On Saturday, January 31, an unusual and significant demonstration took place in Tel Aviv’s Habima Square. Tens of thousands of Arabs and Jews marched together in a rare display of joint civic protest, united in opposition to a governments’ neglect to protect Arab citizens from violence. There was total agreement among the demonstrators that the current Government must be replaced as it is increasingly identified with racism and authoritarian tendencies.  

The demonstration was called by the Higher Committee of the Arab citizens, in response to the spiraling violence and murder within Arab communities in Israel and to the continued failure of the Netanyahu–Ben Gvir government to address it. But its significance extended far beyond a protest against crime. The gathering sent a powerful message: a large and growing public of both Arab and Jewish citizens in Israel is seeking a shared future based on equality, democracy, and mutual responsibility.

For anyone present in the square, it was clear that this was not a routine protest. Conversations with demonstrators revealed an unusual openness and emotional intensity. People were eager to speak, to explain why they had come, and to listen to one another. What brought them out in such numbers was not a political or ideological conviction, but existential anxiety—a sense that the ground beneath their feet is shifting, and that silence is no longer an option.

Not a routine demonstration

Participants arrived from Arab towns and villages across the Galilee, the Triangle region, and the Negev. There were old and young women and men, families who had never demonstrated in Tel Aviv and teenagers who are afraid to be the next target. It was clear to me that most of them never participated in a demonstrated at all. Marching shoulder to shoulder with Jewish protesters was, for many, a first. They carried photographs of victims of violence in Arab society and signs bearing a single word: “enough” (كفي).

The immediate catalyst for the protest was the horrific level of violence that has engulfed Arab communities in Israel. Organized crime, sweeping protectionism curtailing hundreds of businesses, widespread availability of illegal weapons, and years of police neglect have turned everyday life into a source of constant fear

In recent years, Arab society has lived with a pervasive sense of insecurity: Will the child who leaves for school return safely? Will a woman going shopping be hit by a stray bullet? Will a family outing end in tragedy simply because their car was in the wrong place at the wrong time?

The numbers are stark. In 2025 alone, 252 Arab citizens of Israel were killed by this kind of internal violence (in comparison the number of people killed in 2010 was only 73, less than 30% of the number last year). Since the beginning of 2026, already 34 lives were lost. These are not abstract statistics; they are a daily reminder that any Arab citizen could be next.

The protest movement opened the gates of Habima square to the Arabs

Yet the demonstration was about more than violence itself. It reflected a deeper shift: the collapse of a long-held illusion that Arab citizens of Israel can insulate themselves from the state and its institutions, living parallel lives while disengaging from Israeli politics. As veteran Israeli journalist Nahum Barnea wrote after the demonstration, “The threat to life is so great, the government’s responsibility so clear and glaring, that it is impossible to continue with the politics of the past. Eyes that were once fixed on Ramallah are now fixed on Jerusalem. Everything is focused on one issue, one crisis.” (Yediot Ahronot, Feb.2^nd).

In my estimation, Arabs and Jews participated in roughly equal numbers. The strong turnout of Jewish demonstrators mattered deeply. For years, Arab citizens have protested this violence largely alone, often met with indifference or suspicion. This time, thousands of Jewish Israelis chose to stand with them. The atmosphere was respectful and supportive. It was clear that each side was seeking not only justice, but connection.

Several Arab and Jewish speakers gave voice to the emotional and political weight of the moment. Khitam Abu Fana (known as Umm Firas), whose eldest son was murdered while working in the family garage, addressed the crowd with heartbreaking clarity. She described the devastation of losing a son who had recently become a father himself and urged the public not to surrender to fear. She said “I didn’t come here to cry – I came here to scream!”

Prof. Barak Medina, a former Rector of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, called on Jewish and Arab opposition parties to unite against what he described as a racist and failed government. Ali Zbeidat, a resident of Sakhnin whose personal protest helped ignite the mobilization, spoke alongside Jamal Zahalka, head of the Arab Follow-Up Committee, 3 mayors from Arab municipalities, and veteran actress and activist Rivka Michaeli.

