Palestinian NGOs in Israel: The Politics of Civil Society
Shany Payes
I.B. Tauris
Palestinian NGOs in Israel
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Palestinian NGOs in Israel: The Politics of Civil Society
Shany Payes
I.B. Tauris
Palestinian NGOs in Israel
Palestinian NGOs in Israel The Politics of Civil Society
SHANY PAYES
I.B.Tauris Publishers LONDON • NEW YORK
Published in 2005 by Tauris Academic Studies, an imprint of I.B. Tauris & Co. Ltd 6 Salem Road, London W2 4BU 175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010 www.ibtauris.com In the United States of America and in Canada distributed by St Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010 Copyright © Shany Payes, 2005 The right of Shany Payes to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotation in a review, this book, or any part thereof, may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Library of Modern Middle East Studies 45 ISBN 1 85043 630 4 EAN 978 1 85043 630 0 A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library A full CIP record for this book is available from the Library of Congress Library of Congress catalog card: available Printed and bound in Great Britain by MPG Books Ltd, Bodmin from cameraready copy edited and supplied by the author
CONTENTS List of Maps List of Illustrations Glossary of Keys and Abbreviations Acknowledgments Preface Introduction 1 Civil Society, NGOs, and Social Movements: A Theoretical Framework 2 The Evolution of Palestinian NGOs in Israel
vi vi vii viii xi 1 19
3 4 5
110 144 189
6
National PNGOs in Israel Local PNGOs in Israel Jewish-Palestinian Co-Operation in Israeli NGOs Conclusion: The Difficult Road to SocioPolitical Change Notes Bibliography
46
224 238 277
Appendices 1 2
List of Organisations Comparative Data on Health and Education Conditions of Jews and Palestinians in Israel
316 321
Index
323
List of Maps 1
Main Areas of Palestinian Settlement in Israel
xi
2
Jewish and Arab Settlements in the Wadi-‘Ara Region The Unrecognised Villages in the Galilee and Wadi-‘Ara Regions The Unrecognised Villages and the Bedouin Townships in the Negev
131
3 4
187 188
List of Figures 1
76
4
Number of PNGOs Established in Israel, 1948-1981 Number of PNGOs in Israel by Year of Registration, 1981-2001 Registration rate of PNGOs Compared with Jewish NGOs, 1981-2001 Fields of Activity (1990)
5
Sources of Funding
82
6
Levels of Change Campaigned for by National PNGOs Infant Mortality per 1000 Births, in per centage
140
Comparative Educational Data for Jews and Palestinians (1994-2000), in per centage Number of Employees in the Ministry of Health (1999)
322
2 3
7 8 9
77 78 80
321
322
GLOSSARY OF KEY TERMS ACRI CBSP CPI EZE Green Line GS HH HRA ‘Ir’ur Ezrahi IDF Intifada
JNGOs NCALC NIF PD PLO PNA PO
PNGOs in Israel SH UNDP Waqf WCAR YP
Association for Civil Rights in Israel Comité de Benfaisance et de Secours aux Palestiniens (Committee for the Benefit and Aid for Palestinians) The Communist Party in Israel Evangelische Zentralstelle für Entwicklungshilfe (The Protestant Association for Co-operation in Development) The border between Israel and the territories it occupied in the 1967 war Galilee Society: The Arab National Society for Health Research and Services Hatza’at Hok – Bill motion Arab Association for Human Rights Civil appeal Israeli Defence Forces The Palestinian uprising against the Israeli occupation. The first Intifada broke out in 1987 and continued until 1991. The second Intifada, known as the al-Aqsa Intifada, erupted in September 2000 Jewish non-governmental organisations National Committee of Heads of Arab Local Council New Israel Fund Piskei Din – Supreme Court’s rulings Palestinian Liberation Organisation Palestinian National Authority People Organisations (also known in contemporary NGO literature as Community-Based Organisations – CBOs) – local, non-profit membership based associations that mobilise and organise their constituencies in support of collective welfare goals Palestinian non-governmental organisations in Israel Sefer Hahukim – The Book of Laws United Nations Development Program Islamic pious endowment United Nations World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance Yalkut Pirsumim – Collection of Governmental Publications
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
O
ne summer night, on a balcony in Baqa al-Gharbiya under trees that keep the heat and the rest of world worries away from the courtyard, four women are enjoying a lazy chat. For three of them this is home. A Palestinian mother who was born here, before the 1948 War, before the state of Israel was established, when Israeli Baqa (‘al-Gharbiya,’ the western side) and West-Bank Baqa (‘al-Sharqiya,’ the eastern side) were still just ‘Baqa,’ a village in which no one could imagine that the location of your house can determine your future; and her two daughters, in their early and mid twenties. Their guest for a couple of weeks comes from Petach-Tikva – the first modern Zionist agricultural settlement established in 1878 – a Jewish city just an hour drive away. But, I know what is the real distance between Petach-Tikva and Baqa. I had to get to Oxford first, before I was able to make this hour trip to Baqa al-Gharbiya. This book is dedicated to all of those who made this journey possible, first and foremost to my partner to all journeys in life, Shany Kaminer, without whose wisdom, advice and support, the joys of this journey were not complete and the hardships much harder to overcome. I thank Shany in particular for his design work, including that of all the maps and figures. To my parents, Judith and Gideon, who are – and will always be – my best teachers and aides. To my critical, clever, funny and supportive brothers, Yuval and Tsahi. To my family ‘in law’ and at heart: Moti Kaminer, who many years ago introduced me to Kafr Qassem, the neighbouring Palestinian village of Petach Tikva, and ever since accompanied me in my project; To Ruti, for her endless care; To Dana and Tal, who have adopted me to their lovely sisterhood. To my dear, supportive hamula who has always been there for me, and especially to my brilliant cousin and best friend, Yael Karlin; to my beloved Apters, Beni, Rivka, Yael, Ayal and Michal; and to Kalman and Ilana Shaham. I dedicate this work to those who are no longer with me, but will always be in my heart, my late grandfather Pablo Haim Apter and grandmother Audelia Zehava Apter. To my DPhil supervisor, Dr. Philip Robins, who has never failed to introduce me with intellectual challenges but always made me feel capable of meeting the challenge. The ideas underlying this book sprang through our discussion of Middle Eastern politics in a 1996 tutorial at Oxford. I am grateful to Philip for retaining the tutor role throughout the way,
Palestinian NGOs in Israel guiding and criticising, keeping me away from dead-end side paths, but always motivating me to trust my own orientation. To my examiners, Dr. Gerard Clarke and Prof. Noah Lucas, whose supportive and insightful comments, encouraged me to write this book. I am deeply grateful to Dr. Clarke for his inspirational, comparative writing on NGOs and for his continuous guidance throughout this project. To Prof. Sammy Smooha of Haifa University, whose writing motivated my work long before I met him, and who has kindly acted as my Professional Tutor. His advice at the early stages of research was invaluable for this book. To the inspirational people I have met and interviewed, for their openness and time they have dedicated to this project, and for the hope they bring for a better society in hopeless days. Each meeting, with each and every one of both Palestinian and Jewish activists, academics, journalists, poets and students mentioned in this book, opened a new world for me. To Israeli officials of past and present, who co-operated fully with the research even when faced with criticism. To the Registrar of Associations, Amiram Bogat, and his staff, for the data and interviews. To academics who gave me from their time, and whose advice was precious for the evolution of this book. I thank all heartedly to Mark Levine, Ilan Saban, As’ad Ghanem, Khalil Nakhleh, Yitzhak Reiter, Oren Yiftachel, Hanna Herzog, Batia Weinbaum, and Reuven Aharoni. To the Middle East Centre at Oxford, for introducing me to a creative, thought-provoking and caring academic atmosphere I never dared to hope to be part of. I am especially grateful to Professors Avi Shlaim, Eugene Rogan, and Ahmad al-Shahi, who followed my work and guided me both intellectually and in the complex ways of Oxford University. I thank Professors Shlaim and Noah Lucas for their careful reading and helpful comments at the stage of Confirmation of Status. To Elizabeth Anderson, the Middle East Centre secretary, for being a good friend. To Mastan Ebtenhaj, the librarian, for her professional help and friendly support. To my friends who read and re-read drafts of this book, and listened tirelessly to new thoughts and dilemmas. For their time, patience, and enormous help, I will never be able to thank enough Dr. Yoav Alon, Dr. Eitan Bar-Yosef, Dr. Gordon Peake and Kevin Rosser. Although the responsibility for the contents of this book remains my own, I am deeply grateful for their insights. To Audrey Daly, I am grateful for the dedicated linguistic editing. I was lucky to receive financial support for conducting the research, and would like to thank all of those who believed in this project enough
Acknowledgements to help me through it. First and foremost, to the Israeli Centre for Third Sector Research (ICTR) in Ben Gurion University of the Negev and its head, Prof. Benjamin Gidron. I thank the centre not only for the generous scholarship and for the opportunities to present my work, but also for its dedicated work on developing a databank on Israeli NGOs. The availability of information from this databank has proved invaluable for this book. To the Wingate Scholarships. To Mr. Ian Karten and to the Jewish Students and Widows Fund, who lifted my spirit and helped me financially in my hardest time. To Avi Foundation. To St. Antony’s College. I am grateful to the library at the Jewish-Arab Centre for Peace at Giv’at Haviva. I found their unique collection of newspapers and publications about Jewish-Palestinians in Israel invaluable. I am especially thankful to the librarian Ronit Barzilai, and to the assistant librarian until 1999, Rauda Ghanayim. The ideas in this book have developed to no small extent following thought-provoking interaction with attentive audiences in the conferences in which I have presented my work. I am grateful to organisers in the ICTR, the Truman Institute, the National Women’s Studies Association in the United States, and the Middle East Centre at the University of Oxford. To all my beloved friends, Aliza Samorly, Naomi Bitan, Lina Barouch, Shahar Markus, Doron Peri, Efrat Lev, Aviram Gavish, Revital Shpangental, Rinat Ben Noon, Yaron Dekel, Meera Selevananthan, Kalanit Shina, Fauzia Ghanayim, Rauda Ghanayim, Shira Zeitak, Pia Oberoi, Kathryn Stapley, Guido Dolara, Hamish Nixson, Markus Bouillon, Shlomi Segall. I thank each and every one for their friendship, for their listening and for constantly making me feel I am engaged in a valuable project. And to anyone who contributed to this book in any way, and whom I may have forgotten to mention in this paper at the haste of the moment.
PREFACE
T
his book analyses the role that has been played by Palestinian Non Governmental Organisations (PNGOs) in Israel in defining the relationship between the Palestinian Arab minority and the state. Non-Jews in an avowedly Jewish state, Palestinians are an integral part of the citizenry yet suffer from discrimination in all avenues of life since the foundation of the state in 1948. Exploring the political conditions that facilitated the proliferation of PNGOs and affected their development, the book demonstrates that the primary motivation behind their establishment was to campaign against this discrimination. PNGOs provided services to Palestinian citizens the state failed to provide while at the same time lobbied the state to provide them. They have successfully harnessed growing opportunities that opened up for Palestinian citizens as a result of social developments within their community, changes in the Israeli political system, and the growing availability of foreign support and funds. Consequently, PNGOs have played a central role in the struggle of Palestinians in Israel for civil equality. However, despite their achievements, PNGOs themselves were unable to elevate the minority to a par equal with Israel’s Jewish majority. This observation concurs with those made by social and political scientists, critics of the dominant liberal and neo-liberal literature on NGOs. These critics have argued that NGOs are limited instruments when it comes to challenging the power relations in society and the promotion of democratisation, especially in an ethnically dominant polity. To effect lasting and enduring societal change, these critics have argued that NGOs need to abandon the model of independent organisation and instead align themselves as part of a social movement to agitate for wider change. Although PNGOs have succeeded in bringing about some tangible achievements to their community and elevated political consciousness, the book argues that they have failed to transform into an effective social movement first and foremost as a result of state-imposed obstacles. These obstacles were exacerbated by NGOs’ own problematic patterns of action and the weaknesses of potential coalition partners such as other Palestinian organisations in Israel and the JewishIsraeli ‘peace camp.’
Palestinian NGOs in Israel
Map One: Main Areas of Palestinian Localities in Israel*
*
This map is schematic and does not reflect an accurate scale.
