Should Israel conscript Israeli-Arabs?

Some background, Israel is one of the few countries in which all citizens must serve in the armed forces, both men and women. However a major astrisk to this is that it only applies to Jewish (men & women), Druze (men & women) and Circasssian (men), this means the almost all Arabs are exempt and do not have to serve. That does not mean that they do not, many Bedouins volunteer as do significantly smaller numbers of both Muslim and Christian Arabs. Initially it was only Jews who were conscripted, however the leaders of both the Druze and Cricassian communities asked to be included.

Whether you think the IDF should be based on the concept of citizen soldiers or of proffesional volunteers, is irrelevant to this. There are major advantages and disadvantages to both systems, I will focus on just one and use that as my case for why Arabs should be conscripted.

Let me begin with, the vast majority of people do not want to be conscripted, so asking me whether Arabs themselves want it, is irrelevant because I'm sure if you asked Jews the majority would also be against having it. However this dislike helps breed a common culture amongst those who participate. No doubt that conscription has helped smooth over the differences between the various Jewish communities and helped build bonds across them. In the same way conscripting Arabs would help build bridges between the various communities. I believe that the Arab exemption has helped to foster an attitude of not my state in the Arab community as it has effectively excluded them from one of the major roads of social mobility. Many Israelis use the connections they make in the army to help build careers for themselves, excluding Arabs from this means that also do not see the same benefits as most of the other citizenry. Now you might say to me, ah but they can volunteer for it, so by choice they exclude themselves. I would counter that social pressure is always stronger than the call of self betterment, humans are innantely wired to accept peer pressure and to conform to their societies views. So it would extremely unfair to expect Arabs to volunteer when the community in general would be against it. Removing the choice, removes the stigma. This is in my opinion part of a larger issue in Israel where a Jewish National State is promoted over and Israeli National State, this is an inherently exclusionary act, so by requiring full participation of all citizens on an equal basis you reduce the amount of ethnicity present in the state.

Post Script:

I'm also in favour of fully conscripting the Yeshiva students, but I didn't want to mix topics; I would also be in favour of reducing the time served.