New trends made the demonstration possible

Two important trends enabled this unprecedented demonstration: The first is unfolding within Arab society itself. For years, many Arab citizens avoided engagement with Israeli political life, fearing that cooperation, speaking Hebrew, or participation in state institutions would be labeled “Israelization” and seen as a betrayal of Palestinian national identity. This tendency, which intensified after the October 2000 events and even more so after October 7, has increasingly come under question. The realization is spreading that isolation does not protect lives—and that disengagement from Israeli society and politics had come at a terrible cost.

Two important trends enabled this unprecedented demonstration: The first relates to the feeling of many Arab citizens that avoiding engagement with Israeli political life, is a dead end that had come at a terrible cost. The second is visible within liberal Jewish activists who realize that to confront the Netanyahu government they need to join hands with Arab society

The second trend is visible within liberal Jewish society. Confronted with the Netanyahu government’s assault on democratic institutions, judicial independence, and minority rights, many Jewish Israelis now feel that the country is approaching a breaking point. There is growing recognition that the struggle against authoritarianism and racism cannot be won without genuine partnership with Arab citizens. There is also a plain fact: Israeli Jewish opposition alone does not reach the 61-parliament threshold to topple the Right wing in elections.

Habima Square itself symbolized this shift. For the past three years, it has been a central site of protests against Netanyahu’s government and its proposed “Judicial coup d’etat”. On January 31, this same square opened its gates to Arab citizens in a way not seen before. Long-standing criticism that the protest movement marginalizes Arab voices was addressed directly: more than half the speakers addressed the crowd in Arabic. The bilingual nature of the event felt natural, even obvious—an embodiment of a different vision of Israel as a shared civic space.

The need to translate the demonstration into Political force

The demonstration’s power raises an urgent question: how can this moral and civic energy be translated into political change? Protest alone, however massive, will not bring down a government entrenched in power. That requires a political alternative capable of winning elections. Here, the limits of the moment become apparent.

Among Arab political leaders, MK Mansour Abbas has been unusually explicit in calling for concrete political cooperation between Arab parties and Zionist opposition forces. For months, he has urged leaders such as Yair Lapid, Naftali Bennett, and Gadi Eizenkot to form a joint Jewish–Arab front to replace Netanyahu’s coalition. Abbas argues that the choice now is not between protest and politics, but between paralysis and responsibility.

Yet his call has been met with resistance on multiple fronts. Opposition leaders claim that Israeli society, especially after the trauma of October 7, is “not ready” for a government that relies on Arab parties. There is a grind of truth in the hesitancy to cooperate with Arab parties. In the last 25 month since Oct. 2023, the Communist Party led “Hadash Front” and the National Democratic Bloc “Tajamu’” did not convey a sense of solidarity with Israel when it faced an existential threat from Iran and its proxies i.e. Hamas and Hizballah. Yet, MK Abbas represents a sharply different approach and when Lapid and other opposition leader reject him they are actually rejecting the Arab society as whole and thus give Netanyahu and the racist right wing a huge concession.

 At the same time, Abbas faces fierce criticism within Arab society, where some view partnership with Zionist parties as capitulation or betrayal. The day after the demonstration, one Arab media outlet reported that “100,000 Arabs marched in Tel Aviv,” erasing Jewish participants entirely in order to preserve a nationalist narrative. That outlet also did not mention the Israeli-Jewish speakers.

This mutual rejection is deeply troubling. Refusing Abbas’s outstretched hand is not merely a tactical choice—it is a rejection of the tens of thousands of Arab citizens who filled Habima Square in the hope of partnership. It is also a rejection of the Jewish demonstrators who stood beside them, recognizing Arab society as a legitimate and essential ally.

The January 31 demonstration should therefore be understood as both a breakthrough and a test. It revealed a public readiness for shared struggle that political leadership has yet to match. It showed that fear can give way to solidarity—and that despair can be transformed into collective action.