INTRODUCTION
O
ne in every six Israeli citizens is a Palestinian Arab. As a national and ethnic indigenous minority in a state that is both Jewish and democratic, Palestinian citizens enjoy many of the same formal democratic rights as Jews. Yet Israeli law does not grant them full equality, and the state confines them to the margins of the country’s political life. Over the last quarter of a century, Palestinians in Israel have established a wide variety of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) seeking to challenge this marginality and reduce inequalities. Since the passing of the Law of Associations in 1980, the establishment of nearly 1000 Israeli Palestinian non-governmental organisations has been recorded. A number of factors combined to facilitate the proliferation of Palestinian NGOs (PNGOs) in Israel. Internally, Palestinian society in Israel experienced throughout the 1980s and 1990s rising levels of education and standards of living, which consequently increased the level of political participation across society. As old institutions were ill equipped to represent the interests of newly organised strata, specialist NGOs grew in significance. Externally, NGOs have proliferated throughout the developing world. They enjoy the support and funding of governments and organisations in the West, which view NGOs in developing societies as carriers of democratisation and economic reform. Palestinians in Israel benefit from this support. Finally, the development of PNGOs in Israel was affected by state regulations and policies as well as by attitudes of the Israeli Jewish majority. PNGOs in Israel were formed, on the one hand, to challenge discriminatory state policies against Palestinians and to cope with their manifestations. On the other hand, NGOs were established to take advantage of political opportunities that have increasingly been available for Palestinian citizens in Israel. PNGOs in Israel have not been thoroughly studied despite their growing importance, both quantitatively as the number of registered organisations has grown and qualitatively in terms of the scope of their activity. The political role they have played in the history of Jewish-Arab relations in Israel has remained largely unexplored for two main reasons. First, theoretically, much of the literature discussing the phenomenon of NGOs worldwide has tended to view them as non-political entities. Two factors in particular obscure the political importance of NGOs: their explicit distinction from political parties, often required by state laws; and
2
Introduction
donors’ demands for an apolitical nature of activity. Notably, however, in recent years scholars have increasingly contested this view of NGOs, emphasising their contribution to processes of political change.1 Second, empirically, some scholars have argued that PNGOs in Israel are politically insignificant, mainly because of the internal deficiencies they suffer from and their alleged lack of influence on the predominantlyJewish Israeli politics and civil society.2 In sharp contrast to these views, other scholars have related to PNGOs in Israel a potential to shake the existing political arrangements in Israel/Palestine. Some of these observers view NGOs as a vehicle for future autonomy of Palestinians inside Israel’s 1967 borders and perhaps even their secession from Israel. This view of PNGOs in Israel is shared by some Israeli nationalists, who perceive this possibility as a threat, as well as by some Palestinian nationalists who welcome it.3 Still others view the emergence of PNGOs in Israel as the first step in ending the national phase in the history of Israel/Palestine. Amina Minns and Nadia Hijab argued in 1990 that PNGOs in Israel formed the basis for a non-Zionist phase in the history of the conflict. Although at the time of writing they identified the main focus of PNGOs in Israel as a struggle for equality within Israel, they expressed their view that in the future these organisations would lead to a truly democratic, non-Zionist civic state.4 Both the view that undervalues PNGOs in Israel and that which portrays them in revolutionary terms obscure the main focus of PNGO activities, namely the struggle for equality through mobilisation of underrepresented Palestinian citizens. Focusing on this role, this book challenges the assumption of their political irrelevance. Adopting a political understanding of NGOs, the book opens a window to appreciate the political repression of Palestinian civil society by the Israeli state and attempts by Palestinian NGOs in Israel to build a civil society in the face of such oppression. The growth in the number and scope of PNGOs in Israel is indicative of their growing importance in Israeli politics and civil society. PNGOs in Israel make a political impact by empowering the minority as well as marginal groups within the Palestinian society in Israel, including Palestinian women and Bedouin in the Negev; participating in the implementation of state-initiated reforms; facilitating the joint activity and protest of different social groups, including Arabs and Jews; and influencing the public discourse within their own community, in Israel and abroad. Unlike political parties, NGOs do not aim to run the political system themselves. They also refrain from outlining long-term political solutions.
Palestinian NGOs in Israel
3
These characteristics do not contradict their collective political meaning. This meaning, however, is formulated more through NGOs’ flexible strategies and focus on specific aspects of civic inequalities than through a commitment to a coherent political ideology. Moreover, the political meaning of the activities of PNGOs in Israel is influenced by political circumstances and linked to the agenda of other social forces more than some scholars have implied. In other words, the labelling of PNGOs in Israel as vehicles for ‘autonomy’, ‘secession’, or alternatively ‘integration’ seems to obscure the changing meaning of their activities in accordance with changing political circumstances and the alliances they take part of. Thus, for example, one aim of PNGO activists in Israel is to raise international awareness to the difficult situation of the Palestinian society in Israel. Whereas the strategy used in order to promote this aim has not changed since the 1980s, when NGOs started representing the cause of Palestinians in Israel in international forums, the political meaning of this strategy changed with time. In the 1980s, when Israel fiercely enforced the law against meetings with PLO members, defining such meetings as interaction with terrorist agents, international NGO meetings in UN conventions served to break the isolation of Palestinians in Israel (as well as left-wing Israeli Jew activists) from the rest of the Palestinian world. In the 1990s, when the Israeli government already dealt with the PLO and came to be more receptive to the civic demands of Palestinians in Israel, PNGOs in Israel used international forums to put pressure on the Israeli government to respect the rights of Palestinians as citizens of a democratic state. Following the events of October 2000, in which the Israeli police shot dead 13 Palestinian demonstrators in Israel, PNGOs in Israel apply to international forums in order to assert the human rights of Palestinians living within Israel’s 1967 borders, beyond their civil rights as Israeli citizens. These changing uses of a similar strategy demonstrate the flexibility characterising NGOs’ activities and the different political meanings attached to their activities in different circumstances. Palestinian NGOs in Israel challenge the marginality of the Palestinian minority through activity at two political levels. At one level, NGOs act to promote specific interests, whether through the provision of services in place of the state or by advocacy campaigns aiming to lead the state to provide the services it fails to offer. At this level – defined by scholars as the level of ‘politics of interests’ or ‘politics of resource allocation’ – PNGOs in Israel have gained important benefits for the community. However, the establishment of most PNGOs in Israel followed the Western-liberal model with its perception of NGOs as a tool for more fundamental change in society, labelled as the level of ‘politics of change’.
4
Introduction
The liberal concept views NGOs as a means for democratisation, the development of civil society, and a shift in the power relations of dominant and minority groups. In other words, at this level NGOs are not only seen as a means for empowering the minority within the existing political system, but as a means to change the system itself. This process is naturally slower and its progress more difficult to judge, because it involves changes of discourse and collective identity as well as more tangible issues such as legislation. Clearly, however, PNGOs in Israel were less successful in bringing about changes at this second political level. This book suggests a twofold explanation for the limited impact of PNGOs on the Israeli political system. First, both their achievements and failures are influenced by the structure of political opportunities in Israel. This, as elaborated below, is based on the dialectical nature of Israel as a democratic and Jewish state. The increasing choice of Palestinians in Israel to organise as interest groups corresponds to the accessibility of a representative democratic system, which is formally open to the influence of different groups. At the same time, PNGOs in Israel are exposed to stricter control and to greater restrictions than their Jewish counterparts. And most significantly, Israel deviates from the ideal-type pluralistic depiction of a civic democracy as a system in which the state acts as a neutral arbitrator between different interest groups.5 Rather, as an ethnic-Jewish state, it identifies its interests with those of the Jewish majority. Consequently, PNGOs in Israel enjoy a much more limited access to the political system than their Jewish counterparts. A second explanation for the difficulties faced by PNGOs in Israel at the level of ‘politics of change’ is inherent to their own patterns of activity, and is not unique to the Israeli case. Critical scholars of NGOs have pointed to their shortcomings in challenging the political, social and economic status quo throughout the developing world. NGOs are nonelected bodies, and as such lack popular support. Moreover, they are often obliged to refrain from confrontational tactics due to their dependence on the state for formal recognition and thus for permission to receive funding. Hence, while PNGOs are often responsible for improvements in the life of Palestinians in Israel, they also have the effect of channelling the struggle of minority groups away from popular protest. Moreover, NGOs tend to prefer partial solutions that may solve problems only technically rather than articulating demands for a more fundamental reform of the political system. In light of these shortcomings, some scholars have argued that NGOs are more likely to mount a successful challenge to the political status quo if
Palestinian NGOs in Israel
5
they go beyond independent activity and mobilise in the frame of a ‘social movement’ – a loose alliance of organisations that act in concert with other social elements to promote political and social change, and explicitly challenge the assumptions that underlie the entire system.6 This book argues that the transition of PNGOs in Israel from a collection of atomised, particularistic organisations into a genuine social movement which promotes equal citizenship has proved difficult. Successful examples of social movements in the twentieth century, such as the civil rights movement in the United States, highlights the support of powerful groups within the majority as a pivotal condition of success. Such support has so far been limited in the case of Israel. Moreover, state restrictions and a low level of co-ordination between PNGOs have compounded this limitation. The case of PNGOs in Israel nevertheless demonstrates the interconnectedness of the two political levels, the ‘politics of allocations’ and the ‘politics of change’. The campaign of PNGOs for a shift towards a more equal allocation of resources and their advocacy of technical solutions to problems constituted in themselves a powerful challenge to Israeli power relations. This book analyses this process, its achievements and constraints. In order to provide a realistic analysis of the political impact of NGOs’ activities, the book grades the challenge of PNGOs in Israel to the exclusionary political system in Israel along a continuum. At one end of this continuum, there are demands for reforming the Israeli political system so that it includes Palestinians on equal grounds. Such demands for inclusion do not challenge the fundamental ideology of the regime, but call for enhancing Israeli democratic practices. Campaigns conducted under the banner of reform usually focus on specific services and policies, and are therefore characteristic of ‘politics of interests’. At the other end, there are demands for more radical change in the political system or the regime. These demands range from a call for some degree of autonomy to the Palestinian minority – including cultural, educational and institutional autonomy – to a call for turning Israel into a ‘state of its citizens’ (rather than the Jewish state). During the 1970s, Palestinians in Israel established organisations that demanded a fundamental reform in the power dynamics between Jews and Arabs in Israel and in allocation of state resources. The National Committee of Heads of Arab Councils and The Committee for Defence of the Lands, both active in organising the Land Day protests, represent these demands. However, these organisations had little success in changing state policies, largely due to the state’s refusal to accept their representative role. This relative failure is one of the causes leading the
6
Introduction
next generation of organisations, established during the 1980s and 1990s, to adopt more limited demands for reform and more formal means of activity. Most PNGOs in Israel therefore aim to achieve tangible interests for their community and focus on a demand for reform, rather than a total change in the system. However, in many cases, the state is unwilling to compromise, often seeing any reform – for example, in the crucial issue of land allocation – as a threat to its security and even its very existence. In the face of this reaction, PNGOs in Israel often move between categories along the journey for political change, gradually engaging in demands for structural changes as straightforward representation of specific interests fails to achieve the hoped for results. The book analyses this process. It also examines the level of partnership of Jewish Israeli activists and NGOs and foreign donors in this PNGO-led campaign for civic equality. Historic Background Palestinian Arab citizens in Israel are members of an indigenous minority. A two-third majority in Palestine, they have become a one-sixth minority in Israel following the Arab-Israeli War of 1948. During the war, 600700,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled to the West Bank, Gaza Strip and neighbouring Arab states. By the late 1990s, nearly one million Palestinians were living in Israel.7 Those Palestinians who stayed in new-born Israel in 1948 were constrained by a Military Government that was only abolished nearly two decades later, in 1966. The civic status of the Palestinian minority is affected by Israel’s dialectical definition as both a Jewish state and a democracy. Some scholars have argued that democracy in Israel is nothing more than a ‘masters’ democracy’ in a colonialist settler society, built to serve the colonists’ interests and prefer them to those of the colonised.8 Others have emphasised the tension between democratic and ethnic considerations in Israel, whether viewing Israel as an ethnic democracy that ‘combines the extensions of civil and political rights to individuals and some collective rights to minorities, with institutionalisation of majority control over the state’;9 or as an ethnocracy, an ethnic state run by a regime that was established by and for one dominant ethnic group living inside the state but also outside its borders. In this view, the Israeli regime is not democratic but neither is it authoritarian or totalitarian.10 At the declaratory level, Palestinians enjoy full legal equality to Jews. Palestinian citizens of Israel, unlike the residents of the West Bank and
Palestinian NGOs in Israel
7
Gaza Strip Israel has occupied since 1967, have full political rights, including the right to vote and be elected to the Israeli parliament – the Knesset. Even after more than fifty years of statehood, however, both official and popular attitudes towards the Palestinian minority are marked by the suspicion that many of them are either a real or potential fifth column, awaiting the opportunity to join up with the hostile states on Israel’s borders to destroy the state. These suspicions, along with the Jewish definition of Israel, are used to justify unequal budget allocations and discriminatory laws on such issues as housing, education, culture and political participation.11 Further, the Mandatory Defence (Emergency) Regulations which provided the legal basis for the Military Government are still in effect today, selectively activated mostly against Palestinians.12 The political marginalisation of Palestinians in Israeli society is enhanced by socio-economic discrimination. Sociologist Ella Shohat has argued that Israeli society is divided into a ‘First’ and ‘Third’ world dichotomy. The main representatives of the First world are Jews of European descent, the Ashkenazi Jews who founded the Zionist project through a reliance on colonialist European interests.13 Palestinians are the most obvious representatives of Israeli Third world’s groups. Economic discrimination against the Palestinian minority is manifested first and foremost by the fact that most Arab land in Israel has been expropriated by the state. Further disadvantages stem from the concentration of most Palestinians in the peripheral regions of the Galilee in the North, the ‘Little Triangle’ bordering the West Bank, and the Negev in the South. Palestinian Israeli NGOs have been established amidst the discrimination and marginality of the Palestinian society. Time Frame Palestinians in Israel protested against their unequal civil status even during the period of the Military Government (1949-1966). During this period, the restrictions of that government as well as the expropriation of land constituted the main reasons for protest.14 However, due to the limitations imposed on the rights of Palestinians to freedom of movement, expression and organisation, protest was sporadic and by and large non-institutionalised.15 This book therefore begins with the event that is seen to have institutionalised the protest of Palestinians in Israel: Land Day 1976. The publicity of a plan for large-scale land expropriations in the Galilee led Palestinians in Israel to conduct their largest organised national protest up to that time, on 30 March 1976. In the strikes and demonstrations that followed on what came to be known as ‘Land Day’,
