COVID-19 Crisis in the Israeli-Arab Society
Kiril Moskalev and Marian Tehawkho
At the time of writing this paper, over a month since the onset of the COVID-19 crisis in Israel, the two population groups which were indicated as having the highest risk of an outbreak are located on opposite ends of the spectrum: Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) localities exhibit the highest disease rates, significantly higher than the general population, whereas the Arab (including Muslim, Druze and Christian) localities have the lowest rates. This is because COVID-19 reached the Arab population at a much later stage than the general Israeli population, when awareness of the virus was already high, and the economy was already heading into lockdown. Moreover, contrary to the Haredi society, Arab religious leaders and heads of local authorities were fully cooperative in maintaining procedures and observing instructions. There are a few Arab localities which have high infection rates, where the disease was brought in by local residents who had contracted it in their workplace and then infected their immediate environment, leading to relatively fast outbreaks in these localities.