The Declassification of Arabic as an Unofficial Language in the State of Israel following The Basic Law of 2018.

Prelude

The Basic Law of 2018, passed by the Knesset on the 18th of July in 2018, represents a significant milestone in the country’s legal and political landscape.

This law enshrines Israel’s status as the nation-state of the Jewish people, affirming the importance of Jewish heritage, culture, and identity within the state as well as declaring that Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

That being said, the Basic Law of 2018 emphasizes the right of the Jewish people to self-determination, while also safeguarding the rights of all citizens regardless of religion or ethnicity.

Finally, the Basic Law of 2018 reinforces Israel’s commitment to its Jewish character, democratic principles, and pursuit of peace and security in the region.

Credit: New York Times

Introduction

This essay explores the role of Linguistic Human Rights towards understanding the declassification of Arabic as an official language in The State of Israel following the Basic Law of 2018 and the history of the language status of Arabic within The State of Israel examining its sociopolitical significance and conducting a review of the literature on this topic. The essay also considers the rights of minority groups to preserve, develop and express their language that may be at risk against a backdrop of an apparent policy shift towards defining Israeli national identity in terms of Jewishness and speaking Hebrew. It also balances such concerns against the apparent continuity of Arabs legal status in Israeli law and considers what linguistic human rights entail practically upon states in terms of preservation, promotion and opportunity for public expression.

Historical Context

The language of Arabic has a long history in the land now covered by the State of Israel, replacing Aramaic around the seventh century (Amara, 2017, p. 24). Arabic is currently spoken by over 20 percent of the Israeli population, though this was prior to 1948 the majority language across what are now the de jure borders of Israel (Rekhess, 2014, pp. 187-8). The modern dialects of Arabic spoken across this region are Palestinian variants of Levantine Arabic, consisting of several related dialects. For example, there are urban or Madani dialects related to Northern Levantine dialects and rural or Fallahi dialects associated with Southern Levantine dialects (Edzard, 2014, pp. 653-76). Outside of Palestine and within the State of Israel itself, the dialect is known often as the ‘Israeli Arabic dialect’, or Aravrit, referring to the strong influence of Hebrew on the dialect (Dekel & Brosh, 2012, p. 1). Jewish variants of Arabic did exist prior to 1948 but are now moribund (Geva-Kleinberger, 2018, p. 572).

The English language was removed as an official language of the region immediately after the 1948 Arab Israeli leaving Hebrew and Arabic as co-official languages of the growing Israeli state. Practically, the 150,000 Arabs that remained in Israel after this time needed to be catered for in a language they could understand, though the Israeli state was reluctant to do so other than with regards to some exceptions including extremism and political issues. Use of Arabic became far more extensive after a Supreme Court ruling of 2000, which demanded Arabic translations of government documents, road signs, food labels (Rapoport, 2015). An Arabic Language Academy was approved by the Knesset – Israeli National Assembly – in 2007, providing for greater knowledge of the Arabic language (Nahmias, 2007).

Whilst most Arab speakers are now fluent in Hebrew, speakers of Hebrew often have limited knowledge of Arabic, though secondary-school courses are now offered to improve Arabic – particularly for use in the military (Louer, 2014, p. 455). The basis of much of modern Hebrew in Arabic means that there is a surprising level of overlap in terms of grammar and vocabulary of the languages. Despite being semitic languages, both are not mutually intelligible as the relationship between the two languages means that acquiring the other may be comparatively accessible for speakers of one of the two languages, offering a pathway towards a functionally bilingual population.

The official status of the Arabic language was relegated to that of a ‘special status’ in 2018 with the passing of the Basic Law: Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People, often simply called the ‘Nationality Bill’ (Kershner, 2018). The law, which is wide-ranging in what it covers, was controversial due to its apparent identification of the state with the Jewish people and faith exclusively, being interpreted by some as racist or in effect the declaration of Israel as an ‘apartheid state’ (Beaumont, 2018; Berger, 2018). There were concerns expressed in some quarters also that in establishing the Israeli state as definitively Jewish, this ignored the multi-ethnic character of the Israeli electorate and thus constituted an undemocratic step towards instituting a discriminatory constitution (Ghanim, 2021). Defenders argue that it does not establish Israel as an exclusively Jewish state but argue that it merely reflects the demographic reality of Israel as majority-Jewish, a conclusion shared by the country’s Supreme Court (Sales, 2021). That being said, the fourth clause of the Basic Law concerns the language of the Israeli state. The law specifies Hebrew as the state’s language (4A) and gives Arabic a special status within the state (4B).