8
Introduction
six demonstrators were killed by the police. The decision to expropriate the land was cancelled, however. Ever since, Land Day 1976 has stood as a landmark of Palestinian political behaviour in Israel, the moment when the minority’s attitudes to the state was transformed ‘from acquiescence to activism’.16 The period that began with Land Day is identified in this book as the formative period of PNGOs in Israel. Similarly to developments elsewhere in the Developing World, the 1970s saw the transition of Palestinian organisations in Israel from welfare, relief, and small-scale development activity to the more politically explicit activities. These were defined by David Korten and Gerard Clarke as activities for ‘conscientisation’ (raising the critical consciousness of members) and mobilisation, leading to direct intervention in political conflicts.17 Land Day had three main consequences so far as the history of PNGOs in Israel is concerned. First, it highlighted the leadership role of several civic organisations, foremost among them being the National Committee of Heads of Arab Local Councils (NCALC), that would exercise a defining influence on the activities of PNGOs in Israel for a generation. Second, Land Day defined a shared national agenda for Palestinians in Israel, organised around such issues as land expropriation, unequal access to public services, and other forms of discrimination. Land Day commemorations are now a permanent annual fixture of the Palestinian political calendar, a constant reminder of the unfinished struggle for equal rights as citizens of Israel. Finally, it set patterns of protest, such as national strikes and demonstrations, which have continued to characterise Palestinian activism in Israel to this day. The formative period was characterised by informal structures and an ad hoc nature of protest. Throughout the 1970s, non-institutionalised mass protest characterised Israeli civil society as a whole for the first time. During these years, Israel has witnessed the development of a civil society that is relatively independent of the state, in contrast to most Jewish organisations in the first two decades of Israel’s existence, which were either formally or informally linked to the state. The beginning of this process can be traced to the public outcry at Israel’s unpreparedness for the 1973 Arab-Israeli war. Public confidence in the government was shaken, legitimising open public protest. The formative period continued through October 1982, when a wave of protest broke in response to the massacres in the Sabra and Shatila Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon.18 The period of 1982-1993 saw the institutionalisation and a growing professional activity of PNGOs in Israel. This period was characterised
Palestinian NGOs in Israel
9
by three main factors. First, the new Law of Associations, enacted in 1981, regulated and structured the activities of Israeli NGOs. Second, the proliferation and institutionalisation of PNGOs in Israel in this period was influenced by the availability of both indigenous and external resources. Increasing education levels and living standards produced growing number of Palestinians able to articulate their case before international forums and institutions. The latter have, as a result, devoted increasing financial support to PNGOs in Israel. Third, the outbreak of the first Intifada (uprising) in the Occupied Territories in December 1987 brought about a peak in the number of PNGOs in Israel established within Israel. Palestinians in Israel expressed support for the national struggle of Palestinians across the border and its aim of ending Israeli occupation and the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. From the early stages of the Intifada, however, Palestinians inside the Green Line emphasised their different position in the struggle, as Israeli citizens. Consequently, their aid to the Intifada concentrated on providing humanitarian relief on the one hand, and conducting an advocacy campaign within Israel on the other. NGOs therefore proved to be an increasingly effective means for the Palestinian campaign in Israel during this period. As explicitly civic and non-violent in terms of means, they distinguished the Palestinian struggle inside Israel from that of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories, and reinforced the linkage between peace between Israel and the Palestinian national movement outside, and equality for Palestinian citizens inside Israel. A third period in the history of PNGOs in Israel began with the signing of the Israeli-Palestinian Declaration of Principles at Oslo, in September 1993. The outbreak of the second ‘al-Aqsa’ Intifada, at the end of September 2000, marked its termination. Paradoxically, this period witnessed both the consolidation of PNGOs in Israeli civil society and their disillusionment with the hope that peace between Israel and the PLO would bring about equality for Palestinians within Israel. On the one hand, this period witnessed growing confidence on the part of the minority to use state channels along with growing responsiveness of state institutions to the civil-liberal message of PNGOs in Israel. Consequently, more nation-wide NGOs were established in order to deal with Israeli institutions, such as the Knesset or the Supreme Court of Justice. On the other hand, frustration with long-held expectations of the partnership with the Jewish-Israeli peace camp increasingly manifested itself among these recently formed independent PNGOs in Israel. This emphasised the national agenda of Palestinians in Israel and led to the
10
Introduction
establishment of new Palestinian organisations in Israel, promoting issues that were previously dealt with by joint Jewish-Palestinian NGOs. Since October 2000, when the Israeli-Palestinian peace process collapsed into the al-Aqsa Intifada, PNGOs in Israel act in a dramatically changed environment. During the first days of the al-Aqsa Intifada, Palestinians in Israel joined the demonstrations that broke across the Green Line in protest against the political visit of Ariel Sharon, then head of the opposition, on the Temple mount. Israeli police killed 13 Palestinian demonstrators in Israel and wounded many more. These events brought about a tragic confrontation between the frustration of Palestinians in Israel, on the one hand, and suspicious and coercive attitudes of state institutions, on the other. Consequently, they have severely hindered trust between Palestinians and Jews in Israel. These circumstances have made a major impact on PNGOs in Israel. First, the campaign of PNGOs in Israel for civil rights and their role as mediators between the Palestinian society in Israel and the state have gained increased importance amidst the crisis. Thus, for example, Adalah – the legal centre for Arab minority rights in Israel – and other NGOs played a crucial role in enabling the investigation of the Or Commission of Inquiry, established to probe the October 2000 events. Second, as a result of the crisis of trust between Palestinian citizens and the state and the election of a right-wing government headed by Sharon, PNGOs have enhanced their campaign towards human rights as complementary to the civil campaign, and reinforced international and regional activities. A manifestation of this strategy was in a call for the UN to ensure the principles of human dignity and liberty of Palestinians in Israel, made by the Local Preparatory Committee of Palestinian NGOs in Israel, in the United Nations World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance.19 The October 2000 events and their aftermath have also affected joint Jewish-Palestinian activism in Israeli NGOs. Jointly-working NGOs have reconsidered their strategies in the past few years, in some cases realising that the mainstream co-existence initiatives did little to bring about real dialogue between Jews and Palestinians in Israel. As a result of this understanding and the pressing needs caused by the new realities of the intense conflict, some of the joint organisations have developed new programmes to promote more sincere dialogue and co-operation between Jews and Palestinians in Israel. In addition, growing poverty, especially in the Israeli periphery, shared by Palestinians and Jews, led to the establishment of new coalitions and co-operations that focus on joint struggle against the causes of regional underdevelopment, rather than on
Palestinian NGOs in Israel
11
co-existence as such. Thus, for example, a coalition of social NGOs is active in the Negev, and a PNGO established in Nazareth to provide support to Arab unemployed and workers, Sawt al-‘Amel (Voice of the Worker), responds to calls for help from Jews in the region as well as Palestinians. Methodology and Sources This book reflects a growing theoretical interest in NGOs as political actors, especially in the context of the developing world.20 Despite this interest, there are still only a limited number of studies of specific NGOs and their interaction with the state in particular places.21 The book therefore aims to contribute to the nuance understanding of the relations between NGOs and the state, in particular in the under-researched context of ethnic-national conflicts. Within this context, the book examines in a critical manner the association – suggested by liberal scholars, especially following the collapse of Communism in the Soviet block in 1989 – between NGOs and processes of democratisation, development of civil society and empowerment of minority groups. Due to its political focus, this book aims to transcend the functional analysis of individual NGOs. Tamar Hermann has criticised the methodology used for the analysis of the functional-individual role of NGOs, which may be labelled as ‘Third/Nonprofit sector analytical framework’. This level of analysis focuses on the structure of particular organisations, and is therefore essential for understanding the mechanism of NGOs. However, Hermann has suggested that a more comprehensive political understanding of NGOs should be based on a complementary, ‘social movements analytical framework’. This methodology focuses on relations between organisations, their common aims, and the political conjunctures in which they operate.22 Similarly, William Fisher has argued that an exclusive focus on institutions of civil society, rather than on the process in which they are involved, masks their political role. In order to avoid simple generalisations and reveal the ideological and functional diversity of NGOs, Fisher calls for applying a methodology that focuses on the ‘fluid and changing local, regional, national, and international processes and connections’.23 Aiming to apply such comprehensive methodology, this book utilises a thematic approach to PNGOs in Israel as actors influencing the development of state-minority relations. In order to study this role, research was conducted in three stages involving four field visits, over 17 months, between the summer of 1997 and September 2003. The research required me to work in three languages: English, Arabic and Hebrew.
12
Introduction
The initial stage included gathering general information about the number of PNGOs in Israel, the period of their establishment, their geographic deployment, and the fields of their interests. This stage involved interviews with activists in 44 organisations focusing on their goals and ways of functioning.24 These organisations were selected on the basis of size, location, dates of establishment and fields of activity in order to compose a representative portrait of the Palestinian NGO sector as it exists today. The second stage focused on a study of processes and key events in the development of PNGOs in Israel. This study was conducted through in-depth interviews with members of chosen organisations and with participants outside PNGOs in Israel. This second set of interviews both employed a study of organisations that offered complex and thorough insight of the relationship between state agencies and PNGOs in Israel, and explored themes and events that shed light on the relations amongst PNGOs in Israel and between them and other social actors. Moreover, the research at this stage was expanded to include community leaders and members, Israeli officials and donor funds in addition to beneficiaries. Participation in a large number of meetings and events of PNGOs in Israel has also offered better understanding of their routines. The final stage involved reading of written documents, against which the material collected through interviews was verified. With time, the number and variety of documents against which interviews could be assessed have increased. This was the result of two developments: Firstly, the growing institutionalisation and professionalism of the organisations involved in this research. Secondly, the rise in the importance of the internet as a medium of communication for these organisations. Since 1999, all the major nation-wide PNGOs in Israel have developed their own internet sites, making it possible to follow their activities continuously. In addition to the analysis of these sources, the final stage of my research included analysis of official publications of PNGOs in Israel, the Arabic and Hebrew press, protocols of the Israeli parliament, ministerial documents, and protocols of courts. One of the main distinctions which came to the fore at the early stages of the research was that of secular vis-à-vis religious organisations. 25 per cent of PNGOs in Israel are religiously motivated, most of them Islamic, formed by or associated with the Islamic movement in Israel (al-Haraqa al-Islamiyya fi Iisrail). Islamic organisations have played an important role in the development of Palestinian civil society in Israel, a role that is examined and analysed in this book. The book focuses, however, on secular organisations that constitute the majority of PNGOs in Israel. The second, in-depth, stage of research therefore included interviews and
Palestinian NGOs in Israel
13
participation in meetings and events of secular PNGOs in Israel alone, whereas information on Islamic PNGOs in Israel was gathered through interviews with leaders and functionaries in the Islamic movement, and a close reading of publications of the movement as well as secondary literature. The focus on secular organisations was chosen for three reasons. First, thematically, despite many similarities between religious and secular NGOs, there are important differences in the vision they promote, their external orientation, and their ways of organisation. Most importantly from the point of view of this book, secular NGOs promote a civic vision based on the Western-liberal model of organisation, whereas Islamic organisations have a religious vision of society. An in-depth analysis of both may have therefore obscured the impact of the proliferation of liberal-modelled Palestinian NGOs on state-minority relations in Israel, the main theme this book seeks to explore. Scholars throughout the Middle East have acknowledged the importance of the liberal model of NGOs for the way civil societies developed in the region. They have also emphasised the need to distinguish the development of secular NGOs from religious ones in order to fully appreciate their role.25 Second, while a rather rich body of literature discusses the Islamic movement in Israel, research of other Palestinian NGOs is scarce. By the time I began my research, only three works, limited in scope, dealt with PNGOs in Israel. The Jaffa Research Centre published a guide to 186 PNGOs in Israel in 1990, anthropologist Khalil Nakhleh dedicated the first part of his 1991 book on Palestinian NGOs to organisations active within Israel, and Amina Minns and Nadia Hijab examined the work of several PNGOs in Israel and activists in their book ‘Citizens Apart.’26 The years that passed since these three books were published saw many developments, which were sketched in a guide, published in 2000 by the Israeli Centre for Third Sector Research.27 Third, a methodological problem had also affected the choice to focus on secular NGOs. My access as a Jewish Israeli woman to Islamic NGOs was far more limited than my access to secular organisations. As far as secular PNGOs in Israel were concerned, I was invited to interview members from the bottom as well as the top hierarchy of organisations and to take part in activities and even board meetings. My position as a Jewish Israeli woman, who had been studying abroad, was never overlooked in this context, and almost always came up in discussion with interviewees. No activist ever refused me an interview, although some explained that their willingness to help went beyond the purely academic.
