If Israeli lawmakers demote the Arabic language, then what?

In May, the Israeli legislative body, known as the Knesset, passed the nation-state bill in its first round, which redefines how Israel is to be a Jewish and democratic state. The bill will serve as something of a constitution, since Israel does not have one. It will also formalize the state’s relationship to its Palestinian-Arab minority.

If it becomes law, the bill would establish Hebrew as the national language of Israel, and in effect eliminate Arabic as an official language.

Some fear that doing so would also threaten to deny the history of Arabs in the state.

Linguistic legacies of 1948

Today, about 20 percent of Israeli citizens are Palestinian Arabs who remained in Israel after it was established in 1948. As I discuss in my book “The Politics of Arabic in Israel,” Arabic has been an official language in Israel since 1922, when a law was passed during the British rule over Palestine (1918-1947). After the establishment of Israel, the law continued to exist.

However, Hebrew was used more commonly and publicly. Palestinian citizens of Israel became increasingly bilingual. As historian Ilan Pappé has written, the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians is often attributed to the one single act of Israel’s creation in 1948, when Palestinians were dispersed into several countries. But, he argues, the ethnic cleansing is still ongoing. Removing Arabic as an official language would just be one more step on a long road.

Scholars like Yehouda Shenhav claim that Israel’s melting pot necessitated that the mother tongue of all Jews living in the country would switch to Hebrew. Just look at the dwindling number of Arabic speakers among Mizrachi Jews and their descendants who immigrated from Middle Eastern countries when Israel was established.

One nation, one language?

The historian Eric Hobsbawm reminds us that the 19th-century model of the European nation-state assumes that a nation is united by one language. He was also quick to point to the ethnic exclusion and cleansing that this model brought into the 20th century: for example, the Holocaust in Germany during World War II. His words are still true today.

If the law passes, Israel would succeed in yet another attempt to deny Palestinian presence in the state. Arabic has been spoken in that geographic location since at least the seventh century. The language holds components from the diverse cultures that contributed to it: Greek, Persian, Pharaonic, Canaanite, Hebrew, Aramaic, Islamic and Ottoman. The Arabic on the tongues of Palestinian citizens in Israel has traces of all of the peoples who settled the land since antiquity.

For example, some syntactic characteristics of Palestinian Arabic resemble Aramaic, which was spoken 2,000 years ago by inhabitants of Palestine and Greater Syria. It also borrows words from languages such as Aramaic and Turkish.

The elimination of Arabic as an official language in Israel risks violations of linguistic rights – the ability for humans to choose what language to use. Linguistics scholar Tove Skutnabb-Kangas argues that linguistic rights are human rights, and human rights are national rights and social rights.

The passage of this law may indeed make the Palestinian-Israeli conflict more difficult to resolve.

Camelia Suleiman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.