How to promote internet use in Arab sector?

Fact: Only half of the Arab population in Israel surfs the net, compared to 73% of the Jewish adult population. Moreover, a mere 37% of Arabs surf from home, while the others use the internet at their workplace or school.

What are the causes for this gap, and what can be done to bridge it and increase the exposure of the Arab sector to the internet? These questions will stand at the heart of a session titled "Internet in the Arab Community", which will be held during the annual conference of the Israeli Internet Association in March.

Intellectuals and academics will not only attempt to answer the questions, but also present a new program aimed at raising awareness to the World Wide Web among Arabs.

In a meeting of the session's participants with Ynet, Prof. Gustavo Mesch of the Haifa University said that the gap between the Jewish and Arab sectors could not be attributed to financial differences, because a breakup according to income levels revealed similar disparities between the populations.

Dr. Nimer Baya'a, a senior lecturer and computer consultant, said that the language barrier also failed to account for the gap, as most government and private websites had Arabic versions, and Israeli Arabs usually have no problem with reading Hebrew, while they found English more challenging.

Is religion the barrier? Many religious Arabs are indeed opposed to computers in general, mostly because they were believed to undermine culture and tradition and bring young men and women together, said Hussein Abu Rukein of the Druze Religious Council.

But the main factors for the relatively low number of internet users in the sector were apparently the lack of accessibility of older populations to the net and poor infrastructure: Of the 700 Arab schools in Israel, 600 have computer labs, but only 300 are connected to the internet. According to Baya'a, this was mostly due to the schools and authorities' inability to fund the connection.

Teaching moms how to use email

A new pilot program launched last June aims at tackling this problem and promoting internet use in the Arab sector through students at schools. As part of the project, students and their parents attend classes that provide them with information and tools for web surfing.

"Because the internet has become an inseparable part of the student's life, we realized that students might be at risk," said Rena Hana, a computers teacher from Sakhnin.

Hana said that the school held workshops for parents in which they learned about the hazards involved in surfing the web. As a result, many mothers decided they needed to learn more about the internet in general, including how to use the email in order to stay in touch with the school.

The program has so far been running in four schools as a pilot, but Baya'a said that the project's real objective was to introduce the technology to those who are still unfamiliar with its advantaged.

"At the moment it's a pilot. We'd like to prove that it works, with the hope that someone will decide to turn it into a nationwide project," he concluded.