14
Introduction
As a Jewish Israeli, I was seen to offer a channel to influence the majority, to crack the screen-veil of ignorance and apathy in the Jewish sector. This response of Palestinian activists called my attention to my own political role and position in the Israeli power dynamics, as an Israeli woman studying the Palestinians. The complexity of this situation, however, is not unique to the Israeli case. As anthropologist Lila AbuLughod has commented, ‘[T]he outsider self never simply stands outside; he or she always stands in a definite relation with the “other” of the study[…] What we call the outside, or even the partial outside, is always a position within a larger political-historical complex’.28 My personal concerns could not be detached from the context of Israeli scholarship. Both anthropologists Khalil Nakhleh and Dan Rabinowitz have noted the tendency of Israeli scholars to study Palestinian society in isolation from its power relationship to the Israeli state. One of the most common concerns of such studies has been an attempt to explain the failure of Palestinians in Israel to organise effectively at a national level. By resorting to cultural explanations, Nakhleh and Rabinowitz have argued, Israeli scholars ignore the central role played by the Israeli system (and the British colonial system before it) in this failure, thus choosing a defensive framework of analysis.29 The growing awareness of these power relations has to some extent reshaped the focus of this study. First, it influenced my encounters with interviewees. An open discussion tended to lead to greater insights on the perceptions of interviewees regarding the position of their organisations in Israeli society. Second, it reinforced my growing interest in the role played by the state in shaping the opportunities and limitations experienced by PNGOs in Israel. Both methodologically and thematically, then, Rabinowitz and Nakhleh’s observations served to shift this book away from a functional analysis of NGOs, and enhance its focus on the power relations and social dynamics of which they constitute a part. A word is in order on the question of terminology. Power dynamics of Palestinians and Jews in Israel are reflected in the terminology used by the state to describe the Palestinian minority. As the Palestinian author Anton Shammas has argued, ‘[n]aming is a powerful thing, a privilege given to those who hold power.’30 The Israeli author David Grossman has articulated the ways in which the power of naming was used by the state:
Palestinian NGOs in Israel
15
‘The People… are alluded to in Hebrew as ‘Israeli Arabs’, a name that is in no way innocent[...] A more widespread term is “minorities”… [For the Arabs] - a standing reminder of their humiliation... There are no correct names - there are only a few terms created by the military, the bureaucracy, and the legal system, sterile forceps with which to grasp what the hand dares not touch’.31 Since the beginning of the 1970s, Palestinians in Israel ‘began, almost illicitly, to refer to themselves in one way or another as Israeli citizens who belong to the Palestinian people’.32 In fact, as Rabinowitz has contended, the term ‘Palestinians’ reflects the national and ethnic identity of the people it describes.33 Consequently, this book adopts this term. When Palestinians in the Occupied Territories or the diaspora are referred to, this distinction is made explicit in the text. As for the terms ‘civil society’, ‘NGOs’ and ‘social movements’, which are used to discuss the organisation of Palestinians in Israel: scholars representing different schools of thought have used these terms in different ways, reflecting their view of their social meanings. The debate is reviewed at length in the next chapter, but it is in order here to mention the way they are used throughout this book. The literature bestows two meanings to the concept of ‘Civil Society’: the term is used both to describe a set of values, predominantly the virtue of civility; and also to describe a realm of organisations and associations that mediate between the individual and the state. This book refers mainly to the second meaning of the concept. It views civil society as a sphere of institutions, composed of the ‘intimate sphere (especially the family), the sphere of associations (especially voluntary associations), social movements, and forms of public communication’.34 The perception of civil society as a set of virtues is debated in the literature, as reviewed in the following theoretical chapter. In light of this debate, the book does not accept as granted the association between civil society institutions and virtues of civility. Rather, it emphasises the centrality of power dynamics in the sphere of civil society similarly to the political sphere. Furthermore, civil society is not an autonomous realm that operates in a void. The achievements and failures of civil society actors can only be understood in relation to other political and social forces, predominantly the state that sets the rules for the political interactions in its realm.35 NGOs are defined as non-profit organisations, private in that they are institutionally separate from the state, and having a distinctive legal character.36
16
Introduction
A social movement, as noted at the beginning of this chapter, is defined as a loose alliance of organisations that act to promote social change and challenge the underlying assumptions of society. Structure of the book The book consists of six chapters, grouped into three sections. The theoretical and historical background to the development of PNGOs in Israel, the subject of section one, is discussed in two chapters. Chapter One provides the theoretical conceptualisation for the book. Based on critical approaches to the concepts of civil society and NGOs, the chapter challenges their idealistic portrayal as carriers of democratisation common to the liberal and neo-liberal worldviews. Cautious about sweeping generalisations of NGOs, the chapter reviews the NGO literature which sheds light on differences and similarities in NGOs’ activities at different geographic and historical contexts. It examines in particular the unique role of NGOs in the context of deeply divided societies and ethnic states, where citizenship and full political participation are explicitly linked to ethnicity and descent. The chapter highlights the dialectics characterising the realm of civil society, identified and discussed by Antonio Gramsci in his Selection from the Prison Notebooks, arguing that NGOs and other institutions of civil society can simultaneously support and hinder processes of democratisation, social change, and empowerment of marginal groups. Two factors especially influence the effectiveness of NGOs. One is the position of state institutions towards their activities, the other is the level of their own political commitment. Moreover, the political impact of NGOs seems to depend on their ability to transform into a social movement. For a successful movement, it should not only bring together a number of NGOs and other social actors but also act explicitly to challnge governmental ‘truths’. Chapter Two reviews the historical conditions that made possible the development of PNGOs in Israel and analyses their evolution through the periods of formation (1976-1982), institutionalisation (1983-1993), consolidation and disillusionment (1993-1999), and struggle for human rights and recognition of Palestinians in Israel as a national minority (Post-October 2000). The chapter identifies the factors contributing to the proliferation of PNGOs in Israel. It also discusses the constraints they have faced – both in their encounters with state institutions and Israeli-Jewish civil society in Israel – as a result of the ethnic character of the state. Other factors affecting the difficulty of PNGOs in Israel to transform into a social movement involve internal limitations of PNGOs
Palestinian NGOs in Israel
17
in Israel themselves and weaknesses of potential partners, including other Palestinian bodies in Israel and the Israeli (Jewish dominated) peace and co-existence camp. These themes are further elaborated in the next section of the book, presenting specific case studies. This section is composed of three chapters, discussing the experiences of PNGOs in Israel that act nationally, PNGOs in Israel that act locally, and those co-operating with Jews in joint organisations. Chapter Three analyses the campaign of PNGOs in Israel that act nation-wide. They are defined as those which serve or represent large sectors of the Palestinian minority, beyond the boundaries of local communities. The chapter highlights some of the ways in which national PNGOs in Israel challenge the exclusionary Israeli political system. It locates these methods along the continuum identified above, which grades the different approaches in terms of how fundamental the changes are that they promote. While most PNGOs active nationally focus on demands for reform of the existing system, the chapter discusses activists’ debate over this strategy. The chapter also analyses the effect of new methods such as appeal to international forums and the role of NGO coalitions on the crystalisation of more fundamental demands. The prevalent response of Israeli state institutions to national PNGOs in Israel can be characterised, based on a terminology coined by Yael Yishai, as ‘active exclusion’. This response is based on control and denial of recognition and legitimacy to challenging components of civil society. The experiences of national PNGOs in Israel show that ‘active exclusion’ remained the dominant state attitude vis-à-vis these organisations throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Chapter Four, dealing with local organisations, further demonstrates the engagement of PNGOs in Israel in processes of change. It highlights the NGOs’ contribution to the democratisation of their own society, and their encouragement of political participation of previously excluded groups. The chapter discusses processes of co-operation of various local organisations, as well as co-operation with Jewish activists. It highlights the role of local NGOs in representing the interests of grassroots and peripheral communities at the political centre. This chapter demonstrates the contribution of formal NGOs to the development of a Palestinian civil society in Israel. It illustrates the importance of NGOs at the grassroots level and their centrality in struggles for political change that involve other social forces as well. At the same time, the chapter also highlights the difficulties faced by local PNGOs in Israel. These difficulties echo those faced by national PNGOs in Israel, and include
18
Introduction
state pressures that undermine attempts of Palestinians to co-operate beyond the local and the interest-specific level, either by refusal to recognise such initiative or outright coercion towards them. Chapter Five examines joint activities of Jews and Palestinians in the NGO sector in Israel, after establishing the importance of such co-operation throughout the book. The chapter discusses the difficulties associated with joint activism, as suggested by activists and academics. It points at three shortcomings in particular. First, membership in Israeli peace organisations is characteristically dominated by Ashkenazi Jews and excludes other segments of Israeli society. Second, Jews and Palestinians, active under the same umbrella, often have different agendas. Differences surfaced especially since the Oslo peace process was in place, in 1993. Third, power dynamics within joint organisations often reflect those at society at large, affecting the possibility for equal activity, advocated by joint organisation. These challenges are discussed in the contexts of peace organisations, NGOs organising Jewish-Palestinian encounters, and funding institutions. Growing differences between Jewish and Palestinian activists in this well-intentioned arena, this chapter argues, go a long way to explain the barriers between PNGOs in Israel and the Israeli-Jewish society. Ideologically, they demonstrate the gaps between the two societies, and practically, they highlight the shortcomings of actors that could potentially mediate between the two. These shortcomings do not overshadow certain achievements, especially in recruiting resources and influencing decision makers. The increasingly open internal debate within these organisations is also highly significant for the evolution of sincere dialogue between Palestinians and Jews in Israel. The conclusion to the book evaluates the factors hindering the transformation of PNGOs in Israel into an effective social movement. For this purpose, the chapter discusses both the contribution of PNGOs in Israel to political and social change in Israel, and the limits of this contribution. It argues that PNGOs in Israel have accomplished considerable achievement at the level of politics defined in this book as the ‘politics of interests’. These efforts brought improvements to the lives of Palestinians in Israel. However, PNGOs in Israel encountered limited success in challenging the power dynamics prevailing in the Israeli society.
