Similar to the rest of Israeli citizens, life for the country's Arab citizens is slowly returning to normal. For many of them, however, what this means is returning to a reality of rampant crime in the streets, criminal vendettas that often involve the harm of innocent bystanders, and a culture of so-called "honor killings."
Routine life in Arab towns and villages also involves crumbling infrastructure and a failing educational system, as was evidenced throughout the coronavirus crisis, when the term "distance learning" was rendered virtually meaningless for Arab students. Arab online commenters, by and large, correctly identified the prime culprit – the culture of clan and family-based politics within Arab municipalities – whereby personal and family interests are prioritized over the interests of the public and are largely responsible for the ineffectual schooling.
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The Arab public's leaders are also returning to business as usual; or in other words, devoting most of their attention to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Joint Arab List Chairman MK Ayman Odeh has already asserted that another intifada is inevitable as the only form of struggle against the Israeli presence in Judea and Samaria. But Arab citizens don't want another intifada, and also don't want to denounce the state. Instead, they want the state to enlist its resources to help them – just as the Arab public, spearheaded by its health professionals, enlisted on behalf of the country to fight the coronavirus.
In Jalal Bana's harrowing description of the distress (Let the Shin Bet defeat crime), he called on the Shin Bet security agency to tackle the crime and illegal weapons in the Arab sector. The Shin Bet, Bana explained, has capabilities the police does not, and despite the Arab public's inherent apprehension and mistrust toward the shadowy agency, it is imperative that it now begin operating in Arab towns and villages – where it is probably working anyway.
Bana's diagnosis is right, of course, but the prognosis he suggests is, in my opinion, doubtful to materialize. The problem of illegal firearms is indeed acute, but using the Shin Bet, in and of itself, is enough to mark the Arab public as a group against which it is permissible to apply "extraordinary" tools, the likes of which the State of Israel only uses against defined enemies and enemy collaborators. The only deep-rooted, fundamental solution to these painful problems is to approach them from a different angle.
Anyone who has studied Arab society in Israel is familiar with the phrase "the upright generation," in reference to the younger generation that sought to shed the pathos of submissiveness and idleness of the older generation that led Arab Israeli society in the 1950s and 60s after the War of Independence in 1948, during which a military administration still governed the Arab communities.
The upright generation sought to challenge the previous generations but also the state, which it blamed at the time for the situation in Arab society. It chose the wrong target for its contempt, and its path ultimately proved a dead end. Today, however, five decades later, the Arabs in Israel need a new upright generation, one that will rally to fix matters at home. One needn't look hard to see them. Just look around any hospital, any university, and today many other fields, and see the restless Arab youth striving to advance and be part of society and the state.
A revolution at home is what the Arab Israelis need, a revolution spearheaded by the youngsters who are presently daring, in growing numbers, to volunteer for national service and even, believe it or not, military service. The key to change is in their hands.
