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January 18, 2002/5 Shevat 5762, Vol. 54, No.18
Attack shows risks for Arab soldiers
GIL SEDAN
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
HAIFA - The Christmas decorations were still hanging in the Abu-Ghanem residence here when the unbearable news reached the family: Their son, Hanna, was among the four Arab soldiers killed last week in a Palestinian attack on an Israeli army outpost.
The joyful decorations soon were replaced with signs of mourning.
Death has been a guest in too many Israeli and Palestinian homes during the past 16 months, the heavy toll of the Palestinian intifada. But it is not often that Arab soldiers die in serving the Israel Defense Force.
The four soldiers killed last week near Kibbutz Kerem Shalom near the southeastern border of the Gaza Strip served in the Desert Patrol Unit, a special unit that in recent years has been in charge of security patrols along the Gaza Strip.
Two and a half years ago, then-Defense Minister Moshe Arens (now a Likud legislator) set a target of enlisting 800 Bedouin soldiers in the IDF this year. However, due to the intifada, the Israeli Arab riots in October 2000 and ongoing discrimination against Arabs and Bedouin in Israel, it is doubtful that even 200 Bedouin will volunteer.
In addition, increasingly radicalized Arab legislators and propaganda efforts backed by the Palestinian Authority are further eroding Arab citizens' sense of allegiance to Israel.
The decreasing number of Arab volunteers also is a function of the general atmosphere among Israel's Arabs. While never fond of army or any other kind of national service, Arab society in Israel has become even less tolerant toward Arab soldiers in recent months.
Reserve Gen. Rafael Vardi recently completed a special report on the state of the Bedouin soldiers. He reported that rather than winning praise for going against the general anti-Israeli trend in Arab society, Bedouin soldiers suffer discrimination in the army, enjoy few opportunities for professional mobility and face difficulties in finding security-linked jobs after they are discharged.
That is only part of a general situation of neglect and discrimination against the non-Jewish segments in Israeli society. Bedouin villages suffer from a lack of land reserves and housing development projects, Bedouin towns in the Negev have the highest unemployment rates in the country and education and health projects are far below the national average.
Some Bedouin settlements even lack running water and electric power.
The attack near Kerem Shalom is hardly likely to increase the number of Bedouin recruits. Young Arabs have learned the hard way that once they join the army they face not only strong criticism from their own society but - like all Israeli soldiers - the danger of death.
Bedouin activists worry that the deaths of the four soldiers could further erode the already weakened will of Bedouin youth to enlist.
"Nowadays, in effect, there's no enlistment," says Salameh Abu Ghanem, a veteran enlistment activist among Bedouin in the Negev Desert and an adviser to National Infrastructures Minister Avigdor Lieberman.
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