version of the law applies to 41% of all areas and 80% of the state’s land.
If you are a Palestinian living in this country, you have two options: either find a safe place to live and work where you feel protected, can speak Arabic, express your political views freely, and don’t have to be careful with what you say, or completely blend in with the other side. “Buttu said that the space where there is complete discomfort can be found anywhere. ” “But even if you fully blend in, there is still uncertainty. ”
In Nader’s cafe, the coffee he serves is really strong and has a lot of sugar. He makes it in special copper pots that have a long neck, called cezve.
He said that some people call it Turkish coffee, Jerusalem coffee, Palestinian coffee, or Israeli coffee. He personally likes to call it Palestinian coffee when he feels like it. He watched a spoonful of sugar go up from the bottom of the pot. “When I don’t feel like talking about politics, I jokingly refer to it as Jerusalem coffee. ”