Abraham Initiatives Conference on Mixed Cities | “Between Civil Partnership and Tense Quiet”

At the beginning of September, the 4th Annual Mixed Cities Conference, organized by Abraham Initiatives, was held under the title “Between Civil Partnership and Tense Quiet.” The speakers and participants discussed the changing realities in the mixed cities since October 7, the profound shock felt in areas where Jews and Arabs live and work together, and the success of Jewish-Arab partnership initiatives in preventing violence.

The relative calm in Israel between Jewish and Arab citizens during the ongoing war has been praised, especially in contrast to the violence of 2021 in mixed cities. This year’s conference aimed to examine the factors contributing to this calm. Is it a product of voluntary restraint, or is it the result of an imposed sense of fear and lack of personal security among Arab citizens? And who bears responsibility for maintaining this quiet — political leadership or civil society organizations?

According to Adv. Abeer Baker of Haifa University, the silencing of Arab society during this time comes from both the government and self-suppression: “Restricting freedom of expression is suppressing my identity. I am silenced not because I have an opinion that is difficult to hear. A Jew who expressed the same opinion faced no repercussions. What created the fear leading to silence — it’s not just the arrests due to statements but also the visibility of the arrests. The feeling in Arab society is that it has no one to rely on, certainly not the police.”

The ongoing war and the uncertainty regarding its implications for Jewish-Arab relations have put civil society organizations in a position of increased relevance. Dr. Shani Payes from Abraham Initiatives presented research examining the activities of local leadership and civil society organizations in preventing conflicts between Jews and Arabs over the past year, as part of the “Guardians of Partnership” program. This program is a collaboration between Abraham Initiatives, the Social Justice Centers, and Givat Haviva, based on conclusions from research conducted after the events of May 2021. According to this research, it is crucial to create coordination and cooperation among three key stakeholders: the community and civil society, the municipality, and the police. Dr. Payes’ conclusion is that this coalition enabled the calming of tensions and the prevention of violence. Notably, the solidarity and shared responsibility of organizations, activists, and local leaders—who organized well and operated networks for reporting and preventing cases of violence—stood out. One of the initiatives in the coalition is a technological tool for identifying inciting discourse in neighborhood WhatsApp groups, a development of the organization Fake Reporter.

During a panel discussion, Achiya Schatz, founder and CEO of Fake Reporter, explained: “There were many false reports circulating on social media; we trained dozens of Jewish and Arab activists to identify inciting content, remove it, and stop organized attacks. We held shifts for fact-checking and even managed to thwart Iranian and Russian campaigns masquerading as religious Jewish organizations trying to encourage people to attack Arabs in Israel.”

Israel has eight mixed cities; however, according to Amnon Be’eri-Sulitzeanu, CEO of Abraham Initiatives: “In practice, all cities are becoming mixed as citizens from Arab society move to various cities due to a lack of housing solutions. However, there is no public policy in Israel that defines what it means for a city to become mixed. What is expected of the police in a mixed city, or of the educational and welfare systems?”

In the final panel, three elected officials from mixed cities participated: Reja Shaada, a member of Haifa’s council, and Amir Badran and Chen Ariel, members of the Tel Aviv-Jaffa council. The three shared their activities to prevent escalation and their attempts to influence municipalities to collaborate with civil society organizations.

Anat Saragusti, a journalist and member of the executive committee of Abraham Initiatives, who moderated one of the panels, summarized: “Without Jewish-Arab partnership, we have no social resilience in Israel.”