For international observers, the message is clear: beneath the headlines of polarization and violence, new civic dynamics are emerging in Israel. They are fragile, contested, and far from guaranteed. But they point toward a future in which Jews and Arabs do not merely coexist, but act together to defend democracy, equality, and life itself.

Habima Square offered a glimpse of that future.  Whether it remains a moment—or becomes a movement—now depends on political courage.

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After the number of Arab casualties passed 100 this year, Naftali Bennett declared that he takes the issue of violence in Arab society most seriously. At an October 17 government discussion on the issue, he went so far as to say that “we are losing the country. ” The Ministry of Justice is also preparing a package of laws that will permit house searches without a warrant, and economic laws are being designed to fight crime. Bennett announced that he himself would oversee a special cabinet to deal with the issue, and he appointed a project manager to head its staff, which includes the police, the Shin Bet (General Security Service) and the army. It appears that the cries of MKs and heads of the Arab councils have finally reached the ears of the country’s captains, in the sense of: “You asked for it? You got it, and got it big.” What accelerated this concern at the top were the events of May during the last Gaza war, when thousands of young Arabs went out to main intersections, and the mixed cities became battlefields between Jews and Arabs. Along with casualties, this fire consumed businesses, cars, buses and everything in its path. Taken by surprise, the government returned the concept of “governance” to its agenda.

The prevailing opinion is that Israel has a strong army, an omnipotent Shin Beth and a weak police force. The army and Shin Beth have proven they can solve complex problems. As proof, Israel has lived beside the territories it occupies for 54 years. Referring to the Palestinians, Bennett even coined the term “shrapnel in the butt” – something unpleasant, but you can live with it. The army and Shin Beth may excel in exerting control over another people, but they have never solved problems of a social and national nature, nor are they intended to do so. The Palestinian problem remains unsettled, erupting in different ways every few months.

What can the army, police and Shin Beth do about the fact that 40% of Arab youth are not in any occupational or educational setting? What can the Shin Beth do about youth who are careful to point their weapons not at the state and its Jewish citizens, but inwards against Arabs? And it is also worth asking how Shin Beth intervention can be justified, when the motive for violence is not nationalist but socioeconomic?

Violence is a product of the existing socioeconomic system, which has marginalized the poor countries of the world, as well as the underprivileged in rich countries. When 40% of youth do not work or study, the result is crime, drugs and violence, regardless of religion or nationality. In fact, crime among US blacks is much greater than in Israel, and among black youth, those who do not study or work exceed 40%.

Israel should learn from America’s bitter experience. It made excessive use of draconian legislation that filled the prisons with a million inmates, mostly black. The arming of police resulted in the deaths of innocent black civilians and quite a few police. Black society sees the police as the problem, not the solution to the violence that rages within it, and rightly so. That is why the Biden administration decided to bring about change, with support of the black leadership. The Democratic Party wants to inject the huge sum of $ 5 trillion in direct assistance to citizens and renewal of physical infrastructure, bringing back many components of the welfare state. Biden and the Democrats reject the principle that the state is the problem, instead adopting the principle that the role of the state is to serve the citizen. Reagan’s conservative revolution, long maintained by the both major parties, ended with the rise of Donald Trump.

Poverty in Israel is not limited to Arab society. Hundreds of thousands of Jewish citizens are also left on the margins: these include people on minimum wage, temporary and contractor workers, and those who must live on meagre social security. It is clear that Arab society, like black society in the US, is the first victim of the existing economic system, because the tier of national discrimination is added.

The Biden administration, as well as leaders of the black community in the United States, understand that there is no separate solution for blacks and whites. Americans need to rebuild their economy from the bottom up, contrary to what has happened to date. In Israel, on the other hand, neoliberalism continues to dominate and the economy works for the rich. 300,000 high-tech workers act as the locomotive of the Israeli economy, attract foreign investment, get rich quick and enrich the state coffers. Behind them remain the crumbs with which other workers are forced to make do. These crumbs are tossed into Jewish society, and nothing remains for the Arabs. When you build from the top down, poverty grows and breeds violence.

