Number of Muslim, Christian Arab volunteers in IDF growing - Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News
New figures made available by the Israel Defense Forces show the number of Muslim and Christian Arab Israeli volunteers in the army is growing.
The deaths of five soldiers from the IDF's Desert Reconnaissance Unit (the so-called Bedouin unit) in an attack on an army outpost near Rafah earlier this month drew public attention to the service of Bedouin in the IDF.
However, the reports on the incident paid little attention to the fact that most of the dead were not Bedouin: Three of the five soldiers killed were Muslim Arabs from villages in the Galilee and Triangle, who had volunteered for military service.
Chief of Staff Moshe Ya'alon paid condolence visits to the three families - the first such visits by a chief of staff.
During one of the visits, Ya'alon shook the hand of a relative of one of the soldiers, a Palestinian woman from Jenin, who had married into the family of the deceased soldier, and had taken up residence in Israel.
While Bedouin have been volunteering for the IDF, primarily as trackers, for dozens of years, Muslim and Christian Arabs have been doing so, on a very small scale, only since the 1990s.
Nevertheless, partial figures given to Haaretz by the IDF indicate a renewed increase in the enlistment of Muslim and Christian youth over the past two years.
The number of Muslim volunteers in 2003 was 64.5 percent higher than in 2000, while the enlistment of Christians increased by 16 percent over the same period.
A senior source at the IDF's Personnel Directorate notes that incomplete figures for 2004 show a further increase, at a rate of some 20 percent, in the enlistment of youth from both sectors.