ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on a broad range of demographic issues associated with the distinctiveness of the Arab population in Israel, at both the society and the community levels of analysis. It outlines the changing levels of inequality between Arabs and Jews in Israel, the role of fertility in reinforcing the position of women in the Arab community, and the centrality of residential segregation in sustaining the social, political, and economic dependency of Arab Israelis. The chapter demonstrates how demographic issues are integral to the understanding of the Arab community in Israeli society and identify the religious, social class, and regional heterogeneity within the Arab-Israeli population. Demography has been central to the unfolding of the changes in Arab Israeli communities, although the population issues of the last decade of the twentieth century are significantly different from those of earlier decades.