This declaration is somewhat ambiguous across the document, with Arabic’s use in state institutions being ‘set in law’ as well as stating that the reclassification of the language ‘does not harm the status given to the Arabic language before this law came into effect’ (4C). This effectively maintains the practical use of Arabic in state documentation and the public sphere according to the Israeli Supreme Court, raising queries as to whether the status of Arabic has changed in name only (Shvili, 2018).

Those that interpret the Basic Law are largely symbolic (Lis, 2018). This may be supported by the law’s text that states that the practical usage of Arabic has not been altered. Against this interpretation is a 2020 ruling based on the law that confirmed the northern city of Carmiel as a ‘Jewish city’ and forbade the funding of Arabic-language schools or transport for schoolchildren on the basis that this might alter the city’s demographic balance and Jewish character (Boxerman, 2020). The application of the law to this end was successfully challenged in the Appeals Court, though the request for Arabic-language provision for the city’s children was still not approved (Shpigel, 2021).

There remain questions about the status of Arabic following the reclassification of Arabic in 2018.

The Status of Arabic within The State of Israel

A number of academic works have explored the evolving status of the Arabic language within the State of Israel. An important work on this is Camelia Suleiman’s (2017) extensive sociolinguistic analysis of Arabic in Israel, in which she explores the politics of the language within Israeli state and society. The work explores the ways in which the Arabic language has been treated by the Israeli state, exploring the ways in which it has become orientalism as a ‘foreign’ language within, as well as exploring the securitization of the Arabic language (Suleiman, 2017, pp. 39-70). Suleiman makes the case that Israeli nation building necessitated the treatment of Arabic as though it were not a native tongue, whilst the perceived threat posed to the state by an Arab majority saw the teaching of the language itself become an issue for security. Published a year prior to the Basic Law, the work puts forward a rationale for the ‘mineralization’ of the Arabic language that may provide an explanatory account for the motivations behind the reclassification of Arabic under the Basic Law.

Another article by Ilan Saban and Muhammad Amara published in the Israel Law Review (2002) denotes a discrepancy between the legal status of Arabic and its use and treatment in public life. The article notes that Israel is a rare case of an ethnic nation state granting prima facie equality to a minority language, arguing that the historical, sociological, and legal characteristics of the Israeli state have brought about this unusual equality. It notes, however, that the sociopolitical status of Arabic is very much that of a minority language, arguing that ‘the potential inherent in the legal status of Arabic has been depleted of content ́ in a variety of ways in line with its inferior socio-political status (Saban & Amara, 2002, p. 5). The article concludes by stating that it would be too politically controversial to use the law to alter the sociopolitical status of Arabic to play a more equal role in public life – something that appears to be borne out by the subsequent events given the 2018 change in Arabic’s status as an official language.

Hostility to the Arabic language among Israeli policymakers was noted in a 2013 article on Arabic in Israel by Dafna Yitzhaki. Four positions on the status of Arabic in Israel are noted: (1) the ‘absolute equality’ position; (2) the ‘de jure equality’ position; (3) the ‘hierarchy’ position; and (4) the ‘Hebrew-only’ position (Yitzhaki, 2013, p. 290).

Yitzhaki argues that within the discourse of Israeli policymakers, the first two positions supporting an equal status are ignored, whilst only the hierarchical or Hebrew-only positions find expression. The article also notes a draft of a constitution for the State of Israel that posits a revisiting of the legal status of Arabic that appears to prefigure its status within the Basic Law.

The ‘Basic Principles’ draft contains provision for Arabic as reduced to a ‘special status’:

Credit: Knesset

This shift was accounted for in the relevant committee’s discussions as reflecting the largely monolingual status of the Israeli Jewish majority, whilst affording some protection to Arabic as a minority language (CLJC, 2005, pp. 53-4). This draft, dating back to 2005, indicates the longstanding discussions about the future status of Arabic leading towards the 2018 Basic Law.

The reason for this emergence is designated as political, though not with respect to public attitudes. A survey of Israeli Jews’ knowledge of and attitudes towards Arabic revealed that a majority of Israelis felt that Arabic played an important role in public life, with 60 per cent believing it ought to be made a compulsory language for study in secondary schools (Rapoport, 2015).

The reality of a significant population of naturalized and integrated Arabs into the Israeli state have rendered its usage less controversial than political discussions might imply. Rather, as Mendel reflects in his 2014 treatise on the use of Arabic in Israel, the language is viewed by policymakers largely from a security standpoint.