Chapter One
CIVIL SOCIETY, NGOs AND SOCIAL MOVEMENTS: A Theoretical Framework
T
he concept of civil society has engaged the interest of political scientists since the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe in the 1980s. Liberal scholars attributed the rapid demise of Communism to the emergence of a popular anti-totalitarian movement embodied in the idea of civil society. The discourse that subsequently emerged portrays civil society as a realm distinct from the state and the market, and superior in its commitment to civic virtues. A similar commitment to civic change has been attributed to nongovernmental organisations, the principal actors in civil society. NGOs have come to be viewed as effective means for positive improvements in the political and social life of nations. This is especially the case in the ‘developing’ or ‘Third World’, where the model of state-led development which prevailed from the end of World War II until the early 1980s is now widely perceived as obsolete and discredited. NGOs are portrayed by liberals in idealistic tones as entities set to ‘do good’ unattained by either politics or the market, and as agents of ‘democratisation’, ‘development’ and ‘empowerment’ of weak or marginalised groups. For neo-liberals, the significance of NGOs lies in the socio-economic realm. They view NGOs as part of the private sector, delivering services to the poor cheaply, equitably and efficiently.37 In contrast to these idealistic approaches, this chapter emphasises the dichotomy which characterises the relation of civil society and NGOs to democratisation and socio-political change. Following the Italian political philosopher Antonio Gramsci, it highlights the paradoxical role of civil society as a means for marginal groups to challenge the hegemonic social order on the one hand, and as a channel for the dominant group to consolidate this hegemony on the other.38 In the same way, NGOs can both strengthen the democratic aspects of civil society while at the same time weakening them or replicating existing weaknesses.39 A realistic analysis of civil society and NGOs must therefore be based on a balanced assessment of their impact on the process of change. Two factors are of particular importance. First, the engagement of civil society organisations in a process of change is dependent on the political context
20
Civil Society, NGOs and Social Movements
in which they operate. As this context is shaped and influenced to a large extent by the state, this understanding of civil society conflicts with the conceptualisation of an autonomous realm. Rather, it emphasises the importance of the state as a regulator of civil society and as the key actor in setting the boundaries of the political space in which NGOs manoeuvre.40 Other actors, predominantly foreign governments and donor funds, also play a significant role in determining the extent to which developing world NGOs have the resources to engage in a campaign to democratise their societies. Second, NGOs’ contribution to democratisation and empowerment of marginal groups is determined by the level of their engagement in the political process. As this chapter shows, many NGOs tend to regard themselves as non-political actors operating according to liberal and neoliberal precepts of development. This perception, which international aid agencies often encourage, leads NGOs to shy away from political confrontation and to promote technical solutions to problems with political roots. The preference for non-political solutions to political problems in turn limits their impact on processes of political, social and economic change. Following Gerard Clarke, this chapter argues that the perception of NGOs as non-political actors not only affects the activities of some NGOs, but also obscures the fact that the main contribution of NGOs to change is political in nature.41 NGOs’ contribution to political change takes place at two levels. At the first level of politics, NGOs promote specific material interests, aiming to influence the process by which decisions are made about the allocation of resources. This level does not involve active participation in the process by which social meanings, the ‘rules of the game’, are defined. The changes advocated at this level do not fundamentally challenge the framework of the existing political system or power relations of different social groups. At the second level of politics, NGOs negotiate a more fundamental change in the system, and contribute to the process by which social groups mobilise around a struggle for greater participation in decision-making and resource allocation.42 The chapter considers the debate over the political role of NGOs through an analysis of the concepts of civil society, NGOs and social movements. The distinction between the three concepts is mainly analytical, as civil society – in its interpretation as an independent sphere of organisations – can be viewed as an umbrella term covering both NGOs and social movements. The analytical distinction remains useful, however, for understanding the strengths and limitations of NGOs. The
Palestinian NGOs in Israel
21
first section of this chapter, dealing with civil society, presents the theoretical relation between civil society organisations and the state. The second section, dealing with NGOs, discusses the concept of development and the influence of external donors on NGOs in developing countries. The third section, dealing with social movements, presents some successful examples of the engagement of NGOs in political change. This section discusses the assumption that the political potential of NGOs is best achieved within the frame of a social movement. As this book is concerned with NGOs representing a minority group in the circumstances of ethno-national conflict, the chapter examines the implications of these circumstances for NGOs’ activity and the development of civil society. NGOs suffer from unique restrictions in ethnically divided societies because access to the political system is restricted mainly to organisations representing the majority. As many critics on the left have pointed out, restrictions derived from ethnicity often go hand in hand with other limitations, including those of economic inequality.43 The study does not overlook this linkage. However, it emphasises the unique character of the ethno-national component, which restricts social and political mobility even in formally democratic states. Civil Society and the State The idea of a ‘civil society’ distinct from both government and the marketplace has been developed in liberal thought since the eighteenth century.44 It was largely ignored in the post-World War II discourse of nationalism and democracy, returning to centre stage following the fall of Communism in the Soviet bloc. Ernest Gellner has explained the liberal revival of the concept thus: ‘Now [that people are disappointed by Communism] a new ideal or counter-vision, or at least a slogan-contrast, was required, and appropriately enough it was found in Civil Society…’45 In the liberal view, the defining feature of civil society is the virtue of ‘civility’. It takes civil society to mean that citizens and politicians display deference and courtesy towards their political opponents as well as their political allies, and that people consider others as ‘fellow citizens of equal dignity in their rights and obligations as members of civil society’.46 Following Alexis De Tocqueville, who attributed American democracy in the 1840s to the flowering of associations, the liberal concept views a vivid associational life as a necessary condition of democracy. 47 The ideal civil society is seen to facilitate democratisation through a set of diverse non-governmental institutions which is ‘strong enough to
22
Civil Society, NGOs and Social Movements
counterbalance the state and… prevent it from dominating and atomising the rest of society’.48 Associations are seen as pressure groups on behalf of interests that are different from one another but in theory enjoy equal access to the political system. Moreover, both the liberal and neo-liberal views assume that associations representing different interest groups in society are able to achieve compromise based on a fair allocation of budgets.49 The liberal view of civil society portrays a pluralistic picture of NGOs with divergent interests but sharing the same underlying values, and thus able to achieve compromise. Neo-liberals suggest a new pluralistic vision, embodied in the concept of a ‘politics of identity’, which imagines a democratic community in which differences of gender, culture, race and ethnicity are acknowledged and even celebrated, but without being allowed to turn into relations of domination or oppression.50 These liberal and neo-liberal views have been highly contested, above all for their portrayal of civil society as an essentially positive phenomenon. As Michael Waltzer has argued, the idealist understanding of civil society portrays it as a realm in which everyone is included and no one is preferred.51 This conception is criticised for overlooking the reality of the conflict between unequal access to power and the idea of pluralism. In reality, a situation in which civil society is totally unrestricted may be as much of a tyranny as a situation in which civil society has no freedom at all. Richard Norton has put it as follows: ‘Selfinterest, prejudice, and hatred cohabit with altruism, fairness, and compassion, sometimes making unrestrained free civil society a chilling thought.’52 In fact, as John Keane has argued, civil society and the state are each a condition of the democratisation of the other. Civil society may realise such goals as freedom, equality, participatory planning and community decision-making, but the liberty and security necessary for civil society to perform these functions is dependent upon the protective, redistributive and conflict-mediating functions of the state. Civil society organisations cannot on their own bring about the democratisation of the state. The transition to a more democratic order requires a state with liberalising instincts which exercises power more or less neutrally. This cannot happen unless state institutions become ‘more accountable to civil society by having their functions as co-ordinators and regulators of citizens’ lives recast’.53 Furthermore, whereas the liberal concept understands civil society as a counterbalance to the power of the state, critics highlight the fact that many elements in civil society are often bound to the state by ties of co-
Palestinian NGOs in Israel
23
operation rather than opposition. Consequently, the exercise of state power may often find support from some quarters of civil society.54 Antonio Gramsci was one of the leading political philosophers to emphasise the inter-related nature of politics and civil society. Gramsci saw the state as the equilibrium between two realms of political society and civil society. Political society is the realm of ‘dictatorship or some other coercive apparatus used to control the masses in conformity with a given type of production and economy’. Civil society, on the other hand, is ‘the hegemony of a social group over the entire nation exercised through so-called private organisations’.55 The state, which is the apparatus of the class or group that controls it,56 does not achieve the rule of the dominant group over the rest of society by sheer power. The essential idea embodied in Gramsci’s concept of hegemony is that the dominant class maintains its dominance by establishing its own moral, political and cultural values as the norm for society as a whole. The core of his theory is the achievement of a degree of implicit or explicit consent on the part of the ruled to the political order created by the dominant class.57 Gramsci’s definition of civil society broadened Marx and Hegel’s terminologies, concerned as they were with economic relationships and modes of production. He relocated the idea from the structural sphere of commerce and industry to the superstructural realm of ideology.58 Thus, for Gramsci, civil society was not only the sphere of class struggle but ‘the sphere of all the popular-democratic struggles’ which arise out of the different ways in which people are grouped, including nationality, religion or ethnicity. 59 In spite of the essential role of consent in Gramsci’s theory, he has also described civil society as the arena in which a struggle for hegemony is acted out between the rulers and the ruled. The contradiction implied by subordinate groups’ acceptance of the political order even as they struggle against its hegemony is not fully resolved in Gramsci’s writings. However, one influential interpretation of his work sees a partial answer in the idea that it is possible for different degrees of consent to exist. At one extreme, there are groups who express a profound sense of obligation to the dominant ideology, at the other extreme those who express only partial acceptance of the status quo.60 Three aspects of Gramsci’s theory of civil society are fundamental to an understanding of the dynamics within modern states. First, the distinction between political and civil societies is essentially an analytical one. In practice, the two spheres are always interpenetrated. Thus states invoke ‘public opinion’ to justify unpopular actions by appealing to the
24
Civil Society, NGOs and Social Movements
will of the majority and forcing the minority to acquiesce. In the same manner, manipulation of the media by governments is also an attempt by political society to penetrate into civil society.61 Second, as with the coercive functions of the state, relations within civil society are based on power. For in addition to its coercive apparatus, the dominant class also exercises power over subordinate groups through civil society. In other words, relationships within civil society organisations reflect and enhance power structures that already exist in society at large.62 In contrast to the liberal view, Gramsci does not portray civil society as a realm superior to that of other institutions. Rather, these organisations duplicate and sometimes enhance the same conflicts and power dynamics which characterise other institutions. Third, because of the state’s penetration of civil society institutions, Gramsci argues that it is often difficult to draw the line between legitimate efforts by the state to gain consent and the subtle use of force. Nevertheless, the distinction between influencing civil society institutions and the use of outright coercion is the main criterion for locating regimes on the democratic-totalitarian continuum.63 In conclusion, the relationship between state and civil society is both complementary and conflicting. Therefore, the development of a civic culture cannot be imagined in the absence of the state. Negotiation between the two realms is the ‘locus of public opinion formation and resulting struggles’ – the very heart of the process of democratisation.64 Civil Society in an Ethnic State The existence in a society of deep ethnic conflict, as in the case of Israel, amplifies the difficulties of the weakest elements in civil society to negotiate change with the state. Ethnic states can be defined as those which link citizenship and full participation in society to ethnicity and descent, and they contrast with civic states which are pluralistic and aim to facilitate full participation in society for all their citizens.65 In ethnic states, the protection of law and the rights of citizenship do not apply equally to all citizens. Rather, ethnic states tend to function as ‘weblike societies’ – a phrase coined by Joel Migdal to describe numerous systems of justice that operate simultaneously.66 The ethnic state is not a neutral actor. Neither in principle nor in practice does it treat citizens as individuals, each with an equal claim to the obligations and benefits of citizenship. Rather, it distinguishes between them on the basis of ethnicity. Without neutrality, the autonomy of the state is affected, as it merges with the regime and the dominant ethnic group in their hegemonic control over society.67
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Democracy, even if formally exists, is a problematic concept in an ethnic state. According to Donald Horowitz, the main obstacle to a meaningful democratic system in such states arises from the inability of the minority ever to win an election – precisely because in such a state truly democratic elections will always reflect the will of the majority. In a meaningful democracy, elections are intended to be a vehicle of choice. But in cases of ethnically divided societies, majority rule does not reflect a choice so much as a birth affiliation. As Horowitz has argued, in an ideal-type ethnic state in which two ethnic groups are represented by two parties, one representing the majority and the other the minority, the minority can never win. This is therefore not a scenario of elections but a census. In a more probable situation in nominally democratic ethnic states, in which the majority and the minority form alliances and categories of ethnicity are not rigid, many states still make special discriminatory provisions for one ethnic group in the polity. Such provisions are often explained away as exceptional and as a temporary expedient, but there remains a gap between the liberal theory of formal institutions and the practice of exclusivity.68 In these circumstances, scholars regard as unlikely the development of a liberal civil society that encourages people of different groups to consider one another as members of the same collectivity. The nature of the civil society that develops in an ethnic state is exclusive; it does not provide minorities with an autonomous space from which to promote their interests.69 The Zionist movement, and consequently Israel, is viewed as a classic example of the clash between ethnic domination and liberal democracy.70 Other examples include Northern Ireland until 1972, Canada from 1867 until the 1960s, Malaysia since the 1970s, and Estonia and Latvia since the 1990s. All these states extend some individual human rights to members of the minority groups. Sammy Smooha has contrasted the model prevailing in such ethnic democracies with the model of a ‘master democracy’, as existed in South Africa until the 1990s. In the latter model, democratic practices are restricted to the ‘race’ of the dominant group and denied to the minority by force.71 Despite the differences between Israel and South Africa, it is notable that both have their roots in colonial movements. As elaborated in the next chapter, the colonial roots of Zionism have been significant in defining a hierarchy of rights based on ethnic descent. Although democracy in Israel is not fully restricted to the dominant ethnic group, it is marked by ‘master privileges’ which are partly denied to Palestinians within Israel and fully denied to Palestinians in West Bank and the Gaza Strip, at least until a
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somewhat new situation emerged under the Oslo accords of September 1993. NGOs and Political Change The realities of ethnic states challenge the liberal and neo-liberal view of civil society as an arena for competition which sets competing groups on an equal footing. In fact, recognising the centrality of power relations is pivotal for understanding civil society and NGOs in ethnic states and elsewhere. As Michael Kaufman has argued, the problem faced by NGOs is not merely the existence of competition between unequal groups. Rather, it is the fact that those who suffer the most under the status quo do not have the access to means of political power, economic production, education and training to engage in a successful process of change. By definition, the social order has been determined by other classes and social actors acting in their own interest. Therefore, one must be cautious about expecting NGOs to encourage ‘participation’ or ‘empowerment’. Because these commonly used concepts refer to existing institutions as a given, they may mask the need for the creation of entirely new institutions.72 The issue, in other words, is not only how NGOs facilitate the political participation of previously excluded groups, but also what are the implications of this participation for existing power dynamics. A wide range of factors influences the level of challenge NGOs may pose to existing power structures. The following section discusses some of these factors, examining characteristic dilemmas of NGOs in the developing world. NGOs in the Developing World Some liberal scholars argue that civil society is a phenomenon exclusive to the West. Adam Seligman, for example, has contended that the conditions for the ‘emergence of the classical Western liberalindividualist model of civil society’ do not extend much beyond the West.73 These conditions include pluralism, which is lacking in the ‘East’, and the perception of the individual as autonomous in his/her opposition to the state. In the East, according to Seligman, such perception does not exist because the individual is firmly embedded within primordial attributes that define his/her relations with the state.74 Such essentialist views are commonplace in the scholarship on the Islamic Middle East. Ernest Gellner, a leading scholar of the Middle East, has defined Islam as a civilisation and argued that it is resistant to the development of civil society. Due to the all-encompassing nature of
