Ha’aretz articles on Israeli discrimination against Arabs
U.S. chides Israel for religious
bias
We're Here to Help You, Unless
You're Arab
Air conditioning for Jews only
'Israeli Arab security prisoners
discriminated against'
Are Arabs Included in 'Everyone'?
Ethnic Discrimination Against
Palestinians Must End
In Israel, 'Public' Is a Synonym
for 'Jews'
Ha’aretz
Editorial
13
December 2000
The
prevailing view holds that Israeli Arabs won't go the extra mile to help Ehud
Barak win the elections. The proximity
of the balloting to October's violent clashes in which 12 Arab citizens were
killed by police, along with bitter disappointment regarding Barak's policies,
will result in a low Arab turnout in the special election for the prime
minister, that view predicts.
But
even before the violence in the North, Ehud Barak displayed a reserved, cold
attitude toward Israeli Arabs, underestimating them as an election
constituency. Barak apparently viewed the Arab population and its delegates as
a public which would support him under any circumstances, if only because he is
the candidate who conveys a message of peace.
As a practical matter, Barak was wary of Arab support, viewing it as a
burden liable to stain his government.
To
hold Barak accountable for all of the woes suffered by Israeli Arabs would be
an exaggeration. A series of reports
written for Ha'aretz by Lily Galili and Ori Nir on mixed Jewish-Arab towns and
cities has shown that there has been a consistent policy for the past 52 years
of viewing Israeli Arabs as enemies to be kept at bay. That perception was responsible for
political, economic and social measures which discriminated against Arab
citizens - one carved out for a minority which is tolerated but suspect.
The
series of articles documented the discrimination: Funds were not allocated for
the construction of special cultural facilities for Arabs; no new Arab
community (needless to say, no new Arab city) has been established since 1948;
most Israeli Arabs who live in mixed cities such as Acre, Haifa, Lod and Ramle
live in state-owned housing; most educational facilities in these
cities
almost entirely neglect the special needs posed by Arab pupils and Arab
culture. Thus, for example, Arab pupils
in Haifa attend private schools, and Acre students go to schools in nearby
villages. In the most indigent cases, such as Ramle's Juwarish neighborhood,
Lod's Harakevet neighborhood and even Jaffa's Ajami quarter, Arab citizens'
places of residence resemble those which are found in the most squalid refugee
camps.
Since
Israel's establishment, much creative thought has gone into devising ways of
hindering the Arab population's growth, and of keeping the population rooted at
sites slated for it, via deliberate
settlement and demographic policies. In
a large, mixed city such as Be'er Sheva, the municipality refuses to establish
an Arab school and construct a mosque, little matter that the town is
classified as a binational metropolitan area.
The construction of mitzpim, hilltop communities, in the Galilee, was
designed to create a buffer between Jewish and Arab populations. During the 1950s, new Jewish immigrants from
Arab countries were sent to live in mixed cities, or border-line areas, so that
they would serve as a barrier stopping Arab population growth. And in the 1990s
new immigrants from the former Soviet Union replaced their 1950s forerunners,
and were dispatched to neighborhoods abutting Arab areas in mixed cities.
Israel's
government has a new plan to support the Arab minority, one which calls for
investments on its behalf that would total around $4 billion over a number of
years. At first glance, this program is full of potential for social and
economic progress for the country's Arab population. Yet if it isn't accompanied by a new, comprehensive change of
attitude whereby Israeli Arabs are seen as full partners who have equal rights,
this program is not likely to alleviate the feelings of alienation that plague the Arab community.
= =
= = =
By
David Ratner Ha'aretz Correspondent
21
September 2000
An
annual report prepared by the U.S. State Department's Democracy, Human Rights
and Labor division criticizes Israel for unfair treatment of Arabs, for
vandalism and discrimination against Christian groups and non-Orthodox Jewish
streams, and for sanctions against Muslim citizens who want to go to Mecca on
hajj pilgrimages.
This
second edition of the State Department report, entitled "2000 Annual
Report on International Religious Freedom," was released two weeks
ago. It comes in response to a emand
made by U.S. Congressmen that the status of Christian groups around the globe
be reviewed, to ascertain whether they suffer from discrimination or
persecution. Larry Schwartz, a spokesman
for the U.S. Embassy in Israel, confirmed that the report's findings are
relayed to governments in the countries reviewed by it.
The
first section of the report's review of Israel provides a demographic breakdown
of religious groups in the country. In
the second section, which deals with government-sponsored restrictions of
religious freedom, the report claims that the state of Israel provides lower
quality services and opportunities in education, housing, employment and other
spheres to non-Jewish
citizens,
who make up 20 percent of the population.
The
report charges that government programs drafted to reduce gaps between the
Jewish and Arab sectors have not been implemented. It details protests
registered by Israeli Arab
organizations against plans to "Judaize" the Galilee. It
emphasizes that government allocations made through the Religious Affairs
Ministry are highly uneven, with only 2 percent of this money going to the
non-Jewish sector.
Striking
one positive chord, this second section praises last March's Supreme Court
ruling against Jewish Agency policies of restricting land sales to non-Jews.
The
report's writers note their inability to determine whether discrimination
against "non-Jews" in Israel stems from religious sources. They acknowledge
that full freedom of religious worship is protected in the country.
As
in last year's report, the 2000 survey deals with harassment and vandalism
against various religious groups in Israel. Giving special emphasis to the
plight of Jehovah's Witnesses, this year's report says that 120 complaints
submitted to the police by members of this sect in 1998 and 1999 went
unanswered. The report also notes that Reform and Conservative synagogues
have
been the targets of vandalism in Israel.
In
a special passage relating to restrictions hampering hajj pilgrimages to Mecca,
the report claims that age limits are enforced (allowing departure only of
Muslim pilgrims older than 30), and that hajj pilgrims who leave for Syria
without authorization are not allowed to return to Israel.
Asked
by Ha'aretz to respond to these State Department findings about hajj
restrictions, the Interior Ministry spokesman clarified that security officials
set criteria for departures for Saudi Arabia.
The ministry is not aware of cases in which return clearance was denied
to pilgrims who left the country without authorization, he said.