Furthermore, (Mendel, 2014) argues that Arabic as taught in Israeli schools is entirely detached from the spoken Arabic of the region and even from literary Arabic, being taught almost as a ‘dead language’ akin to Latin, intended for active usage in one institution only – the military. There is thus a disjunction between public and political attitudes towards the place of the language in Israeli society.

Last but not least, reactions towards the relegation of Arabic to a special status may be measured also on the basis of media responses to the law. Palestinian outlets interpreted the message sent by the law as exclusive towards Palestinians, indicating that they would not be accepted into the Israeli state (Omer-Man, 2018).

Western media was also largely hostile to the law, with some interpreting the significance of removing Arabic as an official language as symbolically relegating the status of Arabs within Israel also (Holmes & Balousa, 2018). Opinion in the Israeli press was split as to whether the law maintained the equal status of ethnic minorities in Israel, with the issue of the role of Arabic taking a backseat to discussions regarding the ethnic character of Israeli national identity (Yaakov, 2021; Nisan, 2022; Navot, 2023; Fuchs, 2021).

Within academic publications, the law was largely interpreted as a means for effecting the Hebraisation of Israeli society, indicating a shift towards discouraging citizenship for Palestinian Arabs, or towards reducing the equality of citizenship of Jewish and minority peoples (Amara, 2018; Shehadeh, 2019; Pinto, 2020).

Articles exploring the status change from a legal perspective highlight that little has changed about the legal status of Arabic because of its constitutional shift (Wattad, 2021), reflected perhaps to some degree in some of the subsequent ruling discussed above. As is argued by (Salma Arraf-Baker, 2019), it may be that the Basic Law to some extent makes de jure a de facto policy of Israeli institutions that Arabic ought to have a marginal status, without altering the law to this effect.

Linguistic Communities and Human Rights

The discussions above concern largely the effects of the Basic Law on Arabic’s legal status within Israel, what it means for the use of Arabic in Israeli society and public life, and how such changes pertain to the equality of the Arab minority in Israel. Underlying all these debates as they take place in academic and media publications is the morality of declassifying Arabic as a language with equal status to Hebrew. In other words as it speaks to the rights of linguistic communities to express themselves in public lore and to have the legitimacy of their first language recognized in a state where they constitute an indigenous minority group. These questions may be categorized as belonging to discussions on the human rights of linguistic communities. With human rights parlance, linguistic rights constitute the supposedly fundamental entitlement of distinct communities and individuals from within them to preserve, develop and express their languages without fear of suppression or discrimination (Skutnabb-Kangas, 2012, pp. 235-7). This might be extended from use within the home and in public to specific domains or institutions, such as education, media, and government (Phillipson, et al., 1994, pp. 2-3). These rights are supposedly justified by the importance of language as an aspect to cultural identity that distinguishes between groups that share other characteristics, such as race, statehood, or history (Skutnabb-Kangas & Phillipson, 2022, pp. 1-22).

For example, historian (Eric Hobsbawm, 1990) highlights language as one of the key defining factors of minority movements within multi-ethnic states. Deliberate erasure of the language of a minority group may therefore be criticized as an attack against their right to exist as a distinct ethnic group. Whether erasure of a group’s language constitutes a form of genocide is a matter of debate within the literature. Erasure of language has been posited as a means of committing ‘cultural genocide’, consisting of the erasure of an ethnic group’s cultural distinctness and/or their forced assimilation into another culture (Davidson, 2012, pp. 26-8). However, linguistic genocide is not by itself currently recognised as a form of genocide according to international law (Salimi, 2019). The 1948 UN Genocide Convention stated that genocide consists of ‘intentional destruction in whole or in part, [of] a national, ethnical, racial or religious group’, though the term ‘cultural genocide’ was not include in the document despite being considered in the drafting phase (Abtahi & Webb, 2008, p. 731). Similarly, the University Declaration of Human Rights makes no reference to language whatsoever (Skutnabb-Kangas, 2006, p. 275), rendering linguistic erasure absent from much of the overarching framework on human rights.