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Islam, Gellner has argued, rulers base their rule on religious law rather than on secular principles of civil society. Furthermore, while most of the civilisations that existed in the ancient world have gone through a process of secularisation, the ‘world of Islam’ has not changed. Gellner suggests the following explanation for the ahistorical nature he attributes to the ‘Islamic civilisation’: Normally, Third World societies seek to escape the ‘humiliation of backwardness’. Whereas most of these societies at different points in history have chosen to base their reform on the Western-secular idea of nationalism, Islamic societies based reform on a shift from low (popular) forms of Islam to high forms of Islam. Thus they avoided adopting foreign ideas, their modernisation was incomplete and their adjustment to the concept of nationalism was lacking. Due to these circumstances, Gellner has argued that the Islamic social order lacks capacity to provide countervailing institutions or associations, and is devoid of individualism and intellectual pluralism. Hence, it is resistant to the development of civil society.75 In contrast to the interpretations put forward by Seligman and Gellner, since the 1980s Western-model NGOs have proliferated outside the West in what has been dubbed an ‘associational revolution’.76 This process began a decade earlier – during the 1970s – when the Latin America liberation theology inspired the transition of organisations from welfare, relief and small-scale development projects to the more politically explicit roles of ‘conscientisation’ (raising the critical consciousness of members) and mobilisation, leading to direct intervention in political conflicts. David Korten has labelled those organisations dealing with welfare and relief as People Organisations (POs). These organisations – which are also known in contemporary NGO literature as Community-Based Organisations (CBOs) – are defined as local, non-profit membership based associations that mobilise and organise their constituencies in support of collective welfare goals.77 POs are generally regarded as a sub-category of NGOs. Korten usefully distinguishes between four generations of NGOs. The first generation is characterised by POs that focus on welfare and relief. The second generation focuses on small-scale development projects. Korten has defined organisations dealing with ‘conscientisation’ and mobilisation as Third Generation NGOs. The fourth generation of NGOs focuses mainly on institutional and structural reform.78 The second and third-generation NGOs are the fastest growing organisations in the developing world. Acting as catalysts, rather than service providers, they – as well as the fourth generation NGOs – work with networks of POs to enhance the local success of ‘second
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generation’ strategies. Many organisations apply different strategies, identified with the different generations.79 Gerard Clarke identifies five factors that have contributed to the proliferation of NGOs outside the West. These included, first, the transfer of money from NGOs in the industrialised world to their counterparts in developing countries. Second, governments in the West have transferred funds to local NGOs in developing countries. Third, due to the economic crisis of the 1980s, developing states have been forced to transfer an increasing number of responsibilities to NGOs. Fourth, social movements, which used to be ideologically and organisationally united, fragmented due to systematic repression of classbased movements and the collapse of socialism in Eastern Europe. Fifth, economic growth throughout the developing world triggered social differentiation. As existing political institutions failed to represent the new concerns of disparate groups, activists established NGOs that addressed their interests more explicitly.80 The Islamic Middle East has not lagged behind other parts of the developing world in establishing formal, Western-like NGOs. Richard Norton has estimated that the number of such organisations more than tripled across the region between the mid-1960s and the mid-1980s.81 He views the components of civil society in terms of formal organisations, a ‘mélange of associations, clubs, guilds, syndicates, federations, unions, parties and groups [that] come together to provide a buffer between state and citizen’.82 Such institutions, he argues, have increasingly expressed an array of political demands, such as improvements in human rights or women’s rights, and pressured governments to enact political reform.83 So prominent have these organisations become in the contemporary Middle East that by the end of the 1990s, the editors of Middle East Report (Merip) felt able to describe NGOs as the ‘defining social organizational form of the decade’.84 The restrictions these NGOs have faced and their often-limited political impact have had more to do with specific political structures and the relation between global forces and local actors than with essential characteristics of the ‘East’ or ‘Islam’. The extent of NGOs’ contribution to democratisation in the Middle East has been debated in much the same terms as elsewhere in the developing world. The commitment of secular elites to the idea of civil society as a path to democratisation is epitomised in the foundation of an Egyptian journal in 1989 under the title Civil Society: Democratisation in the Middle East. The journal is the monthly newsletter of the Ibn Khaldun Centre for Development Studies, headed by the Egyptian-American sociologist Saad Eddin Ibrahim. The
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centre was established in the mid-1980s as a research centre for the social sciences with Kuwaiti funding.85 Ibrahim’s case also epitomises, however, the restrictions on civil society imposed by states in the Middle East. In May 2001 Ibrahim was imprisoned for his activism. He was sentenced to jail after being convicted of spying for the United States and accepting funds from abroad to make a film critical of the Egyptian government. Ibrahim has argued that his arrest was an attempt of the government to cover up irregularities in parliamentary elections in 1995, which the Ibn Khaldun Centre has investigated.86 Some scholars have long voiced scepticism about the prospects of civil society in the Middle East. John Waterbury, for example, argues that the private-sector bourgeoisie and the intelligentsia have been highly dependent on the state, if not absorbed by it altogether, and therefore ‘made little contribution to the creation of a civil society able to bargain with the state’.87 Similarly, the editors of Merip point out the absence of a broad base of support for modern NGOs. This contrasts with the support given to resistance groups or the popular syndicates of students, workers and professionals, which constituted the dominant form of public organisation in the 1970s. Whereas these groupings arose from and reflected broad-based movements, usually defined as progressive if not radical, and proclaiming unabashedly political (though frequently unrealistic) objectives, NGOs reflect, in Merip’s view, ‘the fragmentation and segmentation of a wide popular base and the depoliticisation of popular discourse in the post-Cold War, post-Oslo Middle East.’88 There is even more scepticism about non-Western forms of mobilisation, such as kinship-based or Islamic organisations. Many scholars of the Middle East who adopt the liberal view of civil society exclude family and clan-based organisations from its ranks.89 Thus Norton, who views democracy as a boundary crossing concept ‘like Coca-Cola’ and civil society as a necessary condition for democracy, believes that the fact that ‘loyalties to tribe, clan, and family are not about to be eclipsed by secular organisations’ poses an obstacle to the development of civil society and democratisation in the Middle East.90 In an African context, Naomi Chazan excludes from civil society ‘parochial associations’ such as remote village communities or religious cults because they ‘do not encourage an interest in matters beyond their own immediate concerns.’91 She also excludes from civil society organisations run by groups that equate their own interests with those of the state and consequently seek to take over the state. She includes in the latter category fundamentalist groups, ethno-national movements and even ideological associations.92 This position is difficult to defend so far as
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kinship is concerned, given the instrumental role played by grassroots organisations, even those based on family or tribal affinities, in Middle Eastern societies. Both Jill Crystal in the context of the Gulf and Richard Antoun in the context of Jordan have argued that the domain of kinship cannot be separated from politics. As Crystal observes, ‘The extended family is the basic institution for wielding any kind of power: social, economic or political.’93 Discussing the importance of kinship, and particularly tribal methods of conflict resolution, Antoun suggests that defining civil society in terms of formal institutions alone is ethnocentric, and misses what he sees as the heart of Jordanian civil society – tribal practices that foster trust and co-operation which are then translated into the political realm.94 While kinship organisations are often underestimated or excluded as irrelevant, Islamic organisations are viewed as a different kind of threat to the evolution of civil society in the Middle East. Gellner, arguing that ‘Islam’ is resistant to democracy and civility, is not exceptional in viewing political Islam in monolithic terms. Scholars often ignore the relevance of modern political conditions, such as the role of the nation state or the influence of external actors, to the rise of political Islam. Instead, it has become commonplace to refer to Islamic movements as a ‘product of historical continuity with an essential Islam preserved in the hearts and minds of the people as “popular culture”.95 Yet even those who acknowledge political Islam as an essentially modern and heterogeneous phenomenon point to the totalitarian vision of most Islamic movements as a threat to civil society.96 The theoretical debate over Islam and democratisation goes beyond the scope of this book, but it is sufficient to note here that despite the less than pluralistic aspects of their political vision, Islamist movements have formed the main opposition in most Arab countries and in most parliaments in the region where free elections are allowed to take place. As Nazih Ayubi and Norton both observe, since democracy requires the existence of opposition and formal contestation, the Islamists have become a de facto part of the democratisation process and civil society in the Arab world.97 The Limitations of NGOs as Agents of Change NGOs have proliferated in the developing world against a difficult backdrop of limited or absent democracy, major social inequalities, economic crises and underdevelopment. Their success in challenging these conditions has been mixed. Despite their self-portrayal as carriers of change, scholars have noted several characteristics in NGOs’ work that typically hinder socio-political change. Critical scholars blame many
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of the deficiencies of NGOs in developing countries on their financial dependence on foreign development agencies and donors. Thus, the same organisations that made possible the proliferation of these NGOs are partly responsible for limiting their political influence in their societies. The Anti-Politics of Development Western governments, multinational and non-governmental organisations have increased their support of local associations in developing countries, viewing them as an effective channel to implement the development paradigm. This paradigm first emerged in the West with the Truman Doctrine after the Second World War. Its fundamentals – the introduction of democracy and the incorporation of Third World economies into the global production system – were best articulated by President Truman himself in 1949: ‘What we envisage is a program of development based on the concepts of democratic fair dealing… Greater production is the key to prosperity and peace. And the key to greater production is a wider and more vigorous application of modern [sic] knowledge’.98 According to Arturo Escobar, the discourse and strategies of the development paradigm are subject to change over time, but in their various manifestations they have dominated the relationship between the West and the Third World ever since their first introduction by Truman. NGOs have played a crucial role in the implementation of development strategies since they constitute the instruments of development planning. They include a vast range of bodies, from state-affiliated international organisations based in the West, to national planning agencies in the Third World, local development agencies, community development committees and private voluntary agencies. The institutionalisation of NGOs began in the mid-1940s with the creation of the large international organisations like the United Nations, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.99 Although development projects have often benefited populations in target countries, scholars have criticised them for failing to solve the underlying problems of underdevelopment. Escobar argues that the development agenda has actually done the opposite, perpetuating underdevelopment by submitting the target population to an external political and technical control.100 A major criticism of the development project contends that it depoliticises the issue of income inequality at
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global and local levels by emphasising technical rather than political solutions to powerless and oppressed people.101 As nominally apolitical organisations, NGOs are seen in this analysis as the instruments for delivering such technical solutions.102 The large-scale involvement of international agencies in the regulation and distribution of aid to refugees in Croatia following the break-up of Yugoslavia in the mid-1990s provides an example of NGOs operating in this capacity. Working with refugees and displaced people, NGOs focused on psychological and psycho-sociological ‘relief models’ (that is, models aiming to offer remedies for individuals) rather than on collective development projects. This approach was consistent with the nominally non-political nature of NGO work, as it overlooked the political cause for grievances and refrained from putting forward political solutions. Most importantly, these projects were detached from the larger context of discrimination and repression in Croatia in the mid-1990s. As Paul Stubbs has argued in this context, ‘relief models’ are more containable and less likely to lead to a ‘politicisation’ of aid and the development of particular forms of consciousness and action among beneficiary populations.’103 Given this preference of many NGOs to concentrate on the individual and technical sides of political and social injustices, the ability of nongovernmental organisations to prevent or solve ethnic cleavages, and to elevate the collective status of minority groups, is controversial. Sherill Stroschein argues that some strategies of NGOs representing ethnic minorities in central Europe have actually proved to be counterproductive. Looking at Hungarian NGOs and Roma NGOs in Rumania, Slovakia and Ukraine, and Roma NGOs in Hungary, Stroschein shows that the two ethnic groups chose very different strategies from each other, based on their understanding of the reasons for ethnic cleavages with majority groups. Hungarian NGOs have strong ties with their “mainland” (Hungary) and receive generous funding from this country. Since their socio-economic status is solid and their confidence in their communities is relatively high, Hungarian NGOs tend to concentrate on personal netweorking with individuals from the majority groups in Romania, Slovakia and Hungary. This strategy has a counter-productive effect as far as minority-majority relations are concerned, according to Stroschein, especially in Rumania where officially 1.6 million Hungarians live, mainly in the Transylvania region. Since Rumanians are concerned for the integrity of their country, the tight connections of Hungarians with Hungary are seen as a threat, and enhance ethnic tensions. These ties were strengthened after 1989, when Hungary chose to help Hungarian minorities economically but ignored other poverty-stricken
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ethnies in the region. Personal networking does not confront these issues, especially since it does not involve the masses of middle class Hungarians and Rumanians, but rather focuses on either elites or the lower classes. Roma NGOs through Central Europe identify the main source for ethnic tensions in the low socio-economic status of Romas, and therefore concentrate on service provision and humanitarian aid to their community. According to Stroschein, this is often counterproductive because it relieves the government from its responsibility to provide equal services and keeps the Romas separate from other ethnic groups. Most Roma NGOs avoid dialogue activities because of worries that Romas, as members of the poorest and most disenfranchised minority in Central Europe, may not be able to express themselves properly. This, in turn, accentuates stereotypes and segregation.104 As James Ferguson shows in the context of the state of Lesotho, a state may actually take advantage of NGO work in order to gain control over peripheral minorities. In this case, international aid agencies funded ‘development’ projects in the peripheral mountain area of Thaba-Tseka for several decades even though such projects had consistently failed to achieve their stated goal of modernising the region’s agricultural sector. Trying to account for the continuous interest in these projects despite their repeated failure, Ferguson finds an explanation in what seems at first glance to be nothing more than a side effect, the greater accessibility of the province due to the construction of modern transport and communications links. As a result of the projects, the government enhanced its control over a previously inaccessible region in which the political opposition was based. The pavement of a road connecting the region with the capital city, for example, facilitated the deployment of a military unit in Thaba-Tseka. The extension of dozens of government services to the region benefited local population but was, if anything, an even greater benefit for the government, which now had a foothold in the opposition heartland. This led Ferguson to argue that, ‘government services are never simply “services”; instead of conceiving [of] a government whose purpose is to serve, it may be at least as appropriate to think of “services” which serve to govern.’105 The case of Lesotho demonstrates the way in which development projects can facilitate greater government control. Ferguson suggests that a similar political effect characterises the entire development process. Donors may not consciously aim to enhance state control. However, the fact that such projects often increase state power as their by-products – regardless of whether or not they achieve their economic and social objectives – helps to explain why they are advanced so consistently.