= =
= = =
By
Baruch Kra, Ha'aretz
Thursday,
November 18, 1999
[A
cafe for youth in distress run by the Jerusalem municipality has a clear
admission policy: No Arabs allowed]
Five
youths stood outside a downtown Jerusalem cafe, as they do every day. While
smoking cigarettes and casually flirting with passing women, they spotted two
figures approaching. "Here come the Border Police again," says
16-year-old F. of Ramallah. "No kidding," answered 18-year-old R. of
Wadi Joz. When F. asked "How much do you wanna bet?," the policemen
were
close
by, and the youths, for the fourth time that evening, automatically reached
into their back pockets and pulled out their identity cards. The Border Policeman and his colleague, a
civilian policeman, checked the identity cards one by one. None of the youths actually lives at the
addresses listed on the identity card. Most
have run away or been kicked out of those addresses.
Since
then, they have been hanging out on the streets and in public parks in western
Jerusalem, some in a gang and others alone.
Finally
M.'s turn came. "Where are you from?" the Border Policeman asked.
"Pisgat Ze'ev," the boy answered.
The policeman looked at him suspiciously. He checked the identity card.
That was what it said. Apart from the
boy's accent, it was impossible to tell that he, unlike most of the boys
sitting that night on the steps beside the cafe, was Jewish. He was not the only Jewish
boy
who hangs out with the Arab boys.
Sometimes other Jewish boys came out of the cafe and joined the group on
the steps. Occasionally the Arab boys
asked the Jewish boys to go into the cafe and buy them a cup of coffee or a
sandwich because they are not allowed to go in.
Once
they were allowed to sit at Koreh b'Cafeh - a coffee shop in an alley off the
Nahalat Shiva pedestrian mall but that policy has changed. Hardly an ordinary cafe, Koreh b'Cafeh
belongs to the Jerusalem municipality and is a project run by the youth welfare
assistance department.
It
opened around a year ago when the department, which used to send social workers
and counselors to points where alienated youth would congregate, decided to
change its tack: Instead of investing energies and resources in attempts to
find youths in pubs, clubs, on the streets and in public parks, it decided to
open an alternative place to hang out with subsidized prices. The
managers
of this cafe would be trained youth counselors and social workers. The plan worked; every night youths in need
of care arrive there. The seven staff
members attempt to direct the boys, who are separated in varying degrees from
their families, to places that can help them: hostels, professional counseling,
educational institutions and others.
Until
four months ago, Arab boys could also benefit from the initiative. But after a
few months of activity, the youth welfare department, which is headed by
Shabtai Amedi, decided to ban entry of Arab.
Why? At a certain point, Amedi said, "it became clear that some
youths were coming, who weren't the age the cafe caters to, and they were not
in need of care; their main interest was that there were young (Jewish - B.K.)
women in distress there."
"We
started noticing," said Jocelyn Vaknin, the department's supervisor for
the city center, "that (Jewish - B.K.) young women were hitchhiking rides
to Ramallah, 15- and 16-year-old girls and even 14-year-olds."
"They
(the Arabs - B.K.) told me in all seriousness," Amedi relates, "that
the cafe is the only place where they can pick up Jewish girls. They also
brought drugs into the place." Has Amedi as a professional not encountered
young Jewish criminals who use or push drugs? "Yes," responds Amedi,
"but you have to understand that the Arabs operate as a gang. Therefore, we
considered
the matter and thought that it might be better to close the cafe. We reached
the point where we feared the café would cause more harm than good. We were
afraid we would find young women in the Arab villages."
At
that point, the youth welfare department temporarily closed the cafe. After a
month, a solution was found: a membership card. The department decided that only a population that was
"therapeutically suited" to the cafe would be eligible for membership
cards. The Arab population, it was decided, was not appropriate. Amedi notes:
"Of course, it was all done politely
and
without being offensive."
This
is how the polite step seemed to R., of Wadi Joz: "After they told us that
a membership card is necessary, we came to Salameh (the caseworker for the Arab
sector at the time in the youth welfare office - B.K.) and said 'okay, we also
want membership cards.' He said to us 'come back in a week.' Every time,
Salameh said, 'soon, soon, until one day, he just disappeared. We asked the
counselors if we could go in and they told us 'No, the Arabs can't come
in.'" The departure of the department's veteran Arab sector welfare
counselor eliminated any possibility of the Arab youth being again permitted to
enter the cafe.
"It's
racism, simply apartheid," says Samia Shibli, a social worker from the
Arab sector and a volunteer at Elem, the organization for distressed
youth. "There's no other way to
explain it. And what hurts the most is that this is racism coming from the
welfare system. They aren't barring the youngsters from entering because they
did something, but because they're Arabs."
The
message the youth get, Shibli argues, is a very dangerous one in terms of the
formation of their identity. "It gives them permission to do
anything," says Faras Abu Shamaa, a social worker at Elem and Avi (the
International Children's Rights organization). "These boys have lost their
trust in everyone and now they've also lost their trust in the social welfare
system."
"The
Arab population that came here," Amedi insists, "was not looking for
an answer. They mostly saw the place as
a drug hangout. They didn't want any kind of care."
And
youths seeking to do drugs are not distressed youth?
"We
reached the conclusion that we couldn't meet their care requirements. We also
decided the ultra-Orthodox aren't appropriate for this kind of care." That
is Amedi's proof that his motives are purely professional.
"I
wouldn't want to take responsibility for the fact that women are showing up in
villages around Ramallah," Vaknin says.
But the young men and women continue to meet in Zion Square, in
Independence Park, the Mahaneh Yehuda market and also in front of the cafe.
"Inside the cafe," says Shibli, "it might actually have been
possible to establish a different type of connection
between
the young men and women that is not based on exploitation." The minute the young women leave the cafe,
they meet the Arab boys on the streets directly, without counselors and social
workers. "As far as I understand it, a welfare department should solve
problems, not ignore them," Shibli says. "The Jewish boys also take
advantage of the girls, so will they kick them out of the cafe too?"
