ON THE ARABIC IN ISRAEL

In this article an attempt is made to shed light on the unique status of the Arabic language, both spoken and written, in Israel. Arabic is de jure the second official language in the State of Israel, but de facto it is marginal. By 1948 Hebrew had become in fact the only official and dominant language in Israel. In the 1950s all the Jewish attempts to persuade the Arabs in Israel to write their literature in Hebrew, to learn only Hebrew or to write Arabic in Hebrew characters failed. In the summer of 2008 right-wing Jewish members of the Knesset also failed to strip Arabic of its status as an official language.