The latest round of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has seen an unusual surge in violence between Palestinian Arabs and Jewish communities living in Israel, drawing attention to the status and future of the 1.9 million Palestinian Arab Israeli citizens, who make up around 21% of the population.

Palestinian Arabs of Israel – also referred to as "48 Arabs," "Palestinian Israelis," or "Arab-Israelis" – are descendants of the 150,000 Palestinians who remained inside the so-called Green Line drawn between Israel and Jordan after the 1948 Palestinian exodus or nakba, which occurred when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were forced to flee during the 1948 war over Israel's establishment.

They include Muslims, Christians, Druze (a religious minority) and Bedouins. In theory, Arab Israelis have the same rights as Jewish Israelis but, in practice, they are treated as second-class citizens and face discrimination in many aspects of their lives.

Last month, in an unprecedented conflict, Arab citizens of Israel took to the streets of Haifa, Lod and other cities in Israel in parallel with Israel’s fourth conflict with the Palestinian Hamas resistance group that rules the Gaza Strip.

The people were on the streets when the conflict intensified and protests erupted in the Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem over the eviction of Palestinian families in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood.

The conflict is not just unresolved, it is not even frozen and the cease-fire will hold until it is tested by a crisis caused by the ongoing discrimination toward Palestinians in Israel, in East Jerusalem and in the occupied territories.

The violence has stopped, but the grievances and bitterness that sparked the unrest are far from resolved.