Amedi
claims that while the cafe was open to Arab patrons, "80-90 percent of the
Jewish boys stopped coming." The Jewish boys describe it slightly
differently: "We would sit together with them like brothers, it was
great," says 16-year-old S. "I don't understand why they took them
out." There were violent incidents, he acknowledges, but those also
happened among the Jews
themselves
and among the Arabs themselves. "I took a cup of coffee out for my
friend," says 17-year-old B., "so they kicked me out. They told me
they don't want the Arabs to come here."
"When
I see them sitting outside," says 16-year-old N., who is formerly
religious (another distressed segment that hangs out in these parts of
Jerusalem), "it hurts me."
It
is a unique population. Some of the alienated Arab youth roam around the
eastern section of the city, but these - around 40 known ones - run to the
western part. Some come from broken
homes, some have run away from abusive parents, some have emotional problems,
most have dropped out of school. They want to be as far away as possible from
their families. Therefore
Amedi
should not be surprised when the boys rejected his idea of compensating them
with a parallel cafe in the eastern part of the city.
N.,
a 17-year-old, is desperate. A week ago he ran away from home again. At night, he usually rotates among the
publicparks. "I stay awake all night and only in the morning go to
sleep," he says, "I'm afraid I'll be raped." He ran away from his father, a former Shin
Bet collaborator in Jerusalem who is now a drug dealer and living in the
el-Arub refugee camp, who beat and severely abused him. "No one cares
where I am," he says, "all I want is to tell the world what I'm
experiencing and then to commit suicide."
They
are all boys. Some are exploited laborers working in the market, garages or
other jobs, some are light, social drug users.
Some of them, the really tough cases, are involved in commercial sexual
exploitation. There is also another reason for their flight to the western part
of the city: the boys want to enjoy a little of the west's pleasures, which
don't exist in the Old City, on the Mount of Olives or in Silwan. However,
these urges do not change the definition of these youths from distressed youth
to just youths seeking entertainment. That, nevertheless, is how the youth
welfare department views them.
The
cafe is just one example of the neglect of Arab youth in Jerusalem - primarily
the ones who wander from the eastern to the western part of the city. Initially, the welfare department tried to
deal with this group. A social worker from the eastern section was assigned to
each one. When the cafe opened, he would meet them there. "This effort was unsuccessful,"
Amedi says, "these boys just didn't want to receive treatment." Since the employee decided to quit, no
replacement has been found. The boys
have been left without any authorized body to care for them.
The
group is comprised of sub-groups: the first and largest is those who are
defined as residents. They are entitled to all welfare and other services
provided by the Jerusalem municipality.
The second largest group consists of residents of the Palestinian
Authority. According to international
conventions, Israel must also care for these youngsters. Shibli claims neither the Israeli nor
Palestinian authorities care for them at all.
She plans to approach Umm Jihad, the PA social welfare minister,
directly with a request to deal with this phenomenon. The third largest group is Arab youths who are Israeli
citizens. The common denominator is
that none gets any of the care available to Jewish youth. None of them is
allowed to enter Koreh b'Cafeh.
"Apart
from the usual problems of such youth," says Michal Ben Arye, the
coordinator of the Elem mobile assistance unit in Jerusalem, "these are
kids who experienced the Intifada period as children. This affected their identity very much. A specially trained staff is needed to earn their trust."
Once
again, Elem is the only organization that seems to be on top of the
situation. But it has no therapeutic
authorities. After the staff of its
nighttime mobile assistance unit noticed the growing incidence of neglected
Arab youths in the western section of the city, they decided to launch a project
which would employ a full-time social worker and later would set up a support
and
counseling
center. Elem workers approached the
youth welfare department and promised to share the expenses equally. The project was approved, but a suitable
social worker and the funds to finance one have yet to be found.
= =
= = =
By
Einat Fishbain, Ha'aretz
26
September 1999
[Many
Arab job-seekers are labeled as 'job-refusers' when they are sent by the dozens
to inappropriate workplaces and rejected by their prospective bosses.]
The
Employment Bureau offices in Upper Nazareth are divided every week, on Mondays
and Tuesdays, into two sections. One section is for Jews from the town; the
other, for Arabs from Ein Ma'ahal. The
Jews get a large room with air conditioning, three clerks, bathrooms, a water
cooler and rows of chairs with a stunning view of the Jezreel Valley. The Arabs get a small room, a single clerk,
no bathroom, no water, a small air-conditioner that can barely be felt and
dozens trying to fit inside a room that can barely hold 20 people. On the
Jewish side, people are
assigned
a number, and can sit inside until they are called. On the Arab side, the unemployed receive a handwritten number and
have to wait outside in the sun, where there are neither chairs nor water. At the end of August the unemployed of Ein
Ma'ahal, approximately 500 people, were moved from the Employment Bureau office
in Nazareth to an office in Upper Nazareth. The Nazareth office had consisted
of a large, windowless room at the end of a long dark corridor in the basement
of the local Mashbir Lezarchan department store - hot, cramped, and dirty, and
used to handle a total of 4,500 unemployed in what even the Employment Service
admits are "difficult physical conditions."
At
first it seemed that the partial solution to the crowding for the estimated 500
unemployed of Ein Ma'ahal would be pleasant accommodations in Upper
Nazareth. But this would not be so.
What they did get was a separate room at the back of a building that serves
part-time as an office for unemployed academics.
The
walls are covered with job offers and instructions regarding the rights of the
unemployed - but all the notices are in Hebrew and Russian. There's not a word in Arabic. The room
serves a few dozen academics who come in for a few minutes a week, and deals
twice a week with hundreds of Arabs, who spend hours waiting their turn. Sometimes, to relieve the boredom of the
wait, they knock on the glass doors of the waiting room for unemployed Jews,
until a security guard comes and gives them permission to use the bathroom, or
they simply stare through the glass doors at the unemployed Jews.
"The
women stand here for hours from the morning," said Wahaba Badarna from
Ma'an, the Workers Guidance Center, a social rights organization. "Some
170 women come every Wednesday, sometimes with children in their arms, without
a place to sit, without a toilet facility for them." It didn't take long
for the villagers to rebel. At the Employment
Service they promised to move the women to the large room now serving the Jews
only. But last Wednesday, the women
were still eating in front of the small office, like the men.
