The Arab minority in Israel and its relations with the Jewish majority: A review essay

This article reviews and analyzes recent developments in research on the Arab/Palestinian minority in Israel. It focuses on the distribution of societal resources between Arabs and Jews and on the role of the state in determining that distribution. Accordingly, literature on three key areas of Arab-Jewish relations is reviewed: territorial, socieconomic, and power relations. Particular attention is given to the influence of Israel√ss policies on changes over time in these three areas. Studies on Arab political reactions to interethnic disparities are also reviewed, and an agenda for future research is sketched. The analysis of literature on the Arabs in Israel published during the last decade highlights six major phenomena: (a) the volume of research on the subject has increased markedly, transforming it into one of the central topics of social science research in Israel; (b) many studies have been innovative, opening up new areas of research and instigating active scholarly debates; (c) the findings of most studies reveal persisting disparities between Arabs and Jews in Israel, which are influenced by Israeli public policy; these disparities have been translated into growing Arab political militancy; (d) most studies use a descriptive approach, although the number of theoretically based studies has increased recently; (e) there exists a lack of cross-national comparative analyses; and (f) interpretations and explanations of similar data vary on occasion according to the national (Israeli-Palestinian) affiliation of scholars.