Israel President Reuven Rivlin Floats Plan for New ‘Arab City’
Israeli President Reuben Rivlin called for the building of a new city to accommodate Israel’s growing Arab minority.
Rivlin met Thursday at his residence with 50 Arab local council heads and mayors and discussed integration and development, according to his office.
Rivlin called for the creation of a new Arab city, and for schools to “continue to deepen the integration of the Arabic language in all our children’s educations.”
“Today the Arab minority is no longer such a minority, and there is a need to realign the system of local government to include balance between all sectors of Israeli society,” the president said.
The mayors agreed to create a working group managed by the president’s Office to seek out solutions. Mazen Ghanaian, the mayor of Sakhnin and the head of the committee for Arab municipalities, called for Rivlin’s help in addressing unemployment.
“We have come to ask for your intervention, mainly in the growing unemployment among Arab men, which is a phenomenon plaguing all parts of the country,” Ghanaian said. “We, as mayors, are facing claims made by citizens who demand education and employment.”
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
