This is Haifa University in Israel, where Arab students are commemorating the Nakba or ‘Catastrophe’ which, for them, defined the founding of the state of Israel sixty years ago. The other group, larger in number, is made up of Jewish students staging a counter-demonstration. These young people study alongside each other every day, but, with each group’s political and racial sensitivities to the fore, the prevailing mood is one of tense confrontation.

‘It’s always like this,’ Jana, a twenty-one-year-old student from East Jerusalem, tells me afterwards. ‘Whenever we meet to remember the Nakba, we’re shouted down. When the Holocaust is remembered, we respect it and we take part. Where is the room for our pain?’

Jana is bright, confident, and articulate in English, her third language after Arabic and Hebrew. As an Arab citizen of Israel she is also, according to the historian Benny Morris, part of a demographic ‘time bomb’ threatening the country (http://www.counterpunch.org/shavit01162004.html). Morris’s words reflect the fears of many Israelis that a fast-growing Arab population could one day undermine the Jewish nature of the state. Time bomb or no, what is clear is that Israel will come to be defined as much by its relationship with the Arabs within its borders as with those in the West Bank and Gaza.

It is often overlooked that a fifth of Israelis – some 1.3 million people – are not Jewish. In the period leading up to Israel’s Declaration of Independence in 1948, some 750,000 Arabs fled Israel or were deported; the 150,000 who stayed found themselves citizens of a newly created country. The Declaration promised equal rights to all citizens, ‘irrespective of religion, race or sex’. But today’s young Arabs – the grandchildren of those who remained in 1948 – say they are still waiting for that promise to be fulfilled.

‘Are we equal in Israel? Of course not,’ says Jana. ‘We face discrimination every day – from the police, from the army, when we go to school or look for work. It’s always made clear to us that we’re not welcome here. I want to feel like I belong in Israel, but how can I when my rights aren’t respected? Being an Arab Israeli is like being a stranger in your own home.’

Speaking to young Arabs in Israel you encounter the same grievances everywhere. The irony is that, increasingly for the younger generation, they are framed in the language of democracy and civil rights – a language they have learned through growing up in Israel. Rather than dreaming of the reestablishment of an Arab homeland in Palestine, these young people want to claim full partnership and prosperity here, the only home they have ever known.  

The reality, however, is that Israel remains a deeply unequal and segregated society. A 2006 report published by Israel’s National Insurance Institute found that, despite making up only 20% of the population, Arabs comprised 53% of Israel’s poor. In 2004, Adva, a research centre monitoring inequality in Israel, found that the 36 towns with the worst unemployment figures were all Arab (http://www.dayan.org/kapjac/files/shamirEng.pdf). Arabs earn less, have lower life expectancies, and suffer higher infant mortality rates than their Jewish counterparts (http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=895321).

  Catching a bus from a Jewish town in northern Israel to a neighbouring Arab community feels like a journey from the first world to the third. Nazareth, Israel’s largest Arab town, with some 65,000 residents, is a case in point. The shops selling shawarma and trinkets to Christian tourists near the Church of the Annunciation are surrounded by chaotic, crowded, and dirty streets, many leading up to dilapidated Arab slums. Next door lies the Jewish town of Upper Nazareth, a 1950s development of palm-lined avenues fronted by modern homes with manicured lawns. Built on land seized from the older Nazareth, it occupies three times as much space despite having only two thirds the population.

‘Everything is harder for us than for the Jews,’ says Ali, 20, who works at a falafel counter in Nazareth. ‘When I finished school I wanted to go to university to study engineering, but my family couldn’t afford to send me.’ But he considers himself lucky: none of his four brothers can find work in the town. ‘One day I would like to save enough money to open my own falafel restaurant,’ he says. ‘But at the end of the week, when I share my wages to help my parents and brothers, there’s nothing left.’

  ‘If I go to Upper Nazareth to find work in one of the new department stores, they say, “Sorry, we only want people who have done military service.” What they mean is they only want Jews. They see me, an Arab, walk in through the door and immediately they don’t trust me, they want me out of there. It’s heartbreaking – I can’t describe it any other way – when you realise these people hate you or are afraid of you.’

