Abstract
Abstract
The status of Arabic in Israel gives rise to question. Israel is a rare case of
an ethnic nation-state that grants the language of minority group with a
legal status which is prima facie one of equality. Both Hebrew and Arabic
are the official languages of the State of Israel. What are the reasons for
this special state of affairs? The answer is threefold: historic, sociological
and legal. In various ways the potential inherent in the legal status of
Arabic has been depleted of content, and as a result of that, as well as
other reasons, the socio-political status of Arabic closely resembles what
you would expect the status of a language of a minority group in a state
that identifies itself as the state of the majority group to be. This answer,
however, is another source of puzzlement how does such a dissonance
between law and practice evolve, what perpetuates it for so long, is change
possible, is it to be expected?
We present an analysis of the legal status of Arabic in Israel and at the
same time we proceed to try and answer the questions regarding the gap
between the legal and the sociopolitical status of Arabic. We reach some
of our answers through a comparison with the use of law to change the status of the French language in Canada. One of these answers is that
given the present constellation in Israel, the sociopolitical status of Arabic
cannot meaningfully be altered by legal means.
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