Mideast: Where Israel’s Ethnic Minorities Stand Amid Tensions With Their Government

Richard Blanshard/Hulton Archive

Israel is currently waging a multi-front war against Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon. This should not come as news. The current iteration of the conflict began when Hamas militants, whom the US considers terrorists, broke down border barriers between Israel and Gaza and murdered, raped, and kidnapped over 1200 Israeli people. Hezbollah supported Hamas’ attack with rocket fire in the north. Israel’s subsequent retaliatory campaign has murdered over 40,000 Palestinians in Gaza, the majority of whom are women and children. This should not come as news either. The heartbreaking and bone-chilling photos from the war have been shared across the world as humanity pleads for peace from militant groups and governments, all of whom have remained willfully oblivious.

Israel is the only Jewish state, and it is located on the Eastern Mediterranean; it borders Palestine, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon. These other five states are Arab. Commonly referred to as the Arab-Israeli conflict, violence, war, hate, and terror swirl in this land between its peoples and have for decades.

The Arab-Israeli conflict is one of the most picked apart, analyzed, and obsessed over Middle Eastern phenomena by non-Middle Easterners. Whether or not that leads to knowledgeable understanding on the part of these interested outsiders is a matter of opinion.

Israel’s population is almost 75 percent Jewish, with the remaining minority predominantly Palestinian Muslims and Christians. Ethno-religious minorities, such as the Druze people, Bedouins, and Circassians, make up the final few percentage points.

The Druze

Israel has a large Druze community. The Druze are an Arabic-speaking, Arab-identifying people from the Levant who follow a small, non-proselytizing, monotheistic, prophetic, and Abrahamic religion. Over 100,000 Druze-Israeli citizens live in Israel, while the many thousands who reside in the Golan Heights choose not to obtain Israeli citizenship.

Druze men and women who reside as citizens in Israel are subject to mandatory military service, unlike Palestinian Arabs in Israel. A significant majority of Druze adults serve and identify with Israelis. In 2018, the Knesset passed a controversial law that called “national self-determination” in Israel the exclusive right of the Jewish people. Many Druze spokespeople lamented a feeling of second-class status in Israel, pointing to such laws as evidence. However, the Druze, by and large, support and stand by Israel as their home country.

A poll taken by the Israel Democracy Insitute (IDI) reveals a significant rise in solidarity with Israel among Arab-Israelis after the October 7th attack. Druze surveyed felt “part of Israel and its problems” the most, with 80 percent agreeing.

In the occupied Golan Heights, the situation is even more nuanced. The Golan Heights sits on the Sea of Galilee on the Israel-Syria border. In the 1967 war, Israel occupied the Golan Heights across the border in southwestern Syria and has occupied it since. The Druze live in large populations in Syria, and there are tens of thousands in the Golan Heights, some of whom have become Israeli citizens, some of whom maintain a nationalistic pride for Syria.

In July, during a Hezbollah rocket barrage against Northern Israel and the Golan Heights, a missile struck a soccer field, killing twelve Druze children. Hezbollah denies fault, and Israel holds them responsible. None of these children appear to have held Israeli citizenship, and the community begged political and government leaders to stay away from the funerals and mourning ceremonies. The overwhelming plea was not to politicize the deaths of their children in a conflict in which they had no stake. Despite this, Israeli leaders such as former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant referred to them as “our children.”

The non-citizen Druze of the Golan Heights are in a unique position where, unlike the Palestinians, they may travel freely through Israel, claim the rights of citizens, and serve in the military; on the other hand, their ancestral government is technically Syria, and they are currently living in captured land and reliant on their occupying government for protection from belligerents in the region.

The Bedouins

The Bedouin Israelis make up a significant portion of Israel’s Arab community. Some have ancestral roots in Gaza, some in Egypt, and some in Israel. Over 300,000 Bedouin Arabs are living in Israel as Israeli citizens. Most of these Bedouin Arabs live in Israeli cities across the country, but some remain in unrecognized villages in the Negev desert. Their lives are difficult without access to Israel’s infrastructural grid.

Negev Bedouins usually live in temporary or roughly constructed homes without steady access to water, electricity, or gas. The unrecognized villages often do not have schools or gainful employment opportunities. Many Bedouins choose to live in the Negev because of ancestral ties to the desert and to honor their people’s tradition of living nomadically in the desert.

Bedouin Israelis are largely exempt from mandatory service, unlike most Jewish Israelis. Despite this, there are several thousand Bedouin troops in the Israeli Defence Forces. Desert units who train in the Negev and patrol the southern border of Israel are largely Bedouin and rely on Bedouin knowledge of the land. Additionally, the military provides access to education and opportunity which the unrecognized Bedouin villages often lack.

The IDI poll found nearly three-quarters of Arabs in the Negev region identify with the state of Israel, comparatively higher than non-Druze Arabs in other regions of Israel. One reason could be because of the Negev Bedouins’ proximity to Gaza and vulnerability to Hamas. Hamas militants and rocket fire killed twenty-two Bedouins on October 7th, and they took several hostages back to Gaza. Bedouin villages lack air-raid sirens and bomb shelters which mainstream Israeli society is accustomed to. They are significantly more vulnerable to missile attacks.

Under the current far-right administration led by President Netanyahu and his coalition, Negev Bedouins have struggled. 80 percent of their children live in poverty. National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir supports the demolition of homes in unrecognized villages and has threatened the Bedouins saying it is not an acceptable way to live in Israel.

The Circassians

The Circassians are a Caucasian (meaning of the Caucuses, not a euphemism for white) ethnicity from the Black Sea region. A small community of Circassians lives in the Levant region. They were neutral in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war and have mandatorily served in the IDF since 1958. The Circassians are non-Arab Muslims and number just over 5,000, primarily in Northern Israel.

Similarly to the Druze and Bedouin populations, they are patriotic Israelis who serve in the military and risk their own lives to defend it. However, they feel left behind and second-class.

The Israel-Gaza war has made Israel’s ethnic minorities largely feel more connected to Israel. On the other hand, it has also revealed how non-Jewish Israelis are less supported by the current government. Their communities are underfunded and under-protected. In protests this summer, Circassian, Druze, and Arab Israelis took to the streets, waving their flags as well as Israeli flags, demanding more support from the government. Their primary demands were increased community funding for healthcare, education, infrastructure, protection from foreign belligerents, and equal status under law for individual and communal rights.