This study explores the relationship between political control of ethnic minority and political violence. A quantitative analysis of an original and systematic database of protest events of Arab citizens in Israel between 1990 and 2000 has found that heightened police repression of Arab protest was locally concentrated. To illustrate, 76% of all injured protesters from police shootings occurred in five exclusively Arab towns (Nazareth, Umm al-Fahm, Sakhnin, Arrabe, and Kafr Kanna), where only 24% of all protest events took place and whose aggregated population accounted for 12.7% of the Arab population in 2001. According to a regression analysis, the major determinant of state violence toward Arab protesters was the locality's political orientation. The locality's political orientation was operationalized as the relative power Arab political parties enjoyed in the local council. In other words, the more politicized local political elites are, the more likely it is that political violence will take place.
In addition to the statistical analysis, I also used a qualitative method: a structured, focused comparison. Accordingly, six Israeli towns were selected and arranged into three pairs. Each pair includes one repression-prone town and one repression-free town. To ensure I did not compare “apples and oranges,” each pair is matched on geographical location and socio-demographic characteristics, such as population size, proportion of Muslims in the population, and socioeconomic status. The first pair – Umm al-Fahm and Tayibe – is most tightly controlled. The second pair – Nazareth and Shefa’amer – is based on all controls, except population size (Nazareth’s population is almost twice Shefa’amer’s). The third pair – Sakhnin and Tamra – is based on all controls, save for proportion of Muslims (Sakhnin has a sizable Christian minority).
In this study, I demonstrate that in repression-prone towns (Umm al-Fahm, Nazareth and Sakhnin), local political elites were affiliated with nationwide Arab political movements, whereas in repression-free towns (Tayibe, Shefa’amer and Tamra), political elites were largely associated with local clans. I argue then that the Israeli state perceived the population in repression-prone towns as outside the scope of its political control, which in turn raised the state's threat perception, thus bringing the police to use excessive force against protesters in those towns. The argument in this paper is based on two assumptions: first, the state of Israel has always viewed the ethno-national politicization of the Arab minority as a political threat. The second assumption is that the Israeli state has deployed various tactics to weaken and undermine the Arab leadership in order to facilitate its control of Arab society, including a continuous effort to deepen the religious and kinship fragmentation among the Arab leadership and strengthen its dependency on the state through association with Jewish-Zionist political parties. This study contributes to the literature on political violence because it argues that political considerations – or the fear of losing political control over non-dominant populations – are what shape the state’s resort to violence.