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Programmes for settling nomadic or semi-nomadic pastoral tribes throughout the Middle East provide a bold example of the association between international development projects and increased governmental control. National governments across the region have aimed to fully integrate the tribes with the political and economic state system. Hence nearly all governments have initiated some form of settlement programme. These programmes have often deprived Bedouins of their livestock, their traditional grazing lands, or their freedom. Nevertheless, the United Nations and its agencies have generally supported and legitimised these projects. In 1952, the UN justified the policy of settling nomadic pastorals by arguing that such programmes raise their standard of living. In the 1980s, the political motivation to settle or control the Bedouins was further justified in ecological terms – arguing that they abuse the environment. Anthropologist Dawn Chatty followed a specific development programme, that of the Harasiis tribe in the Sultanate of Oman. The project was run by the Omani government and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP). Although initially the government aimed to serve rather than control the remote tribes of the Harasiis, Chatty has argued that it did not take into consideration their real needs. Patronising planning resulted in housing solutions that failed to account for the blend of traditional and modern ways of life among tribesmen and women. Moreover, whereas the government did not suggest the settlement of the nomads, such proposals did come from the UNDP. As far as local bureaucrats were considered, only few of them consulted with the target populations and understood their needs as they themselves defined them. Moreover, officials did not serve in their positions long enough to see the project through.106 Similarly, Gerard Clarke has highlighted the adverse effect of many development projects conducted by governmental, non-governmental or multi-national organisations on ethnic and indigenous minorities in Southeast Asia. In many cases, he argues, development projects are initiated by Southeast Asian governments in order to achieve national cohesion biased towards the dominant ethnic group. In effect, such projects often aim to break up ethnic minority communities and consolidate the dominance of the majority. In post-independence Burma, for example, ethnic minorities were forced to migrate from their towns or villages. The government justified this policy on the grounds of ‘urban development’. The real aims of concentrating minorities in a single place, however, were both to assimilate them with the rest of the population and to exercise tighter control over their lives.107
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Funding and External Dependency Western funding of NGOs has constituted one of the main grounds for criticism of the association between development and NGOs. Since the end of the Second World War, aid flows from American and European organisations to NGOs in developing countries have risen steadily. Annual transfers to developing country NGOs have increased by nearly 70 per cent in real terms between 1960 and 1980. The absolute figures are also revealing: while in the early 1960s Western NGOs transferred some $3 million annually to their counterparts in developing countries, by 1980 this figure exceeded $4 billion. According to Brian Smith, the most important factor in explaining this rise has been the dramatic increase in government funding of overseas NGO projects. This occurred as their greater access to poor and underprivileged segments of developing societies has become more widely appreciated.108 Governments in target countries have also played an important part in the development of local NGO projects, directly from the state budget or by transferring some of the government’s foreign aid receipts to NGOs.109 The benefits of funding are evident. External funds are critical to sustaining organisations and implementing their projects. The growth and development of these institutions also constitute a platform for the emergence of new leadership and for advocating alternative policies. Thanks to the availability of funding, NGOs can ‘make their voices heard more loudly and more often through lobbying and advocacy.’110 A telling example of the association between availability of funds for service provision and the empowerment of marginal segments in society is provided by the involvement of women in the national struggle of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. According to Rita Giacaman, a scholar and activist in the women’s movement in the Occupied Territories, women would have been unable to participate in the democratic process without the commitment of Western NGOs to the provision of essential pre-school services. These services freed up time for Palestinian women to take up public activities, in the process giving them a platform from which to influence decision-making.111 The experience of NGOs worldwide shows that external funding carries risks along with opportunities. Loss of independence is perhaps the biggest casualty of foreign funding. NGOs funded by Western donors or by their own governments run the risk of limiting their autonomy and their ability to advocate policies that conflict with existing power structures. There is often a clear conflict between the policies of donors on the one hand and those of the communities which NGOs aim to serve on the other. Funding facilitates pressure for co-optation from
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donors, who feel their financial support of an organisation entitles them to call the tune of its activity. David Hulme and Michael Edwards have argued that such pressures often deprive NGOs of their original aim of mobilising social change, turning them into little more than bureaucracies in the service of their own members. Moreover, the risk of deflecting NGOs from the attempt to influence policies toward a focus on local implementation is strengthened by the tendency of donors to fund individual projects rather than the administrative overhead of organisations. This approach arises from the desire of donors to see tangible results, a reluctance to fund open-ended capacity building, a certain intolerance to long-term learning processes, and an emphasis on upward accountability. In other words, donors may reorient accountability of NGOs up and away from their grassroots origins. This sometimes means that NGOs’ time and energy are diverted towards liaison with donors and away from their own communities. This, in turn, may limit the public impact of their work. Competition for donor funding may also hinder co-operation between NGOs, thus weakening their influence on policy. While many NGOs in the developing world claim to challenge the existing socio-political order, it has often been argued by indigenous people that international aid agencies serve to perpetuate the underdevelopment of Third World countries. The dependence of developing world NGOs on these agencies raises the question of whether such organisations are in a position to promote an alternative system at all. Hulme and Edwards argue that NGOs which are dependent on official aid agencies are less willing to speak out on issues that are unpopular with governments for fears of being accused of promoting the political agenda of outsiders. They also argue that the problem of maintaining the legitimacy of NGOs which receive external funding is enhanced to the extent that donors lack effective financial control and are exposed to the possibility of corruption or other abuses. Finally, the absorption of donors’ norms and standards has implications even down to the choice of personnel. English-speaking graduates with financial and technical skills have become increasingly important within NGOs, often at the expense of individuals with a sustained record of activism in the community.112 Stubbs has called this process ‘the creation of a “globalised new professional middle class”. This class, which Stubb sees as a product of the ‘aid industry’, not only speaks a common language with donors but also shares many of their assumptions. Donors, he argues, tend to prefer NGOs that reproduce their own view of the world. In the process of negotiations and alliance between NGOs and donors, certain common
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goals are defined and other possibilities are ruled out.113 Despite the language of civil society used by NGO activists, Stubbs argues that the proliferation of NGOs often indicates more the increase of professional power than that of civil society.114 The danger in this situation is most explicitly spelled out by James Petras, a leftist critic of NGOs. Petras argues that NGOs provide jobs for unemployed or underemployed intellectuals, academics and professionals, but only if they are willing to ‘spout the civil society-free market-alternative development line’ and collaborate with policies of neo-liberal regimes and international financial agencies. These jobs, Petras argues, are essentially provided in order to ‘put out the fires’, or divert potential ideological responses to situations that had led to loss of jobs and budget cuts in the first place. Consequently, NGOs in effect use foreign funds to recruit and elevate local leaders, while at the same time encouraging them to adapt to the reality of neo-liberalism.115 The failure of NGOs to fully achieve this purpose or solve problems in their societies is attested by the frequent violent mass outbursts that take place in regions of micro-enterprise promotion.116 The Transformation of NGOs to Social Movements Due to the challenges faced by individual NGOs and the limitations which characterise their work, some scholars have argued that NGOs are more likely to engage in a process of change if they go beyond independent activity and mobilise in the form of a ‘social movement’ – a loose alliance of organisations that act in concert with other social elements to promote social and political change.117 As part of a movement, studies throughout the developing world have indicated several ways in which NGOs can contribute to socio-political change and democratisation. These include organising and mobilising disempowered social strata; advocating and supporting the reform of the state; and supplementing the traditional institutions of democracy such as political parties, trade unions and the media.118 Probably the most sustainable contribution of NGOs to democratisation and change, however, is achieved when they are involved in an active attempt to influence social meaning, to redefine which issues are considered to be political. Based on Michel Foucault’s analysis of the ‘strategic reversibility’ of power relations, William Fisher has argued that NGOs can play a key role in challenging the terms of governmental ‘truths’. By changing the terms in which people think of politics, power relations may shift and reality may change.119
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Gender-based activism in the Middle East demonstrates this type of contribution to socio-political change by NGOs. The literature highlights the proliferation of women’s organisations throughout the region, especially since the United Nation’s Decade for Women (1975-1985) and subsequent United Nations-sponsored conferences on women in the 1990s have offered increased funding and lobbing opportunities for these organisations. In light of these increasing opportunities, women in the Middle East have played an important role in the proliferation of NGOs. Their role has been prominent both in terms of raising the profile of their own feminist organisations and in terms of their activism in mixed-gender organisations concentrating on more universal issues of human rights, community services, education or the environment.120 Women’s organisations embody many of the practical contributions of NGOs to democratisation. Women’s activism reflects the role of NGOs in providing an arena for participation of a sector of society that was historically excluded from public forms of politics; women NGOs have tended to support and facilitate state reform on gender issues; and they have complemented traditional forms of organisations, which tended to exclude women and their interests.121 Moreover, feminist NGOs and activists in the NGO sector have brought gender to the centre stage of the domestic political discourse in the Middle East.122 Achieving such a position of influence, whether for women’s NGOs in particular or for the sector in general, is difficult at the level of the single organisation. Indeed, while individual NGOs, both local and international, have often tended to focus on practical needs and interests rather than on political solutions to inequality, the literature has emphasised their enhanced ability to bring about political change when they join in a social movement. Whereas individual NGOs often tend to act as interest groups and focus on the limited aims of ‘politics of allocation’ within the context of a given set of power relations, social movements are distinguished by the fact that they aim to promote far-reaching social change and challenge the underlying assumptions of society. 123 Jürgen Habermas has defined social movements as ‘learning processes through which latently available rationality structures are transposed into social practice, so that they eventually find an institutional embodiment’.124 Drawing on Habermas, Roy Eyerman and Andrew Jamison contend that social movements represent the dynamic interaction between various organisations and interest groups. Collectively, these actors carve out for themselves a political space that did not previously exist for the articulation of new interest and ‘knowledge’ (by which they refer both to formal and informal scientific
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knowledge and to broader aspects of political and social consciousness ).125 This set of new ideas that articulates a movement’s collective ideology, dubbed its cognitive praxis, does not come ready-made to a social movement. Rather, it is through the process of formulating and articulating these ideas that a social movement defines itself in society. Moreover, social movements are not the totality of the organisations or institutions of which they are composed. For Eyerman and Jamison, the meaning, or core identity of a social movement, is the ‘cognitive space the movement creates, a space for new kinds of ideas and relationships to develop.’126 They define social movements as a ‘new conceptual space’ filled by the dynamic interaction between different groups and organisations. It is through the tensions between these organisations that the identity of a social movement is formed. However, this identity is relevant only so long as the central ideas of the movement remain noninstitutionalised within the scientific community or in the established political culture. Once the movements’ aims have been realised, its raison d’être will have disappeared.127 Despite the analytical separation between the medium and the message, the cognitive approach underlines the fact that the two are interdependent. As Thomas McCarthy has argued, Habermas’s theory of social evolution attempts to explain how what individuals or marginal groups learn could eventually become the ‘basis for a new principle of society as a whole’.128 This, in turn, is inextricably linked to the means they use. According to Habermas, the historical role of social movements arises from their attempt to challenge the irresolvable problems of capitalist societies, to question the legitimacy of the system ‘at its lowest point’. Social movements are invaluable to the functioning of a democratic system, because they tackle the core conflict within their developed capitalist societies. This conflict derives from the fact that the ‘representatives of the state, although elected by the entire population, have to legitimise their activity in securing more economic rewards for an increasing smaller sector of society’. Against this backdrop, a social movement ‘unmasks the ideological obfuscations, critiques the attempts at diversion and opens discussion on fundamental issues of economics and politics’. 129 Eyerman and Jamison further elaborate on this idea. They assert that not every social problem generates a social movement, ‘only those that strike a fundamental chord, that touch basic tensions in the society’. This approach, they go on to argue, tends to limit the number of social movements ‘to those especially “significant” movements which redefine history, which carry the historical “projects” that have normally been attributed to social classes’.130 Habermas makes
