(Agencies)
Updated: 2007-11-12 11:01

National service originally was designed for religious Jewish women who did not want to serve in a coed military, but several years ago the government opened the program to Arabs. The idea has gained traction recently after signs of growing Israeli Arab alienation, and this summer an agency was established to attract more recruits.

The number has risen thanks to word of mouth as young people completing their service encourage others to sign up, said Reuven Gal, director of Israel's national service program.

Volunteers serve for one year, and can add another year if they so choose. That's shorter than army service, which is three years for men and two years for women.

Abu Rumi, a Muslim who lives in the northern village of Tamra, decided to do national service to become eligible for schooling benefits. But he finds the program, where he helps severely disabled Jewish and Arab children, has done much more for him.

"I opened up to the world," he said. Before national service, he rarely ventured outside his village. Now, he said, he counts as friends Jews and Arabs from the Druse and Christian communities, groups that tend to live in separate towns or neighborhoods.

His local community is unforgiving. "I've been called a traitor," he said.

Arab newspaper editorials malign those who do national service, and Abu Rumi says he avoids talking about it with strangers.

When he rides the bus from his village to the Jewish town of Kiryat Ata to do national service, he's entering a different world.

According to government statistics, an Israeli Arab worker earns $1,270 a month on average, while Jews make nearly 50 percent more; unemployment among Israeli Arabs is 11 percent, compared with 8 percent for Jews; Fifty-one percent of Arabs live under the poverty line, compared with 15 percent of Jews.

"If Israel was a state for all its citizens, and my son was equal to the son of a Jew, then discussion of national service would be legitimate," said Nadim Nashif, director of an Arab youth group. "But when I'm this far below, this issue shouldn't be raised."

Gal, the national service director, said those gaps are precisely what the program is designed to narrow.

"The youngsters will benefit a lot, the community will get a lot ... and the entire Israeli society will benefit. You (the Arabs) will become a part of Israeli society and contribute to integration," Gal said.

Arab leaders say the argument is misguided, pointing to Israel's Druse, an Islamic sect. The Druse identify with Israel, their men are drafted, yet their salaries and education levels are similar to other Arabs, not the Jews they serve alongside.

Zahalka sees national service as the "loyalty of the victim to his master."

But 18 months into national service, Abu Rumi says he's glad to have contributed something to himself and his community.

"I'm still an Arab," he said. "And I would never join the army. In the army, my hand would hold a gun. Here, in national service, I extend my hand to help."

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