Shmuel
Shukrun, who runs the Employment Service's Jezreel Valley district, wrote
"I'm convinced that there was no worsening of conditions (compared to the
Nazareth offices).
On
the contrary: a) the Upper Nazareth office is closer to Ein Ma'ahal; b) it's
cheaper to get to the Upper Nazareth by public transport; c) there is a larger
reservoir of jobs and job training available through the Upper Nazareth office;
d) there's intensive treatment of the unemployed at the Upper Nazareth
office. Many resources were shifted to
the Upper Nazareth area, at the expense of other parts of the district. The job seekers from Ein Ma'ahal are handled
in the department that deals with academics, which is an inseparable part of
the bureau."
"Thanks,
but we'd rather go back to Nazareth," says job-seeker Habib Ala al Hamad,
61, complaining that he needs to take two buses to get to Upper Nazareth and
that often, people without money have to walk the entire way. "They invite
all the unemployed of the village - more than 400 people - on the same
day. There aren't enough chairs for
everyone, only for 20. I'm number 111 today, but because I'm considered old,
they let me sit down. People stand here
from 8 in the morning. We aren't asking for a movie theater or a fancy
office. But a chair in the
yard
and a water faucet would be nice. Now they opened a duct for air conditioning
from the main room, but you have to blow to feel it. But that was nice of
them."
An
unwanted record "We lead the country in unemployment," says Ein
Ma'ahal council chair Tawfik Habib Alla.
“Number one, for the second year in a row. We have 17.7 percent unemployment in a village of 9,000. Once we were close to the national average,
say 7, or at the most 8-9 percent. But
most people work in construction and because of the recession, many lost their
jobs. In recent years there have also been some factory closings, as the plants
move to Jordan."
The
unemployed of Ein Ma'ahal remember all the factories that have closed. They remember the textile plant in Nazareth
that employed 30 women, the irrigation pipe factory that had 12 workers, the
textile plant that employed more than 100.
Hamzi
Alouan, deputy to Alla, says the unemployment problem began in 1975 when the
state expropriated land from the village.
"They took our main source of livelihood, farming. When more than
8,000 dunam were expropriated, the livelihood of the people, their profession,
was also taken away. We had only 4,000
dunam left, and peasants went to work in construction, to find out that their
only certainty was either employment or the dole on the 28th of the month."
The
villagers, many of whom can't afford to pay their city taxes, spend their time
listlessly waiting for their weekly visit to the Employment Service
bureau. Few come back from Upper
Nazareth with jobs. Many come back with
the ominous "job-refuser" written on their card. That means that they lose a month of
unemployment payments, with the payments only resuming three months later, and
lose their right to job training courses.
Social
rights organizations report that in the last year hundreds of complaints from
both Jews and Arabs have accumulated on their desks. The complaints are about
what appears to be the almost capricious method by which Employment Service
clerks decide that an unemployed person turned down a job offer, making them a
“job-refuser."
The
stories are many and varied and point to a decidedly tougher policy by the
services. An unemployed woman who asked that she be allowed to start work half
an hour later in order to take her child to kindergarten was immediately
stamped job-refuser. A programmer who
asked for permission to show a proposed contract to his lawyer got the same
treatment. An elderly immigrant with a 30 percent disability was told by a
bureau clerk that the disability didn't count, and was stamped a refuser
because a putative employer called the disabled man "inappropriate"
for the job.
There's
been a 10 percent rise since last year in the number of those declared
job-refusers. That's totally out of proportion to the overall rise in
unemployment. In May and June the number of job rejectors jumped 13.4 percent -
even though the unemployment rate remained the same. The national average of
job rejectors is 4.3 percent. In the
Employment Service they say that Arabs reject jobs at a lower rate than Jews,
so the rejector rate among them is only 3.5 percent. But those same figures show that Ein Ma'ahal had a 13.4 percent
job rejection rate in August - 61 out of 454 unemployed. It's another national
record for the sleepy Galilee village.
Ihlas
Abu Layel has a piece of paper the bureau gave her sending her to work in early
September to work as a waitress. When she showed up to what she was told would
be a cafeteria, it turned out to be a night club that works from 6 at night to
3 in the morning and because of the hours, the owner wanted only male waiters. He wrote on her form that she was
"inappropriate."
"I
went back to the bureau in Upper Nazareth and they immediately stamped me as a
job-rejector," says Abu Layel.
"But I want to work. He was the one who said he wanted only men.
But the service keeps sending him women.
My sister, too, got sent to him. And he tells them all he doesn't need
them." She speaks only Arabic,
though she does know a few Hebrew words: "form,"
"rejector," "inappropriate."
Belated
justice She's a veteran at disappointment. In August 1998 she was sent with 30
other women from the village to work in a olive grove near Beit She'an. They showed up at 6 in the morning at the
Nazareth bureau, as instructed, but the contractor never showed up. The next day they waited again, and again
the contractor didn't show. Because there was nobody to sign her slip, the next
time she showed up at the bureau, she was stamped a job-rejector. For months she didn't make it to an appeals
committee, until the Workers Guidance Center heard of her case and took matters
into their hands, going to the regional Labor Court. Nearly a year after the
failed job in the olive grove, she and 20 other women were reinstated as
legitimately unemployed.
"They
should start checking the contractors and those who ask for workers," says
Bazam Hanni Abu Layel, one of the men crowding the Upper Nazareth offices.
"A contractor shows up and asks for five workers," he explains
angrily. "The next day they send him 50. He takes 10 for a day's work and
at the end of the day he tells them all, "you're inappropriate" - and
doesn't even pay them for the day's work. They'll keep sending him workers, and
whoever doesn't want to go, gets listed as a job-rejector."
Majdi
Shani arrives at the bureau after going to a job interview at a Galilee hotel.
"I sat there for two hours," he says forlornly. "Finally they
told me they don't want workers - and wouldn't agree to sign my slip. They
don't owe me anything. I know I'm gonna get hit with a rejector stamp. A few
weeks ago they sent me to a building contractor from Ilut village. He said,
'You work for two days for free or I won't sign.' So I worked for two days for
free. Otherwise I would be burnt."