Nevertheless, the recognition of a right to protect, develop and express a minority language has been recognised in international law (Dubar, 2022, pp. 25-38). For example, Article 27 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights mandates that ethnic minorities be permitted to use their own language, whilst Article 15 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights permits minorities the same right to use their own language. Similarly, Articles 20(3) and 30 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child profess the rights of children to be brought up speaking their background culture’s language. Israel has ratified all the above conventions into their own national law, though it may be noted that the Basic Law does not actively prevent the use of Arabic in any context, despite not mandating its equal usage alongside Israel. For example, Arabic may be spoken in the Knesset according to Israeli law, despite playing only a marginal role in this institution (Leiber, 2016).

The Israeli government may be criticized for not going far enough to ensure that linguistic communities are able practically to express their own language in public institutions.

Debates about the status of Arabic language schools and where and whether they ought to be permitted to establish have been raised with respect to the Basic Law, indicating its potential to be used to discriminate against Arabs in education (Buxbaum, 2020). Although such interpretations have been successfully rebuffed at a legal level, alongside some examples of Arabic provision in fact being expanded in Israeli education (Obel, 2022), the law certainly does not appear to encourage promoting usage of the Arabic language in everyday life. This raises a question with regards to the status of linguistic human rights and what responsibilities they entail upon states. In my opinion, this is a prime example of degradation of the arabic language and how difficult it is to try and implement linguistic rights and the promotion of the arabic language.

If interpreted as a ‘negative right’, then linguistic rights promise only that the state nor presumably any individuals should not violate one’s right to preserve, promote and practice their minority language (Chen, 1998, pp. 47-8). This, it may be argued, the Basic Law does not violate in any way. If, alternatively, linguistic rights are ‘positive rights’, then individuals have a right to expect that they can practically preserve, develop and practice their language, which appears to entail some responsibility on the state to facilitate this (Chen, 1998, p. 49). How far the State of Israel must go to achieve this is unclear. However, that being said, it may be noted that the Israeli state has established an Arabic language center and that Israeli law permits road signs, food labeling, etc. to be printed in Arabic, even to the point of defending this right against the steep legal challenges. Whether the state must go farther than this to ensure that Arabic may be practically used within all public institutions is unclear.

There are a number of studies comparing the efforts of various states to facilitate the public usage and promotion of minority languages (e.g., Canada, Wales, etc.) which note a significant degree of discrepancy between these states (Williams, 2013, pp. 294-99). It is therefore difficult to ascertain what may be expected of the Israeli state in this regard according to human rights law.

Furthermore, whilst the Basic Law may be interpreted as a step back from greater promotion of Arabic due to its declassification as an official language of the state, the law does not go as far as to advocate suppression of this language, with its ‘special status’ left ambiguous as to what is entailed by its elevation above other languages but below Hebrew. A better way of promoting the Arabic language within Israeli institutions as well as greater provision for the collective linguistic rights of minority communities are not foreclosed by the law, though they may appear to be discouraged by the act of relegating Arabic from its equal status according to the Israeli constitution. From a legal perspective, the Basic Law appears to promote more about cementing the policy direction of the Israeli government more so than constituting a rights violation against a linguistic minority or representing a significant change in the legal status of Arabic itself.

Conclusion

The status of the Arabic language has been degraded, demoralized, reduced and vilified as an official language of Israel to an implied inferiority despite its ‘special’ status. Esteemed academics and respected journalists have expressed alarming concern about the symbolism of this change, associating it with the potential declassification of Arab citizens as secondary to Jewish citizens. However, examining the legal status of the linguistic reclassification of Arabic itself according to the Israel constitution reveals an ambiguity in the language used. From one perspective, the change may be interpreted as representation of what has been reflected in practice throughout the history of the post-1948 Israeli state, effectively stating the secondary status of Arabic as fact.

Alternatively, it may be construed as directing the policy of an Israeli government that is right-wing or far right towards its Arab minority, indicating the future status of Arabs in Israel and its attitude towards the integration of non-citizens such as the Palestinians. Whatever the legal status of Arabic, it does not appear to have changed much according to both legal interpretation and precedent and the law does not appear to have served as the basis for blatant disregard of suppressing Arabic linguistics. Whilst it may be argued that the Basic Law of 2018 discourages the State of Israel taking major new steps to promote the Arabic language and to legislate against linguistic discrimination, neither does the law actively discriminate against Arabic speakers nor does it prevent such laws from being evoked for the current time. What remains extremely worrying for many Arabic speakers in the State of Israel and Occupied Palestine, as well as those concerned with linguistic human rights generally, is the declassification signals the rights of Arabs to cultural expression and existence moving forward in an Israeli state which increasingly equates national identity with Jewishness and speaking Hebrew.

References

Aali Abbasi

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