Housing under occupation

While officially included as citizens, Israeli Arabs, as non-Jews, are socially excluded by powerful symbolic and social boundaries. This chapter joins a small number of studies that have drawn attention to the housing domain of the minority groups in Israel. The primary aim is to critically discuss the issues and factors that negatively influence the housing domain of the Arab minority in Israel. While there are certain variations in terminology when talking about the Israeli Arab minority, in this chapter, the term refers to the ‘Arab citizens of Israel’ who have been residents and exercising basic rights since before the creation of the state of Israel. The key argument is that, while the combination of various aspects (socio-economic disparities, urbanization, cultural preference) has interactively played a role in shaping the housing domain of the Arab minority in Israel, the political objectives and discriminative government policies (negligence, disinvestment) are the ‘invisible factors’ that prevent the Arab minority from meeting their housing needs. I will show, for example, how the proliferation of informal housing in Arab localities is rooted in long-lasting regulatory logics of restrictions and negligence (e.g., denial of building permits). This does not mean that the state has not paid enough attention to fixing the housing issues in Arab localities; the attention given, however, has met little success. This is not to say that I am seeking for ‘ideals and utopias’ with Arab housing, that is, the state has to fix every housing issue related to the Arab communities; I am aware that the housing crisis is omnipresent, even in Jewish localities. However, more attention is needed on the Arab housing domain, so that the Arab minority can have an equal footing with their Jewish counterparts.