Around
him, friends from the village gather, all with job referrals to the same
contractor. They'll all work for free for two days.
Hatib
el Aziz, an older man, watches form the side. "They sent me to a man in
Nazareth to work in refrigeration. As
soon as he saw me, he said 'we want younger men.' I went back to the bureau and
they stamped me a rejector. I have five kids. How can they say I turned down
work. Who doesn't want to bring home food for his children?"
Hatib
Ataf asked not to be sent to a contractor who fired him five years ago and
never paid wages of NIS 6,000. The
result - he became a rejector. Muhammad Abyu Layel went for an interview after
meeting the criteria for being a construction engineer. When he showed up for
the interview, the contractor asked why they sent him when he wanted someone
who finished the army. The contractor
refused to sign Layel's slip. Layel went back to the bureau fearing the dreaded
rejectors stamp - but this time he was relieved. They told him to come back in
two weeks, when they'll consider his case.
"There
are some very weird things here," says Badarna. "In Kafr Kana, for example,
they decided that 30 unemployed have to show up three times a week. They didn't
believe the 30 weren't working. Whoever
tries to sign up for unemployment and brings old wage slips from a family
business - which is a pretty common phenomenon here - has to wait months until
an investigator from the National Insurance Institute shows up to find out if
the person really worked in the family business. Meanwhile, there's no
unemployment payments. The trouble
with
the rejection is that very few appeal the decisions. People don't know their
rights, which aren't even available in their own language, and because the
appeals committees are part of the Employment Service, nobody trusts them. The
few who do appeal find out that the committees only meet every few months. The rejector stamp is rescinded only on rare
occasions."
The
Employment Service says that after "intensive" treatment of the
offices in Upper Nazareth, the number of unemployed from Kfar Ma'ahal dropped
from 454 to 332, moving the village from its top spot on the list of towns with
the highest rate of unemployment. Now
the rate is only 13.2 percent, says the service spokeswoman. "We only stamp a person as a job-rejector
if they don't show up at the place of employment, refuse to accept a job offer,
or reject an employer's offer. And of course, it goes without saying we never
declare someone a job-rejector in their absence. There's no such thing as a
clerk writing job-rejector on a form where the employer has written
'inappropriate' and we keep track of all the employers to find out why they
write what they do on an unemployed person's form."
"There
was someone who had a small air conditioning company in our village," Hani
Abu Layel remembers. "He called
the Employment Service and asked for one worker. The next day they sent 70. He
saw them all and didn't know what to do. His mother stood there making coffee
for them all. They went in and he stamped all their forms. A few days later he got an idea. He called
the service and said they all threatened him to make him sign their forms. The next Tuesday they were all stamped
rejectors. Three months without a
shekel.
= =
= = =
By
Gideon Alon, Ha'aretz Knesset Correspondent
16
March 2000
During
a meeting of the Constitution, Law and Justice committee, Knesset members
harshly criticized President Ezer Weizman for failing to reduce the prison
sentences of Israeli Arab security prisoners, as he has for Jewish prisoners in
similar cases.
Coalition
chairman MK Ophir Pines (One Israel), who initiated the discussion, accused the
president of exercising double standards in granting clemency to prisoners.
A
list of 29 Arab Israeli security prisoners was brought up at the meeting. Of the list, 22 had received life sentences
after being convicted of murder or attempted murder. None of the Arab Israeli prisoners received a commutation of
their sentences, although some of them were sentenced for years.
Pines
said that he initiated the discussion after he heard complaints from prisoners
about discrimination against Israeli Arab security prisoners. Pines mentioned the case of Yoram Skolnik,
who is expected to be released next month after completing only seven years of
the life term he was sentenced for murdering a Palestinian prisoner. President
Weizman twice commuted his sentence.
Pines
proposed a new bill, in which a prisoner whose sentence is commuted by the
president will not be eligible to receive further clemency from the parole
board. He said he hopes that the bill
will prevent the recurrence of cases like Skolnik's.
Attorney
Varda Omansky, who serves as Weizman's legal adviser, said that the president
has not yet commuted the sentences of the Israeli Arab security prisoners
because the defense minister has not yet given an opinion on the matter. However, Ami Palmor, the director of
the Department of Clemencies at the
Justice Ministry, said that Minister Yossi Beilin has asked Prime Minister
Barak to commute the sentences of these security prisoners.
The
legal adviser to the Prison Authority, attorney Haim Shmuelevitz, said that
Public Security Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami has asked to examine the conditions of
security prisoners who are Israeli citizens.
At
the end of the meeting the committee, taking advantage of the absence of most
of its right-wing members, decried the discrimination against Israeli Arab
security prisoners and said it intends to closely follow developments in the
cases of those prisoners.
= =
= = =
By
Amira Hass, Ha’aretz
5
May 1999
There
are no Palestinians except for Yasser Arafat, Sheikh Yassin and, sometimes,
Faisal Husseini. There are no dates
beyond May 4. This is the sum and
substance of public debate in Hebrew-speaking Israel on the eve of
elections. When no news items force
themselves into the Israeli public's consciousness, these are the standard
limits within which Jewish Israelis view the
Palestinian
question. These limits are so narrow
that they can best be described as "denial."
About
3.5 million Arabs live today west of the Jordan in what was once British
Mandate Palestine. This is their
homeland; and it's the homeland of another 3 million Palestinian refugees who
live in neighboring countries and elsewhere in the world.
Blood-soaked
historical circumstances, from World War II to the War of Independence and the
Palestinian "nakba," have made the Jews the majority population but
have not erased Palestinian ties to this land. Consistent Jewish Israeli
policies, crossing party lines, aim at maintaining this demographic edge and,
if possible, increasing it.
According
to this policy's clear but undeclared parameters, the Palestinian population
consists of three subgroups, identifiable by the varying discriminatory regimes
imposed upon them.
The
three subgroups are: Arab Israeli citizens, Palestinians who are
"permanent residents" of Jerusalem, and Palestinians living in
self-administered enclaves (which both One Israel and Meretz strangely term a
"state"). The present context
does not allow a detailed description of the categories or their history;
suffice it to say that the basis of their classification has always been land.
