To Be an Arab in Israel.

To Be an Arab in Israel.
Rhodes, Fred
210 words
1 July 2008
The Middle East
65
ISSN: 0305-0734; Issue 391
English


TO BE AN ARAB IN ISRAEL

by Laurence Louer

published by Hurst & Company

ISBN 9781850657989

price 29.50 [pounds sterling] hardback

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Laurence Louer begins her history in the 1980s when the Israeli political system began to take the Arab nationalist parties into account for the political negotiations over coalition building. Political parties--especially Labour--sought the votes of Arab citizens by making unusual promises on issues such as ownership and access to land.

To Be an Arab in Israel attempts to fill a gap in the study of Israel and the contempo rary Arab world insisting that Arabs have been a presence at all levels of the Israeli government since the foundation of the state.

The continuing rise of nationalist sentiments among Palestinians, however, threw the relationship between the Jewish state and the Arab minority into chaos, says the author, who attempts to demonstrate how "Palestinisation" did not prompt the Arab citizens of Israel to set aside their Israeli citizenship. Rather, Louer declares, Arabs have sought to insert themselves into Israeli society while simultaneously celebrating their difference. These efforts have led to a confrontation between two conceptions of society and two visions of Israel.