The Bennett-Meretz-United Arab List (UAL) government is working to approve a budget dubbed “social”, thus ensuring its continuity. Yet this budget has no good social news. Finance officials continue to dictate the policy that sees the “bloated” state apparatus as the problem. The so-called reforms in question do nothing more than extinguish fires, and are far from meeting the need for a change in priorities. Give another NIS 500 to the elderly, as if this amount will save them from the shortage of food and medicine; impose a congestion charge to rescue Israel from traffic jams; provide a few hundred more jobs to solve the unbearable burden in hospitals, and impose a tax on disposable utensils to deal with environmental pollution.

This is not a comprehensive plan designed to rebuild growth and the economy to locate the foci of poverty and eradicate social gaps and discrimination. This is a program that maintains the budget framework at all costs, and upholds the same method that hundreds of thousands of young Israelis protested against in 2011. In fact, the Bennett government is continuing Netanyahu’s policy, approving a five-year, NIS 26 billion plan for the Arab sector through 2026. The problem is that only 60% of the amount allocated to the previous five-year plan (992) and approved by the Netanyahu government was ever used. Moreover, today we also know that some of these funds flowed in various forms to criminal organizations on the Arab street through unfair tenders. It is known that earmarked funds allocated to Arab society do not solve the problem, for two reasons. Due to its clan composition, Arab local government suffers from corruption and failed performance. In numerous cases, staff are hired not because of skills, but because they belong to the right family. Secondly, NIS 5 billion a year is not enough to make a real revolution. These funds are designed to keep the Arabs with their head above water, but not to grow and integrate.

The Arab leadership’s insistence on trying to address the problem in a sectoral manner, without a comprehensive look at Israeli society and the existing neoliberal economic system, leaves Arab society weak, isolated and devoid of any political influence. UAL’s participation in the government is intended to obtain budgets for the Arab sector in the same way used by the ultra-Orthodox parties. Yet these budgets nourish and perpetuate poverty, and do not solve fundamental problems in education, employment, transportation and welfare. Like its predecessor, the new Israeli government is unwilling to invest in these areas. It continues to starve the public sector, works to privatize government companies to hurt workers’ wages, harms employee pensions, encourages high-tech at the expense of creating jobs that pay a salary above minimum wage, and remains stubbornly unwilling to invest in vocational training.

The black leadership in the United States has become a leader in the struggle for democracy and social justice for all Americans – black and white alike. In contrast, the Arab leadership in Israel sticks to old slogans, differentiates itself from the Israeli public, and leaves the political arena in the hands of the right and its partners from the left. These pretend to fight for citizens, but in the meantime are abusing Palestinians, leaving workers in poverty, and Arab society rooted in poverty and violence.

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The Prime Minister’s Conference on Minorities, held on Oct. 29, 2013, was entitled “Growth in Partnership.” PM Binyamin Netanyahu and senior ministers took part, including the “brothers in arms” Finance Minister Yair Lapid and Economics Minister Naftali Bennett, as well as Education Minister Shay Piron and Bank of Israel Governor Karnit Flug. The speakers gave stirring speeches full of promises to boost the political and economic integration of Israel’s Arab citizens, and to dismantle barriers to enable the full business potential of the Arab sector to be used. Higher education was emphasized along with employment, real estate, and fields in which government incentives could encourage economic growth in the Arab sector.

One step forward, two steps back

This conference is an expression of government efforts to demonstrate change in its policies towards the Arab population. The government has been holding such a conference each year since 2007, providing an opportunity for leaders to proclaim their commitment to the Arab sector and the need for positive discrimination. The initiative began during Ehud Olmert’s term as prime minister, and at that time senior representatives of the Arab population also participated (this year no Arab political leader attended).