The
principal common denominator in discrimination against the three groups is
ownership rights to, access to and use of land resources. In Nazareth and Jaffa, Hebron and Khan
Yunis, Jabal Mukkaber and Anata, and other Arab communities, a policy of
evicting Arabs and confiscating private Arab land in favor of Jews, forbidding
use of public lands and employing
discriminatory
practices in infrastructure development has created a uniform landscape of
overcrowding and suffocation and has accelerated the conversion of agricultural
land into construction sites.
Together
with restrictive economic legislation, this policy has produced a vast
reservoir of cheap labor discriminated against injob opportunities, pay and
working conditions. Yet Israeli Jews have the right and opportunity to live and
work wherever they want in this land - on either side of the Green Line.
Various
laws and regulations make it easy to cancel the residency rights of
Palestinians, revoke their citizenship, and deny citizenship and residence to
their spouses. East Jerusalem's
annexation forced that area's Palestinian inhabitants to become "permanent
residents" deprived of basic rights. In 1995, prior to the interim
agreement's implementation on the West Bank, the
government
authorized the Interior Ministry to revoke this imposed status (which, from the
start, ignored these native Jerusalemites' natural rights) if the individual in
question worked overseas or had been forced to seek housing outside Jerusalem's
boundaries.
Until
the Palestinian Authority's establishment, various military regulations caused
tens of thousands of Palestinians to forfeit their residency status on the West
Bank and in Gaza. Israel continues to prevent them and their families from
returning to their homes. In contrast, Jews can come here from anywhere in the
world, be granted citizenship immediately and live anywhere they wish on either
side of the Green Line.
Over
the past eight years, Israel has consolidated and, with ever-increasing rigor,
enforced a policy of denying freedom of movement to 2.5 million Palestinians on
the West Bank and in Gaza. Limits have been imposed on their private lives,
family relations, and economic, cultural and religious activities as well as on
the effective functioning of the PA's institutions and of
non-governmental
Palestinian agencies. Palestinian individuals and institutions are completely
dependent on movement permits issued by the Israeli military authorities. Only 100,000 Palestinians possess these
permits. In contrast, Israeli Jews have unrestricted freedom of movement on
either side of the Green Line, except for administrative entry limitations on
PA-controlled areas in Gaza.
The
morality and survival of any regime of structured discrimination is a gamble in
the long run. But does that point interest anyone driven by short-term
considerations
= =
= = =
Ha'aretz
Editorial
11 January 1998
Mayor
Amram Mitzna and the Labor faction of Haifa council frustrated the appointment
of Meretz representative Ghassan Abu Warda as chairman of the local education
department. Nobody denies the claim that it was the duty of Mitzna and his
party to honor the agreement with Meretz, but the appointment was blocked on
the grounds that Abu Warda, who serves as deputy mayor, lacks the skills
required for the job. The basic reason
for keeping the job from Abu Warda was that he is an Israeli Arab. In the first days of his struggle for the
job, this was said
expressly
both by anonymous sources within Haifa Labor Party and by a senior Likud
representative, who stated that until there is an Arab chief of staff, there will
be no Arab education department head.
Opponents
explained that a majority of students in Haifa are Jewish, and they should not
be under the supervision of an Arab. Later, when resistance to this racist
reasoning arose, it was said that Abu Warda is indeed worthy of serving as
deputy mayor of Haifa, but lacked the skills necessary for the education
position.
None
of these explanations is satisfactory. What is true for a senior army officer
is not true for the manager of a municipal education department. Service in the
IDF before full peace is achieved raises emotional difficulties for many Arab
Israelis. This is not true of their participation in the Israeli education
system.
Also,
the claim that Abu Warda does not have the proper skills is not logical. He is
an academic and a lawyer by profession; no wrongdoing is associated with his
name, nor any criminal conviction or improper behavior. The political system has no tools to measure
the degree of his suitability to stand at the head of the education system as a
political appointment, nor is such a test necessary. This is the nature of
democracy: government and municipal department heads are political
appointments, and those working with them have to have the appropriate
professional skills.
The
truth about the appointment of advocate Abu Warda is the same as for other
political appointments in the government and municipal systems; nobody can say
in advance and for certain whether his skills are less than those that allow
Yehoshua Matza to serve as Health Minister or Michael Eitan as Science
Minister.
There
has never been an aptitude test for Jewish public activists. The denial of
Haifa Mayor Mitzna on the matter will not help him here, and there is no
alternative but to conclude that the main reason for preventing Abu Warda's
appointment to the job is his Arab origin.
Even
though the initiative to disqualify Abu Warda came from the Haifa Labor
faction, the national party should not accept the ease with which Mitzna's
demand was met. The Labor standing committee, and primarily its chairman Ehud
Barak, should unambiguously express their opinion about the act committed by
Mitzna and his colleagues.
One
can only wonder at why such a crass decision, originating from racist
considerations, has aroused only a weak cry ending only in the withdrawal of
Meretz from the municipal coalition. Meretz should have awakened outrage among
the enlightened public. Bombastic talk about making Israeli Arabs part of the
country does not have to be tested by the manning of the top of the IDF
pyramid, but by the manning of the hundreds and thousands of jobs that Jews and
Arabs are permitted to hold, for professional and political reasons.
= =
= = =
By
Gideon Levy, Ha’aretz
30
May 1999
While
everyone is arguing about whether to bring Shas into the new government, and
the prevailing argument is that 540,000 voters must not be
"disqualified," the fact that Israel's political map has nearly an
equal number of voters who are disqualified for another purpose has been
forgotten.The approximately 500,000 Arabs who have the right to vote, of whom
75 percent cast ballots this time around, are condemned in advance to being
shunned. All the arguments offered by
those supporting the inclusion of Shas - not to leave its voters excluded and
with a feeling they are being discriminated against - are even more applicable
here. But toward the Arabs, it's all right.
Thus,
there are many advocates for the Shas's inclusion in the coalition for social
reasons and they have a fair chance of success, but no one is seriously
considering bringing an Arab faction into the coalition.
