Israel's Internal Crisis Becomes a Direct Threat: Recruitment of Arabs is Approaching

Author: خالد تيتي

The discussion about the recruitment of Arabs in the Palestinian interior is no longer just a political nightmare or a provocative slogan.

This possibility is closer than we imagine, but it does not come as a direct result of the Israeli crisis regarding recruitment; rather, it develops on its margins and feeds off a politically and socially conducive environment. On one hand, there is an increasingly fascist Israeli society that seeks to place part of the burden on Arabs; on the other hand, there is an integrative Arab discourse that paves the way for normalizing this equation, whether intentionally or unintentionally, through acceptance of the equation of "rights for duties".

Thus, what was taboo yesterday transforms into a present possibility in public discourse.

Israel is mired in a suffocating recruitment crisis that threatens its internal cohesion: Haredim refuse military service, the Supreme Court pressures to enforce it, reserve soldiers strain the economy, and the ruling coalition lives in constant fear of collapse.

But this internal crisis does not remain confined to the Jewish community alone. In the atmosphere of fascism and the ease of passing racist laws against Arabs, the proposition of recruiting Arabs becomes a present side option, emerging whenever the crisis intensifies, to be presented as a "demand for equality" or a "natural step" – especially after the government’s legal advisor provided a response to a petition demanding the recruitment of Arabs, clarifying that there is no legal barrier to that, and all that is needed is a change in government policy.

Daily media incitement paves the way for this direction: Arab doctors are accused of benefiting from universities without "serving the state"; Arab students are portrayed as beneficiaries with no return because they enter higher education at an early age; even engineers and young professionals are presented as those who benefit from state resources without reciprocating the favor.

Thus, the language changes: from aberrant incitement to a coherent political discourse, and from discourse to parliamentary debate and potential political change.

But the more dangerous aspect is that this path finds cover from within the Arab community. The policy of "the Unified Arab List" has opened the largest gap in the wall of resistance: explicit recognition of the Jewish state as a reality, promoting complete integration as the only solution to our civil problems, and presenting budgets as an end that justifies the means.

In this discourse, linking rights to duties is no longer an Israeli idea alone, but a political option raised from Arab platforms. Along with it, the dividing line between voluntary civil service and police and military service fades away.

Today, we are indeed witnessing an increase in voluntary participation rates in civil and military service, rates that would not exist were it not for a political and social environment that legitimizes them.

These individual cases, when they find a political discourse justifying them, gradually transform into the prelude for a public policy.

The most dangerous aspect is that the recruitment of Arabs is presented not as external coercion, but as an internal "pragmatic" option proposed in Arabic.

The upcoming elections in Israel will place the issue of recruitment at the center of the debate: the crisis of the Haredim, the collapse of reserves, and the socio-economic divide.

Amidst all this, Arabs will be presented as a "yet to be utilized human reservoir", and the argument is ready: "If you want equality in rights, let there also be equality in duties".

This is the greatest danger: that recruitment shifts from a nightmare we unanimously reject to an option marketed by those within our political spectrum.

The bitter truth is that unregulated integration has a price, and the most dangerous price is that we find our sons and daughters tomorrow wearing the army and police uniform, used as fuel in battles that are not theirs.

This is not a fictional scenario, nor a rhetorical scare tactic, but a logical outcome of a path that began with small concessions and will end with existential costs. Thus, citizenship is emptied of identity, cause, and narrative.

Protecting the Arab community cannot be achieved through "realistic" justifications, nor through the pursuit of budget crumbs, but through a clear national discourse, solid political unity, collective organization, and a firm refusal of any equation linking our collective and individual rights with integration into the institutions of the Zionist project.

Either we stop this slip now, or we find ourselves tomorrow in a reality that swallows our children and uses them to address Israel's internal crises.