| Ach ja, het zijn toch maar niet-joden, hè? | JV - 17.02.2005 09:19
"Jewish Israeli society liked to see the Druze as a nice folkloristic group, a kind of "Arab-lite," whose delicacies and shops one could enjoy, and whose friendship one could boast of. The uniform-wearing Druze, who even have reached officer ranks, broadcast a false image of integration. But the alliance already assumed an ugly face during the first intifada: The harsh policing jobs that were given to the Druze pushed them into the twilight zone between the Jews, who try hard to boast of their purity of arms, and the Palestinians, for whom the friction with the Druze has given rise to insult and a burning and focused hatred of the group. "The occupation has destroyed our youth, and, in effect, our entire ethnic community," Druze intellectuals and members of the academic world said at a conference held three weeks ago in the Galilee village of Yarka.
The intifada, the recession and unemployment, and the accelerated disintegration of civic solidarity in Israel in light of the strengthening of the internal Jewish discourse have pushed the Druze even further into a corner. Whereas their rate of enlistment in the Israel Defense Forces has remained particularly high (about 85 percent), the rate of unemployment among discharged soldiers is increasing steadily. The young men, whose IDF uniforms gave them a false sense of belonging and mobility in Israeli society, have found themselves on the periphery, alienated, unemployed and uneducated, some in mixed communities of Druze, Muslims and Christians."
"Israel, which spoke in lofty terms about the alliance, has neglected Druze villages, failed to establish a modern industrial infrastructure, and hastened to impose a problematic merger on Daliat al Carmel and Isfiya, which no government, for example, would dream of doing in Givatayim and Ramat Gan.
In the distorted hierarchy of civic society in Israel, the Druze have been pushed aside into a situation of neglect that is reserved for minorities in general, and Arabs in particular."
 Website: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/541263.html
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