There are many Israeli Arabs holding high positions in the government while others are actively involved and do make a mentionable impact on how things work. Did you know that since 1996, Palestinians have rated the Israeli democracy as the one they find the most admirable in the world? Israel recognizes Arabs as people and treats them as so (World Policy Institute). No one gets to see this because of the lack of accurate information circulating.
People should not end up under the impression that all Arabs are bad people out to destroy Israel. The main problems lie with the extremist Palestinian groups. One of the main extremist groups is known as Hamas, a terrorist organization that rules the Gaza Strip. Contrary to popular belief, the Arabs were not the first people to live and flourish in the land of Israel. It turns out that Jews have inhabited Israel for a good three thousand years (StandWithUs, page 5). Jews and Arabs had mutual tolerance for each other until Theodor Herzl started the modern Zionist movement (My Jewish Learning, sec. 3). Zionism is the belief that Jews should have their own homeland, and in 1917 the British decided to back Zionism with The Balfour Declaration (Jewish Voice for Peace). After the Balfour Declaration the Jewish people started massive immigration to Palestine and the Arabs located in Palestine were incredibly against this movement. A big part of why the British decided to back the Jews was that all the Jewish people had to suffer through the years of terror that the Holocaust brought. They needed a place to go and their old Holy land seemed like the perfect place at the time. .
The British backed out of Palestine because they were getting complaints from both the Jews and the Arabs. The United Nations made a plan to partition Palestine in 1947, it passed the UN with a two-thirds vote (PBS). However the Arabs refused to accept the compromise and on May 14, 1948 Israel declared itself a state with the US and the Soviets approval.
