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Illustration

Photo by Yotam Ronen, Activestills

Arab Minority Rights

Important terms

  • Arab citizens of Israel – The roughly 21% of citizens who are Arab, most of them descendants of those who remained after 1948. They held Israeli citizenship under military government until 1966. Many identify as Palestinian citizens of Israel; usage varies, including within the community itself.

  • Government Resolution 550 – The five-year plan adopted in 2021 to narrow economic and social gaps between Arab society and the rest of the population across health, transport, personal security and other fields, covering 2022 to 2026. Substantial portions of its budget have since been frozen or redirected.

Arab citizens make up about a fifth of Israel’s population. They face entrenched inequality in land, planning, housing, infrastructure, education and employment. The poverty rate among Arab families is much higher rate compared to non-Haredi Jewish families, and Arab local authorities are the poorest in the country. These are not incidental gaps, but rather the cumulative result of decades of decisions about where land is allocated and where public money is spent.

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Two developments have sharpened the picture. Violent crime in Arab communities has reached record levels while the great majority of killings go unsolved, leaving citizens without basic personal security; at the same time, funds committed under the government’s five-year plan for Arab society have been diverted elsewhere. Legislation has compounded this, including tax benefits designed to shift the demographic composition of communities, a bar on employing teachers who hold degrees from Palestinian Authority institutions, and expanded grounds for revoking legal status.

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ACRI litigates and advocates across these areas: challenging discriminatory laws and budget decisions, opposing home demolitions and discrimination in planning, demanding the removal of roadblocks that seal off Arab towns, defending freedom of expression against selective enforcement, and working to protect the political representation of Arab citizens.

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