The
National Religious Party (NRP), the second-most extreme right-wing and
nationalist party, already has one foot inside the the "leftist"
coalition; the ultra-Orthodox, who are opposed to Zionism and to serving in the
Israel Defense Forces, and who explicitly prohibit any women from representing
their faction, are also natural candidates. Only the Arabs are beyond the pale,
the
lepers.
In
this respect, quite astonishingly, there is no difference between the left and
the right, between a Likud government and a Labor government. Abdulwahab
Darawshe as environmental minister? Inconceivable.
But
the sky will not fall if, finally, a leadership arises that will at least
consider bringing Arab representatives into the government. Joining the
government is a challenge for more than the Arabs: It is a challenge to a state
that has pretensions to being not just Jewish, but also democratic.
No
less democratic and loyal to the state than the ultra-Orthodox parties, with a
potential for harming the security of the state that is no greater than that
posed by immigrants from the former Soviet Union, the Arabs of Israel have long
been worthy of government representation in their country. Their loyalty to
Israel was proved long ago, and sometimes even seems to be exaggerated,
considering the way the state behaves toward them and toward their brothers and
sisters beyond the Green Line.
Was
there any sector more loyal to Prime Minister-elect Ehud Barak than the Arab
voters? Support from 94 percent of a population is a phenomenon that merits
recompense. If there is a gaping chasm between them and their country, it
derives above all from the Jewish state's alienation from them and denial of
them, not the other way around.
True,
it is problematic for any independent Arab party to join a government that -
like all the governments of Israel – promotes continuing the Israeli occupation
in East Jerusalem, considerable portions of the West Bank and also in the Golan
Heights, and that does not freeze the Jewish settlements beyond the Green Line
and is not planning to evacuate them.
The
collective responsibility of the government is off-putting for a party like
Hadash or Balad, which is headed by MK Azmi Bishara and MK-elect Ahmed Tibi.
"How can we take part in a government," asks Tibi, "when it
decides on bombings in Lebanon or a closure of the territories?"
But
it would have been possible to hold serious talks with them about the
conditions under which they might join the government, and it could have been
accomplished with no more difficulty than that occasioned by talks with the
NRP, a settlers' party. Moreover, the United Arab List, the largest of the Arab
factions, has declared its willingness to join the government.
This
could be a golden opportunity. In a government likely to prove more diverse
than all its predecessors, there is room for Arab representation. This would
signal a new Israel inside the country, and abroad it would signal encouraging
winds of change to the Arab countries with which we seek reconciliation. The
situation is not encouraging.
Not
only has there never been an invitation extended to any Arab list to hold
serious discussions on joining the government, in other government institutions
the situation is more disheartening.
There
are only 15 Arabs among the 1,059 members of the boards of directors of
government companies. The electric company has only six Arab employees out of
21,000. El Al is completely free of Arabs. An Arab flight attendant? No way.
In
the government bodies that manage the affairs that most directly concern the
Arabs, the situation is no better. On the national building and planning board,
only one out of the 13 members is an Arab. On the regional boards in the
Galilee, where the number of Arab residents is equal to and in some cases
exceeds the number of Jewish residents, their rate of representation is
similar.
There
is at least legislation to protect women, for example, in respect to their
representation in government companies. No one thinks of passing similar
legislation for Arabs. Because that is how we are: a country consisting of one
nation only, democratic and egalitarian only for Jews.
Because
that is how they are: refugees in their own country, a minority living in the
crushing shadow of the majority, cut off from and alienated against its will
from its own state.
A
party with a banner that says One Israel and whose head promises to be
"everyone's prime minister" must remember that "everyone"
also includes a large minority of Arab citizens.
= =
= = =
By
Amira Hass, Ha’aretz
8
December 1999
About
a month and a half ago, B'tselem organized a tour for foreign diplomats of the
settlement of Ma'aleh Adumim and the Palestinian villages on top of which this
community was built and is being expanded.
The diplomats were brought to the site of a Palestinian home that the
Israeli Civil Administration (CA) had demolished and viewed the shantytown
neighborhood of the
Jahalin
tribe, which was evacuated by the CA from land they had occupied for years and
on which a very impressive-looking Jewish neighborhood has now been built. The diplomats traveled along the broad
avenues, surrounded by lush vegetation, of Ma'aleh Adumim, which is a
well-planned community, and then they were taken to Abu-Dis and Azariyeh, where
they had to
navigate
their way among a disarray of concrete houses and through crowded alleyways and
where they took note of the poorly paved roads.
First-hand
observation informed these diplomats - far more than any statistics can - of
the existence of a tremendous gap between the limited development that Israel
allows the Palestinians to carry out and the accelerated pace of modern
development that is permitted only to Jews - and on the very land that Israel
captured in June 1967.
One
of the diplomats defined the situation in one word: a
"disgrace." A second diplomat
said that his descriptions reach the highest echelons of his foreign ministry
and are included in official reports. However, he notes, by then, the language
has been softened and the reality depicted is painted in vague terms.
A
new report by Amnesty International, which appears today, does not leave much
room for equivocal impressions, although it is written in a pragmatic, succinct
manner. The report, entitled
"Israel and the Occupied Territories: The demolition and dispossession of
Palestinian homes," emphasizes that the demolition of Palestinian homes
goes with a the confiscation of
Palestinian
land throughout most of the West Bank, amounting to a policy of colonization.
Ever
since 1995, Amnesty has been protesting the demolition of homes all over the
world - actions taken simply because of the inhabitants' political belief or
identity, including ethnic identity, in such countries as Burma, Turkey, the
former Yugoslavia, and in the territories occupied by Israel. According to the
present report, Israel's policy of development in the territories it captured
in 1967 can be boiled down to ethnic discrimination. Nothing new, of course, yet this international human rights
organization expresses shock over this fact. Moreover, the authors of this
report are not overly impressed by the promise of a change in the mentality
underlying the Israeli occupation, a promise that many Western governments
believed would emerge from the Oslo agreements.
Since
1987, Israeli authorities have demolished at least 2,650 Palestinian homes in the
West Bank (including East Jerusalem).
