Geographical aspects of changes within the Arab communities of Northern Israel

Abstract

The Arabs of Northern Israel (the Galilee) constitute an unusual population group among the minority populations of Israel. They form the largest concentration of Arabs in the state: over half the minority population. In the central Galilee the Arabs are an absolute majority of the population, and thereby differ from the Arabs of Haifa, Jerusalem, the 'little triangle', and the bedouin scattered over the Beersheba valley. In these areas the Arabs do not form the majority. In contrast to the relatively homogeneous Arab population exclusively bedouin in the south of the country, and the Muslim majority in the little triangle the north is characterized by a unique ethnic, religious, and social mosaic with Muslims, Christians, Druze and Circassians, as well as villagers, city-dwellers and bedouin. The Arabs of the north of Israel, like the other Arabs of the country, underwent major changes between 1948 and 1980; these radically changed their social, economic, political and geographical nature. The aim of this paper is to examine the geographical aspects of these changes, and also to describe and elucidate them. The discussion begins in the last years of the British Mandate and continues through the great crisis that this group underwent in the Israeli War of Independence. Subsequently it deals with the changes that this group underwent from the early years of the state until 1967; it then reviews the dramatic turning point of 1967 and its effects that have continued up into the eighties.