  I ask him what he thinks could be the solution to the problem. ‘They should mix up the elementary schools,’ he tells me. ‘If Jewish and Arab kids grew up learning together at school, they’d learn to trust each other.’ Currently, the segregation of Israeli society is reinforced by its school system. There are separate schools for Jewish and Arab students, and the latter are routinely underfunded and neglected, with larger classes and lower levels of achievement as a result. In 2004 the Israeli government’s own Central Bureau of Statistics published a report showing that each Arab student in Israel received resources of £105 per year, compared with £485 per Jewish student (Nathan, The Other Side of Israel, 94).

Faced with such discrimination, it’s no wonder that even those young Arabs who succeed in gaining a higher education complain of being unable to identify with Israel. I ask Mona, a twenty-one-year-old student at Haifa University, how she feels about an Israeli flag, with its blue Star of David, mounted nearby. ‘I don’t feel anything towards it. I wish I could. But how can I care about my country when my country doesn’t care about me?’ Jana articulates the identity crisis afflicting Arab Israelis en masse: ‘Maybe my parents’ generation saw itself as Palestinian. Some of them have brothers or sisters living in the West Bank. But what am I? I’m not Palestinian, I’m not Israeli. Sometimes I feel like I don’t have an identity at all.’

 Arabs like Mona are taught in Citizenship classes at school that Israel is a ‘Jewish democratic state’. For its critics there is no doubt what this means: a country run for the benefit of its Jewish citizens, from education policy to the distribution of state benefits and municipal funding. Some have characterised Israel as an ‘ethnocracy’, the fundamental contradiction of a democracy run largely for the benefit of one ethnic group. It is this incongruity that belies Israel’s self-image.

 One of the main reasons discrimination against Arab Israelis is allowed to go unchecked is that Israel lacks a constitution codifying basic human rights, such as equality, freedom of speech and freedom of religion. Faced with abuses, the only recourse ordinary Arabs have is to pursue their grievances through the courts – which are themselves stacked with Jewish judges. As for the legislature, there are currently 12 Arab members of the 120-seat Knesset, but no Arab party has ever formed part of a ruling coalition. When Arab politicians demand Israel becomes a ‘state for all its citizens’ they are sometimes threatened with expulsion under a law which bans parties that ‘negate the existence of the state of Israel as the state of the Jewish people’.  

Arabs who hope to claim a more meaningful stake in Israeli society are constantly reminded that they are regarded with suspicion or outright hostility by their Jewish neighbours. Again and again young Arabs tell of the social barriers they encounter in everyday life when people realise they are not Jewish. This widespread impression is confirmed by a survey conducted recently by the Center Against Racism in Israel. Among 500 Jewish Israelis representing all levels of society, 75% said they would not agree to live in a building with Arab residents, over 50% agreed that the government should encourage Arab immigration to other states, and 40% advocated removing Arabs’ right to vote in elections (http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/1,7340,L-3381978,00.html). With Jewish politicians already debating how to counter the ‘demographic threat’ of a growing Arab population – some advocate transferring Arab towns to a future Palestinian state, in exchange for sovereignty over Jewish settlement blocs inside the West Bank – many Arabs fear that their status as Israeli citizens could become precarious.

Go to Ben Gurion Street, a long strip of chic restaurants and cafes in Haifa’s middle-class Arab district, and you are presented with a less menacing vision of Israel’s future. In the shade of the magnificent Baha’i temple cresting a nearby hill, Arab and Jewish families mingle into the late evening in Israel’s only truly integrated city. Despite being bombed by Hezbollah rockets in 2006, community relations in Haifa are buoyed by the relative prosperity Arabs enjoy. Speaking to young Arabs here, you have the impression of a work ethic sometimes associated with immigrant groups in the UK: a determination to succeed in spite of social and economic obstacles. Narjess, a trainee doctor at the city’s Technion college, works up to 30 hours a week as a café waitress to pay for her studies. ‘We know a lot of Jews would prefer us to leave Israel, and a lot of my friends plan to leave once they’ve finished their studies,’ she said. ‘One day soon Israel will discover that all the educated, professional Arabs have left. Those who stay behind will be the ones who can’t afford to leave.’

Would she leave? Her eyes take on the tired, faraway look you often see when asking young Arab Israelis about their hopes for the future. I reflect how gladly a society like the UK’s would welcome a trilingual young doctor like her – and how much Israel would lose if she left. ‘I’d love to leave, to live in a country where I’m free to be myself and where being an Arab doesn’t count against me. But another part of me wants to stay, to raise a family and prove that Arabs can be successful here.’