Until a few years ago the government almost totally ignored the Arab population and swept its concerns under the rug. Now it has suddenly recognized that there is a problem and demonstrated its willingness – at least in words – to deal with it. An expression of this new approach can be seen in the critical report compiled by Prof. Eran Yashiv and Bank of Israel researcher Nitsa Kasir, which was published in May 2013. This report won official recognition, and Yashiv – who gave a speech at this year’s conference – commented that in a recent meeting with Economics Minister Bennett, the latter was ready to listen.

The new approach is reflected in other ways too: about half of the employment guidance centers opened in recent years have been located in Arab towns; the government has set itself the measurable target of increasing workforce participation of Arab women from the current 20% to 40% by 2015; a budget has been allocated for developing public transportation in large Arab towns which, till recently, had none at all; 400 million shekels (about $110 million) have been earmarked for developing industrial zones in the Arab sector; and for the first time in history, the Higher Education Council certified a university in the Arab city of Nazareth.

The conference’s panel on employment was opened by Minister Bennett. In his animated speech, he explained the need to overcome prejudice and take on Arabs holding academic degrees in industry, especially ICT (hi-tech). He also called on Arab youth, saying, “Don’t give up your chance to integrate into the State of Israel and create here a future for yourselves, and we, as the government, declare that we will not give up on you.” He went on to wonder how it is that only 2% of Arabs who have studied programming are taken on in the ICT sector. “After all,” he said, “the talents we’re after are not found only among members of one people or one religion. They are spread around everywhere! We must open our minds and take advantage of every opportunity that presents itself.”

Encouraging words, but Bennett would have done well to direct them at himself and at the members of his government. As noted by Amnon Beeri Sulitzeanu, co-director of the Abraham Funds Initiative, Bennett’s declarations do not sit well with his own political party’s agenda. Bennett, chair of the rightwing Habayit Hayehudi party, is an old friend of prejudice. How does Bennett intend to take on Arab degree holders in the public and private sectors when he himself proposes legislation that would turn Israel’s Arabs into second-class citizens? Right now the government is promoting a law which will discriminate against all those who did not do military or national service, in getting work, in their studies, in buying property and in other areas of life – all this in the guise of benefits to those who served.

Between propaganda and reality

But the fine hall at Tel Aviv University where the conference was held, where all speakers – Jews and Arabs alike – belong to the spruce and orderly upper middle classes, is very different from what one sees in the Arab towns. Here visitors will find poverty and hardship, and the gap between Arabs and Jews is growing. The problem is not merely the hypocrisy of the rightwing, busy inciting against Arabs on a daily basis while calling for us to overcome prejudice at media-covered conferences. The problem is far deeper: it is connected to the basic mood in Israel today, a mood which empties the prime minister’s conference of content.

Fundamental and profound discrimination against the Arab population is the cornerstone of the State of Israel. Positive discrimination for Arab towns, designating land for industrial and commercial development, constructing public and residential buildings, increasing the educational and welfare budget, and investing in infrastructure – all this requires billions of shekels which the government has no intention of spending. It won’t even spend such sums on Jewish towns in the periphery – it will certainly not spend them on Arab towns. And without these sums, as Yashiv explained in his excellent lecture, small initiatives – important though they are – are liable to become barriers to the greater change that is so crucial.

Indeed, as long as the present government continues its blatantly racist policies, such as the decision to establish a Jewish town near Arad at the expense of an Arab village that has existed there for 50 years, all its words on equality for Arabs are a bad joke. (See this article from Haaretz.)

The government has failed miserably to increase the number of Arabs in the state service sector – an issue entirely in government hands, requiring no special resources. It didn’t even achieve its target of increasing the proportion of Arabs in this sector to 10% by 2012: the percentage today stands at 8.5%. This is particularly sobering when one remembers that the Arabs make up 20% of Israel’s citizens. Despite certain steps to integrate Israeli Arabs in the economy since 2010, the gaps between Jews and Arabs are still growing.

