Arab Society in Israel Program

This is a joint program of the Joan and Irwin Jacobs Center for Shared Society and the Center for Democratic Values and Institutions.

IDI's program on Arab society aims at mitigating the tensions between Israel's Jewish majority and its Arab minority and create a shared, inclusive society. The program seeks to address the social, cultural, economic and legal barriers to the integration of Israel's Arab citizens into Israeli society and its economy. On the basis of its in-depth research, the program team devises and promotes policy recommendations, and works closely with government decision-makers to ensure their adoption and implementation.

Among other initiatives, the program publishes an Annual Statistical Report which provides comprehensive and detailed data on the situation of the Arab Israeli population in a broad range of life arenas, along with an in-depth survey of the relationship between Arab and Jewish citizens, and focuses on issues such as developing a model of shared workspaces for Israeli employers, advancing the inclusion of Arab citizens in government decision-making, and upgrading the quality of employment among Arab workers. The program team organizes forums for dialogue and debate between Jews and Arabs, and Arabs and state institutions.

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    Dr. Fahima Abbas

    Senior Researcher

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    Dr. Abbas received her PhD in Geography from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 2016. Her research focuses on the integration of the minority middle class into majority urban spaces, with an emphasis on metropolitan areas and divided cities, spatial inequality, migration, and commuting. As part of her postdoctoral research at the Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace, she examined the participation of the Jerusalem middle class in the Israeli economy. In her recent studies, Dr. Abbas explored access to housing and employment among Palestinian women in Israel, analyzing how residential space, social class, and marital status influence their opportunities for housing and employment.

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    Dr. Muhammed Khalaily

    Researcher

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    Holds a PhD from the School of Political Science at the University of Haifa on the subject: "The role and survival of primordial structures in modern politics: A Neo-Institutional Analysis of Clan Continuity in Arab Politics in Israel."

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    Dr. Arik Rudnitzky

    Researcher

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    Dr. Rudnitzky has been researching Arab Israeli issues for almost two decades. His fields of expertise cover political, national and social developments in Israel's Arab society; Jewish-Arab relations; and government policies on Arabs in Israel.

    Rudnitzky holds PhD degree from the Department of Middle Eastern Studies at Bar-Ilan University, as well as MA (magna cum laude) and BA degrees in Middle Eastern History from the Faculty of Humanities and an MBA degree from the Faculty of Management, Tel Aviv University.

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    Adv. Lital Piller

    Research Assistant

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    Lital Piller is a second-year research master’s student at Tel Aviv University. Her research focuses on the representation of the Arab-Palestinian minority in the land administration institutions in Israel. 

    She holds a bachelor’s degree in law and a bachelor’s in government (both with distinction) from Reichman University. Until 2017, she worked as a lawyer in the Administrative Law Department at the Spigelman Koren Zamir & Co. law firm. There, she provided legal advice in the field of administrative law, including local government, tenders, contracts, and litigation in administrative, commercial and civil matters. She was involved in drafting tenders and contracts for clients in the public sector, providing legal opinions, accompanying, and participating in tender committees, and representing clients in legal proceedings in various courts, including administrative courts.

    In addition, she works as a teaching assistant and research assistant in the field of constitutional law, intellectual property, and international law.

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    Maisam Salem

    Research Assistant

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