As a result, 16,700 Palestinians, including 7,300 children, have become
homeless. The report points out that the annual number of demolitions has not
diminished since the declaration of principles made in 1993 and in fact has
even somewhat increased to 226, despite the fact that Israel now has
jurisdiction over only one-eighth of the population that was under its civilian
control in the past. According to the report, Israel has manipulated, and
continues to manipulate, existing procedures, laws and comprehensive
construction plans in order to carry out its policy of discrimination.
Ancient
Mandatory comprehensive construction plans have been used as a pretext for
preventing the erection of structures in Palestinian agricultural zones. Military orders have been issued to enable
extensive construction for Jews only.
An Ottoman law from 1855 has been distorted in order to permit the confiscation
of uncultivated land: The original law spoke of the transfer of
land
to other inhabitants of the same village so that they could cultivate it, yet
Israel has automatically taken hold of these lands for itself, that is, for its
Jewish inhabitants.
According
to Amnesty International, the Oslo accords have created an "archipelago"
of 227 islands (cities and villages) under civilian Palestinian control (areas
A and B), within a sea of Israeli control (area C, which includes more than 70
percent of the West Bank). In this
archipelago, there are 190 "islands" measuring less than two square
kilometers and they comprise, more or less, the built-up area of each
village. Only 40,000 Palestinians live
within area C; however, all Palestinians live within six or less kilometers of
it. One of the lawyers quoted in the report states that, since Oslo, all of the
200 applications for building permits
submitted
to the CA have been rejected. During that same period, Amnesty learned, 79
building permits were issued for area C.
In Amnesty's eyes, this policy is tantamount to paralyzing any possibility
of legally authorized expansion. Even
if we forget for a moment that area C is an integral part of every Palestinian
community on the West Bank, the natural increase alone of the
population
in area C would necessitate the granting of 1,200 - not 79 - building permits
during that four-year period.
There
is no connection, the report indicates, between planning considerations and the
demolition of homes. On the West Bank and in East Jerusalem, building permits
for Palestinians entail bureaucratic mazes that are - deliberately -
impossible. In Jerusalem, the Israeli authorities' goal, "since then has
been to transform the ethnic character of the annexed area from Arab to
Jewish."
Thus,
in East Jerusalem - whose annexation by Israel, the report stresses, is not
recognized by the international community, the "boundary of the annexed
lands (like that of Area C) was drawn to include land rather than people."
Amnesty
International recommends that Israel repeal the demolition orders that it has
issued and not yet executed and that it end its discriminatory policy in the
West Bank, including East Jerusalem. However, in order to change this policy,
the government and citizens of Israel must conclude that ethnic discrimination
is essentially immoral.
= =
= = =
By
Amira Hass, Ha'aretz
6
October 1999
On
March 5, 1996, Major General Ilan Biran, the IDF commander of the West Bank,
issued an order declaring the entire area of the settlements a "closed
military area." This action was
necessary for security reasons, it was explained. Only the holders of a permit and those classified as Israelis
were allowed to enter.The order defined who is an Israeli: "A resident of
Israel, someone whose residence is in the area and who is an Israeli citizen or
who is eligible to emigrate to Israel under the Law of Return 5710/1950, as it
applies in Israel, as well as whoever is not a resident of the area and holds a
valid entry permit to Israel." In other words: tourists.
Since
the order was issued, which was predictable given the special circumstances (a
series of Hamas terrorist attacks in February and March of 1996), the West Bank
and its Palestinian residents have experienced extended periods of hermetic
closure that were repeatedly gradually eased and then reinstated. But the
above-mentioned order is automatically extended. Incidentally, the need to obtain a permit not only delays many
Palestinians from feasting their eyes on the green grass in settlements built
on their community's lands. It impedes
- if not completely blocks - them from getting to their registered lands (which
therefore could not be officially appropriated) along the edges of settlements
and continuing to work their vines and fig
and
olive trees.
The
ad-hoc bestowing of citizenship on tourists, to enable them to enter
settlements, is a marginal matter that may amuse researchers of Israeli
bureaucracy. But it happens to anger "B'tselem," the Israeli
information center for human rights in the territories.
They
are having great difficulty in "selling" the public on their new
report. While it does focus on the
history of the settlement of Ma'aleh Adumim, it primarily provides an
exhaustive lesson on the history of practical annexation, gradual and carefully
planned, of large tracts in the West Bank and Gaza Strip to the state of
Israel. Annexations have been going on since the early 1970s with the
cooperation of "all the authorized bodies in Israel and the
territories," the report
establishes. "The government,
the Knesset and the army all issue commands, with the blessing of the High
Court of Justice." That is how
personal and territorial enclaves of Israeli civil law were created in the
territories.
The
report, "The Progression of the Annexation - Human rights violations as a
result of the establishment of the settlement of Ma'aleh Adumim and its
expansion," details the laws and regulations that paved the way for
annexation: For example, extraterritorial personal status was first granted to
Israeli citizens in the West Bank in July 1967, under the "emergency
regulations." The defense minister determined that Israeli citizens
violating laws in the territories would be tried in Israeli civilian courts. In
1969, Israeli courts were authorized to hear all legal matters arising between
residents of settlements and Palestinians or among the residents of settlements
themselves.
In
1982, the finance minister enacted a regulation granting agricultural settlers
the right to compensation for damages caused by drought, in accordance with
Israeli law. As part of the extension
of emergency regulations, the Knesset enacted additional laws for settlers
related to security services, income tax regulations, population registry and National
Insurance Institute benefits. At that time, it was determined that for the
purpose of this special legislation, anyone eligible to emigrate to Israel
under the Law of Return would be considered "a resident of Israel."
In other words, every Jew.
In
1988, the Knesset authorized the government to apply the law of development
towns and regions to "local authorities and Israeli citizens" in the
territories as well. This was the first
time the Knesset applied its own law to the settlements as territories, and not
just to settlers as individuals. What enabled the settlements to expand under
the guise of legality was the declaration of the land as state land.
The
declaration, the B'tselem report explains, was made by the overseer of
government property in the civil administration, based on a review conducted by
the civil department of the state attorney's office. Amazingly, in so doing, Israeli authorities were relying on their
interpretation of the Ottoman land law of 1855.