Another failure is linked to Israel’s economic structure and only indirectly affects the Arabs as part of the poverty-stricken periphery. The economy today does not create sustainable jobs in quantities that would enable thousands of new workers to be hired. On this issue we should listen to the words of Zeev Rotem, founder and CEO of Rotem Strategy, in an interview he gave to Tali Heruti-Sover (The Marker, Oct. 27, 2013). He said that the “excellent” statistics on the state of employment in Israel are nothing but deception; most jobs offered today are part-time or seasonal, with wages so low that they do not even meet the most basic needs of the worker. About a third of Israeli workers today are in part-time positions. In other words, approximately one million men and women are not in full-time employment. The fact that the poverty rate in Israel is the highest among OECD countries isn’t a coincidence, he says. This is not a case of laziness – it’s the economy, which is creating more and more destitute workers.

A policy for the elites

In light of the above, how should we understand the aims of the conference? There can be no doubt that the government’s change of approach towards Israel’s Arab citizens was due to its desire to join the OECD, which it did in 2010. An OECD report of that year said that Israeli Arabs suffer severe discrimination, and it conditioned Israel’s membership on fundamental changes in its policies toward this population. According to Raed Mualem, Vice President of the Nazareth Academic Institute, even the decision to allow the opening of a university in the Arab City of Nazareth was the result of a specific OECD demand (Al-Arab website).

On the one hand, the Israeli establishment is willing to make certain changes to keep the OECD leaders happy, since membership in the organization brings many clear strategic advantages in the global market. On the other hand, there is an understanding that the backwardness of the Arab sector in terms of employment, economy and education is pulling Israel’s economy backwards too, and there is a real danger that Israel will become a third-world country, as Israeli Arabs and the ultraorthodox Jews grow in numbers relative to the productive and educated population. According to research published in the days leading up to the Israel Democracy Institute’s Caesarea Conference in November, the Arabs and ultraorthodox will together make up half of Israel’s population by the year 2059 if current trends continue (source.)

In particular, there is a growing awareness in Israeli establishment circles that the Arab population is a powder keg, and as long as no resources are set aside for welfare and for dealing with unemployment and poverty, we are all approaching an explosion. This explosion will find expression in increasing crime rates and extreme trends towards separatism and isolationism, nationalist, religious and anti-Israeli sentiments.

But since the government has no intention of turning the present reality upside down, it focuses on the big promise of the Arab educated middle class, which constitutes a reservoir of wasted talent. It bases itself on the Arab economic elite, which is characterized by pragmatism and makes do with what Netanyahu calls “economic peace” with reference to the Palestinians of the Occupied Territories (meaning that while Israel refuses to accept a political solution and recognize Palestinian national rights, it is ready to give economic incentives to a certain social class, thus replacing the struggle for peace and equality with a narrow economic agenda). The Arab middle class in Israel is comprised of university graduates who are willing to work hard for a relatively low salary in order to get into the job market.

There is no vision of social mobility behind the declarations at the conference. Arab graduates who were taken on at Teva, Super-Pharm and Intel are not ambassadors of social change; rather, they are an example of the fact that one can succeed if one turns one’s back on the desolation of one’s people in the Arab towns. The government is under the illusion that the integration of these educated Arabs in the Israeli economy will create opposition to the Arab leaders, whose popularity is anyhow in decline. And indeed, one cannot but notice that, in contrast to the prominence of Israeli Jewish leaders at the conference, not a single prominent Arab public figure attended – even though hundreds of Arab businesspeople and NGO workers filled the hall.

We can conclude that the conference’s debates did not reflect a fundamental change of policy, but an attempt to skim the cream of the Arab elite – while accepting that the problems of the vast majority of the Arab population are too huge and too severe to be dealt with.

Assaf Adiv, WAC MAAN General Director, attended the panel on employment at the Prime Minister’s Conference on Minorities.

• Translated from the Hebrew by Yonatan Preminger

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