In Mideast, a Growing Linguistic Divide

Israeli Arab students, who attend separate schools, are required to study Arabic and Hebrew. All Israeli students must pass an English exam to graduate. In the Gaza Strip and West Bank, the Palestinian Authority does not teach Hebrew in public schools.

In a survey commissioned last year by Israel's Education Ministry, Israeli high school teachers said the main challenge in teaching Arabic was the "low image" of the language among Jewish students, a majority of whom said it should no longer be compulsory.

"If you study French, you are part of a sophisticated literary culture," said Shlomo Alon, the ministry's head of Arabic instruction in the Jewish school system for nearly two decades. "That's the true explanation, but no one wants to say it."

On Alon's office door hangs a poster featuring the Arabic alphabet, the insignia of Israel's military intelligence appearing prominently in one corner. The branch gives teachers classroom materials and tests the brightest students in their sophomore year. Only 2.5 percent of Jewish 11th- and 12th-graders choose to study Arabic at the highest level, a number unchanged since the start of the most recent Palestinian uprising six years ago.

Military intelligence recruits serve in safer posts than their classmates in the infantry. The classical Arabic taught in high school does not help with conversation in a language complicated by various dialects. But it is the form used in TV and radio news broadcasts in the Arab world, which the recruits monitor.

"My friends think it's a bit odd that I study Arabic," Vittelson said amid the din of his high school's hallways clearing out for Passover break. "But they are wrong."

Rosh Haayin, a town of 30,000 on Israel's coastal plain, highlights the demographic challenge facing military recruiters as the flow of Jews from Arabic-speaking countries dries up and the first new immigrant generation dies off.

Jews from Yemen, raised speaking Arabic, once dominated Rosh Haayin. But they now account for roughly 10 percent of the population, composed mostly of middle-class Jews with European and Russian backgrounds who have little interest in Arabic. "There are very few native Arabic speakers left in the Jewish population," said Carmit Bar-On, who teaches the language at the high school here. "There is a problem teaching Arabic because there is a problem between Arabs and Jews."

After military service, fewer and fewer Israelis are studying the language in university, threatening the future of some Arabic departments.

At 73, Somekh, the retired professor, is the dean of Arabic studies in Israel. He arrived a native Arabic speaker from Baghdad in 1951 after graduating from high school there. His Arabic classes swelled following the 1973 Middle East war, then dipped when the first Palestinian uprising began in 1987, he said. Since the Oslo accords, enrollment has fallen more than 30 percent, even though, he said, "the threat to Israel is higher than ever."

Reflecting the mood in Israel, he lamented, "A friend of mine tells me we are now a high-tech economy that the Arabs have nothing to do with, so now we can turn our eyes to the West."

Three years ago, after Somekh had stopped teaching full time, the university president told him that he was considering closing the department. "I told him the whole world will say the largest university in Israel just closed its Arabic department," Somekh said. "That scared him. But there is still this feeling of needing to get away from them as far as possible. This is the attitude shown toward Arabs and toward Arabic."