‘Besides, it’s hard to leave,’ she sighs. ‘After all, Israel is my home.’ 

El Alma del Mundo est Sangrando

No es esencia de flores
El olor de los explosivos
No es de colores Holi
Sólo sangre, olas de sangre
De los que están matando
Inocentes, la mayoría pobres
Y hermanos.
Las luces de Buda, Chaitanya
Kabir, Nanak, Gandhi se desangran en la oscuridad
El alma de la paz es la hemorragia
Tienes mil formas de protestar para detener la sed del terror
No puedes ganar o acordar
Sin cambiar la ruta de acceso
Pues en la sangre, no florecen rosas.

The Michaelmas term of 2008 ushered in what could be deemed a new age of activism. A number of noteworthy campaigns took place in quick succession: Feminists brandished a banner that proudly proclaimed, ‘Miss LSE = Misogyny’ denouncing the school’s beauty pageant and initiating a University of London-wide campaign against the inappropriate placement of appearance-based competitions within academic institutions. ‘LSE not £$€’ was to be the slogan of the next banner unfurled by activists on campus; a protest against unethical funding for the New Academic Building provided by the late Sheikh Zayed, who controversially violated human rights causes and turned a blind eye to child slavery and anti-Semitism. The LSE Palestine Society has been one of the most visible pressure groups on Houghton Street, consistently raising awareness of the Israeli occupation and its threat to Palestinian civilian life. Lastly, the Student Union launched a campaign that successfully saved the LSE Nursery, and raised questions as to whether the LSE is still committed to providing acceptable welfare services for student families.

For a university with the political focus of LSE, this burst of student activism is a positive development. The idea that any university should be politically neutral is ludicrous, and moreover, detrimental to the development of young minds. Campus is supposed to serve as a focal point for open debate and discussion, with the liberal right to freedom of speech applying here as much as it does more broadly. Philosopher John Stuart Mill prized a ‘free market’ of ideas as instrumental to human growth. Debate is both personally informative and a means by which society as a whole becomes more knowledgeable. Even when one takes offense at another’s opinion, it can be a valuable experience in that one’s own convictions are often strengthened by conflicting viewpoints.

The merits of student demonstration in terms of formulating the opinions of young people are undeniable. Yet protests are also supposed to evoke change; they are not merely worthwhile in themselves, but also serve to fulfill certain aims. While we may hope that the LSE nursery remains open for the foreseeable future, it is doubtful that the Sheikh money will be returned. Even the Palestine Society’s greatest efforts are unlikely to create the slightest ripple of change in the turbulent pool of Middle Eastern conflict.

Presumably, students today are not less inclined to protest because of apathy but rather because they have become hardened realists. Hypothetically speaking, I want to improve human rights violations in less developed regions, so perhaps I will focus my attention on my law degree and become a human rights lawyer instead of handing out innumerable flyers that are fated to lie in a bin, on the floor, or in the darkest corner of some soul’s book bag. Similarly, pursuing a political career path will prove more fruitful in ‘making a difference’ than producing T-shirts and banners, regardless of how aesthetically appealing they turn out to be.

Being a cynic is by no means synonymous with being indifferent. There will always be issues that invoke compassion and thus student protest; after all, world peace and perfect government are utopian ideals. Furthermore, the art of political demonstration will never die, because concern for local or global injustice is not the only incentive for activists. Most regulars on the student protest scene greatly enjoy their efforts. Dressed up provocatively for a silent protest can win you near-celebrity status for the day, or longer if your photo is taken for the Beaver. Moreover, if I am honest, the anti-war march I took part in a few years ago resembled more of a social event than an embodiment of peace sentiments.

The ultimate reason for fewer student demonstrations could be that we have too much to lose compared with what we what our protests can gain. Relatively small problems and perceived injustices do not warrant being suspended from higher education or facing a criminal record that would jeopardize one’s future professional life. For civil rights protesters half a century ago, the consequences of not acting were grave enough to warrant the greatest sacrifices. Yet at this juncture in British history, students have less to shout about. Is there now simply less to fight for, now that we have transformed public life for women and ethnic minorities in this country?

Given the events of recent months, it is perhaps more realistic to speak of a changing face of student activism than of its death. Protesters may not longer be the radically idealistic students of earlier generations, but a sympathetic observer can still spot many signs of life in LSE’s campus activists. Even if occupying the Old theatre is never going to bring peace to the Middle East.