Establishing an Arab only university in Israel is dangerous and would raise the next generation of terrorists, Professor David Bukay of Haifa University warned on Thursday.
Bukay was speaking to Arutz Sheva and was responding to a report earlier this week that the Finance Ministry was examining the possibility of establishing Israel's first Arab university in the Lower Galilee city of Sakhnin.
The Yisrael Hayom newspaper reported that consideration of the possibility was a reason that Finance Minister Yair Lapid and Science and Technology Minister Ya'akov Perry took part in a tour of the city last week.
"An Arab university is a very bad idea,” said Bukay, who warned that such a university would “turn into a nationalistic hotbed.”
“We always want to look beautiful to the world, but this idea is terrible,” he continued. “On the one hand, Israeli Arabs want to enjoy all the goodness of the State of Israel, they are the only ones in the Arab nation living in a democracy, they enjoy the best health services in the world, but they do not want to be ordinary citizens. So why build them a university?”
Bukay warned that “this university will grow the terrorists of the future. At least in the other universities one can prevent their racists from coming and teaching, but an Arab university would put the ‘occupation’ into the curriculum and it would become an ideological and political hotbed.”
Israeli Arabs have the right to vote, serve in the Knesset, study in Israeli universities, share the same hospitals and public facilities and work alongside Israeli Jews. Nevertheless, some Arab Knesset Members ignore this and often claim that Israel uses a policy of apartheid towards Arabs.
At the same time, Arabs have been very upset at a proposal by Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman that would redraw Israel's boundaries and include many Israeli Arabs in a Palestinian state.
The Arab MKs have declared that “there is no way” Israeli Arabs would agree to live under Palestinian Authority rule.