Yahoo – AFP,
Joe Dyke, 29 Oct 2015
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Students
listen during class in the Israeli Arab village of Jish on May 1, 2009
(AFP
Photo/Ahmad Gharabli)
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Jerusalem
(AFP) - Israeli lawmakers voted Wednesday to make Arabic classes compulsory for
students from the age of six, in a move backers hoped would help improve ties
between Israeli Jews and Arabs.
The vote
came amid increasing tensions between Israel and the Palestinians, with a wave
of deadly attacks on Israelis and clashes at protests in the occupied
territories.
Israel's
parliament, the Knesset, voted unanimously in favour of the bill in first
reading on Wednesday, with about half of all deputies in attendance.
It will now
be studied in committee before returning to parliament for a second vote.
Both Arabic
and Hebrew are official languages of Israel, but while the vast majority of
Israeli Arabs speak Hebrew, Arabic is not widely spoken among the Jewish
population.
The bill
was introduced by lawmaker Oren Hazan, of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's
rightwing Likud Party, who said it was meant to reach out to Arab Israelis.
"Language
is a door to culture," he told AFP. "I am looking reality in the eyes
and I understand there is no possibility to walk to peace without understanding
each other."
Arab
Israelis, the descendants of Palestinians who remained on their land after the
creation of Israel in 1948 and who are citizens of the Jewish state, make up
about 18 percent of its population.
However
they often complain of discrimination.
Hand in
Hand, a centre for Jewish-Arab Education in Israel, welcomed the vote, with its
chief executive Shuli Dichter calling it "a good and important
decision".
'Basis
for living together'
"Daily
communication is the basis for living together in a shared society. However, it
is only the first step. Knowing the other side's culture and its core
narratives are no less important for achieving that end."
The surge
in violence in recent weeks has seen nine Israelis killed in attacks.
Many of the
attackers have been shot dead, including one in Hebron on Wednesday. Along with
those killed in anti-Israeli protests, 60 Palestinians have died in the unrest,
as well as one Arab Israeli.
Some have
compared the wave of violence to the two previous Palestinian intifadas, or
uprisings, the last of which took place in the early 2000s.
Members of
both the Jewish and Arab communities say they are fearful of the other.
Hazan said
the classes could help ease such concerns.
"In
the last few months the intifada is rising in Israel," he said.
"When
people stand in the bus station and they hear (Arabic) next to them,
automatically... they maybe think that somebody is going to do something bad to
them -– just because they don't understand."
He pointed
out that the ancestors of many Jews in Israel, himself included, came from the
Arab world.
One
potential sticking point may be around ultra-Orthodox Jewish schools which have
a different curriculum to mainstream Israeli schools.
However
Hazan said every official school in Israel would be bound by the law.
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An Israeli
activist holds a banner during a rally demanding fresh Israeli-Palestinian
peace
talks, on the eve of the 20th anniversary of the killing of Prime Minister
Yitzhak
Rabin, in Tel Aviv on October 24, 2015 (AFP Photo/Jack Guez)
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