Dr. Dalia Fadila, an Arab Israeli of Palestinian descent, focuses her career on improving life for Arabs in Israel. Through education in schools she created, Arab students learn progressive values to lead social change. She encourages them not to define themselves by the Israel/Palestine conflict.
Many people are working to improve life for the Arab citizens of Israel and advance Arab society. One of them is Fadila — an Arab Israeli of Palestinian heritage, a mother, founder of her own set of schools, and the first female dean of an Islamic college in Israel. ." After Israel became a country in 1948, her family stayed, and Tira became an Arab Israeli town.
"No place is perfect, and no state around the world is perfect. And even the U.S., which is the torch of freedom and democracy, had its hard times, to put it as an understatement. But there has definitely been growth here for the Arab community." She also struggled with balancing her various, seemingly clashing identities as an Arab, Muslim, Israeli woman of Palestinian descent.
After reading this story and beginning her Ph.D., it clicked. Fadila looked at herself as the subject, essentially viewing herself as Sirine, and realized like this character, she could embrace all her seemingly contradictory identities by hyphenating them. Fadila said Arabs in Israel haven't yet mastered the hyphenated identity since Israel's establishment, causing them to remain in a state of turmoil and confusion.
Fadila was determined to help Arab Israelis understand these concepts while becoming highly educated productive members of Israeli society — and it's been an ongoing journey mostly involving investing in education. Fadila was working to invest in Arab Israelis education before she even graduated college. In fact, during her time at the university, Fadila worked in the high school in Tira she had once attended. She says she worked to empower her students through English literature.
"And then I realized I need to start from the place of investing in early childhood education and growing an alternative system.", or Quality-Schools — schools that enable marginalized communities to access high-quality, holistic, and humanist education from preschool to high school. Q-Schools specifically serve Arab children in Israel, and through English, students learn progressive values.
Creating schools for early education also helps Fadila's feminist goals— to improve life for Arab women. She says in Arab society, women are mostly expected to stay home and take care of their children to the age of five, so she sees creating these schools as a social revolution. While young children are in school learning, their mothers can pursue education and employment.
Fadila said through her work, she sees the significant amount of budgeting being used to invest in Arab schools through the municipalities in Jerusalem and the Ministry of Education. In addition, she says that considerable funds are being used to support Arab men and women, making higher education accessible to Arab Israelis, and scholarships are being distributed.
"In times of conflict, your country is against your people. And this is difficult," Fadila said."It's complicated to be in such a position where you identify with your people, but you also identify with your country. And you realize that you are within this country, and as long as this country is safe, you are safe. But you also want your people to be safe."
"It's as if we [Arab minority] are on hold, waiting until there is kind of a resolution — a two-state resolution and Palestine is independent — and as if there is no legitimacy to whatever investment we have to do for our infrastructure, resources, economy, even cultivation of a kind of a culture of our own," Fadila said.
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