Israel’s Domestic Policy on Islam-Related Issues: A Preliminary Appraisal

AbstractSince its independence in 1948, Israel’s policy on Islam-related issues has long been subordinated to its Arab minority policy. Policy priorities that focused on land resource deprivation and security risk avoidance and its multiple mechanisms for policy implementation highlighted a strategy of securitisation and pragmatism. Since the 1990s, the ascendance of right-wing forces drove Israel’s Islam-related policy towards a tougher line, with its concerns shifting from material and security to cultural and ideological ones and resorting more frequently to coercive measures. In this process, the Islamic Movement in Israel became the main opposition force among the Arab community to respond to and challenge the government’s policy changes. The bilateral mobilisation of Jewish right-wing and hardline Islamist forces amplified the impact of religious issues on the interethnic relations in Israel, which further accelerated the trend of radicalisation, Palestinization, and Islamization among the Israeli Arab community.Keywords: IsraelIslam-related policyIslamArabsIsraeli-Palestinian conflict Disclosure StatementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.Notes1 At the end of 2020, the population of Israel stood at 9,289,760, including 1,957,270 Arabs, representing 21.1% of the total. This figure includes almost 362,000 Arab residents of East Jerusalem who hold ‘permanent resident’ status, but not full citizenship. Thus, the number of Arab citizens of Israel was 1,595,300 at the end of 2020, constituting some 17.2% of the total population. The large majority of Arab citizens of Israel are Muslim (82.9%), and the remainder are either Druze (9.2%) or Christian (7.9%). See Nasreen Haddad Haj-Yahya, Muhammad Khalaily, Arik Rudnitzky, Ben Fargeon, ‘Statistical Report on Arab Society in Israel: Executive Summary 2021’, Ministry for Social Equality & The Israel Democracy Institute (2021), pp. 6–9.2 Sammy Smooha, Israel, Pluralism and Conflict (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978), pp. 13–15.3 Ian Lustick, Arabs in a Jewish State: Israel’s Control of a National Minority, Austin (London: University of Texas Press, 1980), pp. 24–27.4 Elia Zureik, The Palestinian in Israel: A Study in Internal Colonialism (London: Routledge & K.Paul, 1979), pp. 10–20, 26–28.5 Nadim N. Rouhana, Palestinian Citizens in an Ethnic Jewish State: Identities in Conflict (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997), pp. 14–23; As‘ad Ghanem, The Palestinian-Arab Minority in Israel, 1948–2000: A Political Study (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001), pp. 7–9; Oren Yiftachel, Ethnocracy: Land and Identity Politics in Israel/Palestine (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006), pp. 11–20.6 Alisa Rubin Peled, Debating Islam in the Jewish State: The Development of Policy toward Islamic Institutions in Israel (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001), pp. 10–14.7 Ahmad Natour, ‘Israel’s Seizure of Islamic Endowments (Awqaf)’, in Nadim N. Rouhana and Areej Sabbagh-Khoury eds., ‘The Palestinians in Israel: Readings in History’, Politics and Society (Mada al-Carmel: Arab Center for Applied Social Research, 2018), p. 86.8 Michael R.T. Dumper, ‘Muslim Institutions and the Israeli State: Muslim Religious Endowments (Waqfs) in Israel and the Occupied Territories, 1948–1987’, PhD dissertation, University of Exeter, 1991, pp. 152–153.9 Moussa Abou Ramadan, ‘Notes on the Anomaly of the Shari’a Field in Israel’, Islamic Law and Society 15(1), (2008), pp. 102–104; Alisa Rubin Peled, Debating Islam in the Jewish State: The Development of Policy toward Islamic Institutions in Israel (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001), p. 136.10 Michael R.T. Dumper, ‘Muslim Institutions and the Israeli State: Muslim Religious Endowments (Waqfs) in Israel and the Occupied Territories, 1948–1987’, PhD dissertation, University of Exeter, 1991, p. 149.11 Alisa Rubin Peled, Debating Islam in the Jewish State: The Development of Policy toward Islamic Institutions in Israel (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001), p. 107.12 Wang Yu, Arab Citizens of Israel: Legal Status, Identity and Their Relations with the State, 1948–2018 (Beijing: Social Sciences Academic Press, 2018), pp. 99–102.13 Wang Yu, Arab Citizens of Israel: Legal Status, Identity and Their Relations with the State, 1948–2018 (Beijing: Social Sciences Academic Press, 2018), p. 75.14 Michael Karayanni, ‘Control by Accommodation: Religious Jurisdiction among the Palestinian-Arab Minority in Israel’, in Leora Batnitzky and Hanoch Dagan, eds., Institutionalizing Rights and Religion: Competing Supremacies (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017), p. 101.15 Michael R.T. 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Freedman ed., Israel under Netanyahu: Domestic Politics and Foreign Policy (London: Routledge, 2020), pp. 97–100.