Jerusalem
FENCES LOCK OUT. In the process, they lock in. So it is perfectly foreseeable that Israel's decision to keep out terrorists by constructing a security fence separating itself from 3 million West Bank Palestinian Arabs will also work to keep in 1.2 million Arab citizens of Israel and tie their fate more closely to that of the Jewish state. Less foreseeable are the precise consequences for the Arab minority, now almost 20 percent of the population and growing, and for Israel's character as a state that is both Jewish and democratic.

A new report of the International Crisis Group--an influential NGO with headquarters in Brussels that conducts "field-based analysis and high-level advocacy to prevent and resolve deadly conflict"--argues that the real issue is Israel's lamentable history of discrimination against its Arab minority. Entitled "Identity Crisis: Israel and its Arab Citizens," the report calls for massive investment by the government in Arab communities. And it recommends an extensive array of programs to promote mutual understanding between Israeli Jews and Arabs, because "mutual perceptions typically have been characterized at best by indifference, at worst by total misunderstanding and mistrust."

On a mid-March trip to Israel, I had an opportunity to discuss the condition of Israel's Arab minority with Israeli Jews and Arabs. Contrary to the International Crisis Group report, the deeper problem seems to lie in the conflicting opinions Israeli Jews and Israeli Arabs have about Israel's guiding principles and core promise.

The collapse of Oslo at Camp David in the summer of 2000 and the violent demonstrations by Israeli Arabs in October 2000 in which Israeli police killed 13 marked a watershed in the two communities' relationship. Long pent-up grievances among Israeli Arabs were brought out into the open, and doubts among Israeli Jews about the loyalty to the state of their fellow citizens were crystallized. But if there was a single turning point in Jewish perceptions, it came long before--in 1947, when the Arabs in Palestine emphatically rejected the option of a Jewish state and indeed any option other than an Arab state in all of Mandatory Palestine. Israelis were compelled to conclude that the Arabs were not interested in coexistence. The conclusion was fortified by the war launched by five Arab states on the fledgling Jewish state--which spurred the exodus of hundred of thousands of Palestinian Arabs from their homes and resulted in an Israel more than 50 percent larger than contemplated by the U.N. partition plan.

Even after 1966, when Israel lifted the martial law it had imposed on Arab communities after the 1949 Armistice agreement, Israeli Jews and Israeli Arabs continued to live separate lives. While one could and still can find small towns where Israeli Jews and Israeli Arabs mingle in markets and cafés, the two peoples have mainly coexisted by attending different schools, shopping at different stores, and socializing in different circles. Most Israeli Jews have never really ceased to regard Israeli Arabs as a potential fifth column. And most Israeli Arabs are at best unmoved by and generally estranged from Israel's Jewish symbols and public culture.