Galilee community
Photo: Galit Kosovsky
Communities reject minority groups
Arab, gay, disabled applicants denied residence in communities built on State appropriated land
Arabs, homosexuals, and disabled individuals are denied residence in communal villages due to “social incompatibility”.
In order to join one of these 800 communal villages, which are famed for their good infrastructure and educational systems, applicants are required to undergo a series of interviews and tests, after which they are either accepted or rejected by the communal village’s member committee.
Arabs, gays, and single parents are all systematically denied residence in these communal villages, even after successfully completing the numerous tests given by the member committees.
Applicants with physical or mental disabilities and citizens with a criminal record are also likely to be turned away.
“We arrived at the member committee, and were prepared for an interview that would last half an hour tops. We left with gloomy faces two hours later,” said F., a 30-year-old Arab woman who, along with her husband, was rejected by a communal village in northern Israel.
“They asked us if we even acknowledge the independence of the State, what we do for Israel’s holidays, and what would happen if my Arab son falls in love with the neighbor’s Jewish daughter.
“We said that we were used to living together and that we wanted to. We even offered to visit friends on Independence Day and stay indoors on Yom Kippur.
“One of the interviewers said that we had big fantasies and that we were living in utopia, and another said ‘I don’t want your Arab son looking at my daughter in the pool’,” F. said.
'If we accept you, other Jews won't come'
F. also said committee members made racist comments like "you have a veil in front of your eyes and you are refusing to see the reality," and "you seem very nice and talented, but if we accept you other Jews won't come."After participating in community-life simulations where they received positive feedback, and a successful meeting with a psychologist who asked about their relationship and Arab identity, the couple was hopeful.
However, eight hours of tests and NIS 560 later, F. and her husband received a rejection letter which claimed “social incompatibility”.
'Only burgeouis welcome'
F. and her husband are not the only ones. The most famous incident is the story of the Qadaan family, who in 1995 tried to purchase land in the northern communal village of Katzir, located above Wadi Ara.Five years later the High Court of Justice ruled that it was illegal for the country to choose to appropriate land to the Jewish Agency on a discriminatory basis.
However the verdict failed to aid the family directly, who had pursued the matter for five more years until finally, a decade after their struggle began, the couple received their plot of land in the communal village last year.
“Today, they don’t tell you they won’t accept you because you are Arab. They send you to a psychological examination and talk about social incompatibility,” Dr. Alexandre Kedar of Haifa University said.
“What’s hiding behind this is a significant filtering process, not only of Arabs, but of single-parent families, homosexuals, people with a criminal record, and actually, anyone who isn’t bourgeois,” Kedar said.
