The Israeli towns where Jews and Arabs live side by side 

First, a few facts.  

Israel is a small sovereign state in the center of the Midde East, with a westernized population of about 9.7 million citizens. About 21 percent of these citizens are Arab (2,048,000). Of these, 184,000 citizens are Christian Arabs (many Greek Orthodox), and 152,000 are the Druze (a distant form of Islam).  

The growth rate of the Arab population in Israel is 2.2 percent, while the growth rate of the Jewish population in Israel is 1.8 percent — hence, the fear of some Israelis of a long-term demographic change in the country.  

Many Americans who blame Iran for arming Hamas fail to recognize that Palestinians are mainly Sunni Muslims and Iranians are Shiite Muslims. Yes, their anti-Israel, anti-American sentiments have brought them together, but their relationship is complicated. At least 18 Arab/Israelis were killed by Hamas insurgents when they attacked Israel on Oct. 7.  

All citizens carry an Israeli ID card and go through the Israeli education system- although there are several streams of education schools. Hebrew, Arabic and English are all legal languages, and many Israeli Arabs are trilingual. I was struck by how many of the road signs in Jaffa are trilingual.  

In Jaffa, a beach suburb town north of Tel-Aviv, Jews and Arabs have been living together for centuries. Jaffa currently has 46,000 residents, of whom 30,000 are Jews and 16,000 are Arabs. Visits to the Jaffa Art Gallery and Ilana Goor Museum, which have many beautiful Israeli and Arab artifacts and art, are worthwhile. A lot of the street food is adapted from Palestinian Arab cuisine — hummus, falafel, shawarma and labneh — all delicious.  

However, there is an ongoing gentrification of the old town, and more Arbs residents are being pushed out to the poorer areas. Nevertheless, there is plenty of work in hospitality, tourism and construction. Many of the Arab residents in modern Jaffa are now refugees or workers from outside the area. Here, like many marginalized areas around the world, drug use and dealing are a way of life. Nevertheless, the Jaffa Islamic Council regularly fights in the Israeli law courts for a better deal for Arab locals. On the night of the Hamas attack, a Jaffa Arab-Jewish group formed on WhatsApp to notify and assist police to protect all citizens.  

Up in northern Israel, in the city of Haifa, many of the same problems exist. Of the total population of the city, 282.000 (2021) — about 11 percent — are Arab. The outlying area has an even larger Arab demographic, including Lebanese and Bedouin Muslims. Haifa is a home to the second-largest Arab Christian community in Israel. There is also the community of Ahmadi Muslims who live in the Haifa area and are very strong supporters of Israel because elsewhere in the Muslim world they are persecuted as heretics. 

The mayor, Einat Kalisch-Rotem, promotes Haifa as a young, trendy multicultural city, and for the most part, it is. The city is fast-growing, with strong oil, manufacturing and tech industries. It actively encourages tourism and has many good restaurants, theatres and museums.  

However, barriers for Israeli Arabs remain. In the much-vaunted high-tech industry, the fact that Arabs are exempt from military service works heavily against them. Unlike Jews (and the Druze, who are well-represented in the Israeli military), they are rarely accorded the security clearance needed to work on the many defense projects that are the bread and butter of the industry here.   

On the other hand, here and nationwide, many Arabs go into the medical and legal professions where there’s no need for security clearance; a huge number of Israeli Arabs are hospital doctors, nurses, pharmacists and lawyers. For a lawyer, the chance of an Arab getting to be a judge (who will be deciding the fate equally of Jews and Arabs) is the same as for a Jew. 

The towns of Acre, Ramla and Lod are also known for having mixed Arab/Jewish populations.  

So, what is day-to-day life like for Arabs in Israel? For many, it is not easy, especially with extremists on both sides. Yet Arabs and Israelis often compromise and make it work.  

In 2016, the ruling Jewish party introduced the Muzzen Bill that sought to restrict the loud and frequent Muslim call to prayers (adhan). I recall in Jaffa in 2017 that many Christians and Jews issued official noise complaints about the loudspeakers from the Mahmoudiya Mosque belting out the call to prayers at 5:20 in the morning. So, what was the response from the local Arabs? An armed uprising? No, they arranged a Muzzen is Born contest, a parody of American Idol. Humor instead of guns. As for the law itself, it stalled in the Israeli parliament because of the most unlikely of Arab allies — the ultra-Orthodox Jewish party, who feared that the proposed law could affect their Shabbat sirens.  

Like everything in the Middle East, it’s complicated. 

Patrick Drennan is a journalist based in New Zealand, with a degree in American history and economics.