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clear that this role can only be achieved through the invention of new techniques of protest. In particular, he highlights the challenge of nonviolent resistance developed by the civil rights movement in the United States for maximising publicity with minimal physical risk. The establishment of formal NGOs is seen in this view as one of a host of methods used by social movements to challenge hegemonic ideologies.131 The conditions allowing for the evolution of social movements have concerned many scholars. Perhaps the most prominent explanation was put forward by Ted Gurr, who contended that men ‘rebel’ when they are frustrated, that is, when frustration with one’s relative social or economic deprivation leads to political violence.132 However, as other scholars have noted, Gurr’s theory conflicts with the reality of social movements, which is predominantly one of middle-class activists whose members benefit at least partially from the existing social and political order. For example, while women are socially, economically and politically disadvantaged, the stimulus for the feminist movement was often located among highly educated middle and upper class feminists.133 The American civil rights movement constitutes one of the most prominent examples of social movements in the twentieth century. Its success in raising the civil rights of African-Americans to the American national consciousness highlights the importance of activism and organisation on the one hand and the availability of political opportunities on the other. The movement’s success is also attributed to the alliances it created between religious associations and organisations of the working class. It evolved following the increase in levels of education within the Southern black community and relied on the involvement of white Northern students and intellectuals. One of the highlights of the movement’s activities was the Freedom Summer Camp organised by black students in Mississippi in 1964. The camp is well remembered for the hundreds of white volunteers pouring into the black South from prestigious Northern universities to establish the network of Freedom Schools, and for the harsh violence (including the kidnap and murder of volunteers) some of them suffered at the hands of local whites.134 Based on the experiences of the American civil rights movement, Aldon Morris asserts that exclusion from the decisionmaking processes is the predominant factor leading subordinate groups to opt for ‘non-traditional’ struggles against the holders of power. This option is facilitated, first, by the availability of basic resources, including internal mobilisation and social institutions that provide the community with communication, leadership, and social resources such as money and labour. Second, organisation as a social movement is based on the
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recruitment of social activists with strong ties to mass-based indigenous institutions. Third, it requires tactics and strategies that can be effectively deployed against a system of domination.135 The case of the American civil rights movement also highlights the importance of these factors. The movement emerged at a time when black standards of education and living were rising, and ideologies of African and Third World identity were becoming more significant in the American popular consciousness of the outside world. Further, the case of the American civil rights movements demonstrates the role of the state in shaping the conflict and alliance system that influences social movements’ emergence and development. The sympathy of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations was instrumental in its success.136 Another lesson from the struggle of African Americans for equal rights is the fact that political opportunities do not constitute fixed conditions that predate the emergence of social movements. Organisations and activists within political movements are also agents of change. They act upon political opportunities, and their actions often pave the way for new opportunities.137 South Africa provides another example of a social movement’s contribution to democratic transition in a racially divided society. Hubert Schillinger argues that the civil rights movement in South Africa had three main roles during the 1980s which contributed to the political change of 1991 when apartheid was abolished and a democratically elected government took power. First, civil society organisations were responsible for the politicisation and militant activism on behalf of interests that were excluded by the apartheid regime, principally those of black South Africans. Second, civil society organisations delivered at least some social services to sections of the population neglected by the regime. Finally, in the period leading up to the 1991 elections, civil organisations took a large part in running community affairs. This was done mainly through the mechanism of the Forums, councils of African activists who were directly engaged in negotiations with the state over socio-economic issues, such as housing and education.138 They were especially important at the local level, where they shared responsibilities with other organisations. The main organisation in the Forum was Civics, an NGO established in the early 1980s to fill the gap in the municipal services to black communities. In its early days, the organisation was viewed as illegitimate by the authorities, who persecuted its activists. In the second half of the 1980s, the South African government sought legitimacy for its policies through the establishment of its own Forums.139 For many decades, the apartheid
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regime seemed resistant to change. The majority black population seemed to have accommodated itself to white hegemony, with only sporadic outbreaks of protest. Evidence of the resilience of the state was provided by the rapid rate of economic growth South Africa enjoyed in the 1960s, which was second only to Japan. The regime sustained its viability as long as four conditions prevailed: the economy continued to grow; black South Africans acquiesced in white rule; the international community was prepared to trade and invest in South Africa; and white South Africans remained united. The black protests in Soweto in 1976 and the revolt in the townships between 1984 and 1989, although they did not achieve their immediate aims, signalled to both blacks and whites that black power now had to be taken seriously. Robert Schrire has argued that the three factors that increased the confidence of the black majority in the decade preceding the protests and throughout the 1980s were demography, education and economic empowerment. Demographically, the percentage of blacks within the total population grew from 81.6% to 86%. Economically, this growth advanced blacks in the work force and as consumers, while politically such numbers also constituted a base that could be either mobilised as a voting bloc or relied upon to mount a revolution. In terms of education, growing investments in education led to increasing numbers of black high-school graduates (from 13% in 1978 to 51% in 1988) and black university graduates (by 1989, 49% of university students in South Africa were black). Education liberated many young blacks from their dependency on white society. It gave them the intellectual tools to criticise the white domination in South Africa and organise against it. Education also brought about the establishment of student and civic associations, the creation of a young and articulated leadership, and increased political consciousness. According to Schrire, the South African case supports evidence from other countries that better educated and more affluent minority populations pose the greatest threat to an exploitative order. Finally, education also contributed to the growing economic mobility of blacks. As a result of the move of blacks into more skilled jobs, black trade unions grew to play an increasingly significant role in South African politics during the 1980s. For the majority of blacks who continue to be employed in the informal sector, few changes have occurred. Yet the growing importance of blacks as workers and consumers led to changes in attitudes within white society and a growing acceptance that apartheid was no longer sustainable, morally, economically or politically. The result was that blacks began to receive better treatment in factories and shops, as well as
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in the media and advertising. Economic empowerment led to political empowerment, in the form of organisations and protest.140 At the same time as changes occurred in the black and white communities, international attitudes to the apartheid regime also hardened. In 1986, the United States joined Europe in imposing economic sanctions on South Africa, which included a ban on imports of South African goods and on American business investment in the country.141 As black South Africans’ formal access to power was blocked, their activities were channelled through a host of informal civil-society organisations which collectively formed a mass movement. The internal arena was dominated by a few large institutions with comprehensive political agendas, alongside thousands of local initiatives and organisations loosely linked to one another. Within the former category, unions, religious organisations, and Civics councils stood out, in particular those affiliated with the United Democratic Front (UDF), an umbrella organisation co-ordinating civil society activities on behalf of the banned African National Congress. These included the Congress of South African Trade Unions and the South African Council of Churches.142 As some scholars point out, many of these organisations went beyond the confined role that some scholars have assigned to civil society in that they desired to take over the state. In a situation where the government was undemocratic and unresponsive, black organisations formed a social movement that was both willing to take the risks involved in illegal action but also used whatever legal means were open to it to bring about political change.143 Conclusion As the debates outlined above indicate, the association between NGOs as the vehicle for civil society and the process of democratisation is not as straightforward as some accounts portray it. In particular, two main reservations present themselves. First, the expectation that NGOs can bring about meaningful democratisation in the absence of some degree of support or acquiescence by the state is unrealistic. As Gramsci has argued, the civil and political realms are interconnected and interpenetrative. Thus, as both Ferguson and Kaufman emphasise, the participation of NGOs in the political system may actually serve to enhance rather than challenge the existing order if the state fails to allow a space for advocating change. Second, the ideological perception of the contribution of NGOs to democratisation is critically dependent on how one defines civil society, democracy, and development. The ideology of aid donors in the West is
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especially relevant for understanding the role of NGOs in the developing world. This ideology, defined by the neo-liberal association in terms of economic participation in global markets and democratisation, provides the intellectual framework in which development projects are conceived and implemented. In order to administer these projects, donors encourage the establishment of secular NGOs run by English-speaking elites who accept the main assumptions of the neo-liberal paradigm of economic and political development. Acknowledging these constraints does not negate the contribution of NGOs to the democratisation process, but it does conflict with the rosy image of NGOs as representing a model for development detached from the state, altruistic, and growing from the grassroots upwards. Some NGOs have the potential to challenge hegemonic ideologies and practices in their states. This role, however, is not played by NGOs as a distinct ‘third sector’, independent from the state, the market and other segments of society. Rather, their importance lies in politicising previously depoliticised issues such as gender, the environment and political enfranchisement of subordinate groups.144 The achievement of these aims is more likely when NGOs join with other social forces and form a social movement that aims to challenge the fundamental assumptions of a society. The chapter has demonstrated the weakness of NGOs operating individually in contexts such as that of exYugoslavia and the relative strength of social movements in the United States and South Africa. It is important to emphasise, however, that the conditions for the evolution of a social movement entail more than effective coalitionbuilding among NGOs and other social forces. Like the individual NGO, the success of a social movement depends on political opportunities created by the state and the social groups that control it. The obstacles faced by NGOs in their attempt to transform themselves into a social movement are accentuated in ethnically divided societies. The development of civil society and the political impact of NGOs are hindered when the state regards citizens not as equal individuals, but first and foremost as members in a hierarchy of ethnic communities. In ethnic states, rigid boundaries block the access of minorities to the political system and therefore limit the opportunities for NGOs to lead a successful campaign for political change. The case of Palestinian NGOs in Israel, presented in the following chapters, demonstrates these dynamics and sheds further light on the contributions and restrictions of modern NGOs representing a national
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and ethnic minority in their struggle to challenge political, economic and social inequalities.
Chapter Two
THE EVOLUTION OF PNGOs IN ISRAEL
A
s argued in the previous chapter, NGOs’ contributions to processes of change and democratisation throughout the developing world are dialectical. On the one hand, NGOs are capable of consolidating state-initiated reforms; enhancing the political participation of under-represented citizens; and struggling to redefine the boundaries of the political discourse. On the other hand, NGOs tend to promote technical rather than political solutions to problems, which reduces pressures on the state rather than challenging the roots of inequality; they suffer from lack of co-ordination and splintered representation; and they tend to be dependent on external donors, who sometimes dictate agendas for action. All these characteristics, in addition to constraints imposed by the state, limit their contribution to fundamental political change. The history of Palestinian NGOs in Israel illustrates these dialectics. Palestinian and Jewish organisations of civil society developed under unequal conditions, first in Mandatory Palestine and later in the newly formed state of Israel. The first part of the chapter discusses the different conditions in which the two communities evolved. These conditions account for some of the weaknesses of Palestinian organisations and for their unfavourable position vis-à-vis Israeli civil society in general. Notwithstanding these obstacles, however, the development of Palestinian civil society in Israel has gained momentum since the mid 1970s. The coming of age of a younger, better-educated generation, the emergence of a pluralistic Arabic press, and the activities of political movements in the organisational realm go a long way to explaining the proliferation of PNGOs in Israel at the time. The second part of the chapter explores these developments. The third part of the chapter looks into Israeli civil society and the laws regulating NGO activity in Israel: both have had a significant impact on PNGOs in Israel. Israel is paradoxically defined as both a democracy and a Jewish state. This paradox bears far-reaching implications for the constraints and opportunities of PNGOs in Israel, especially in their attempt to negotiate a political, social and economic change.
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Following this background, the fourth part of the chapter discusses the specific development of PNGOs in Israel through four periods: the initial period of formation and growth (1976-1982); a second period of consolidation and institutionalisation (1983-1993); a third period characterised by growing impatience at the failure of the Arab-Israeli peace process to yield an improvement in Palestinian civil rights on the one hand combined with an increasing number of political opportunities for PNGOs in Israel on the other (1993-2000); and a fourth period – of growing demands for the protection of human rights and recognition of Palestinians in Israel as a national minority – following the outbreak of the second Intifada. Finally, the fifth part of the chapter compares PNGOs in Israel with their Jewish counterparts; with Islamic associations in Israel; and with Palestinian NGOs in Gaza and the West Bank. The comparisons highlight the three main conclusions of this chapter. First, the state discriminates against PNGOs in Israel in comparison with their Jewish counterparts. Second, secular PNGOs in Israel have distinct characteristics fitting the Western model of NGOs and the ‘global associational revolution’ identified by scholars since the 1980s. Third, the political framework in which they operate has shaped the evolution of Palestinian NGOs in Israel. Representing a national minority in an avowedly Jewish and democratic state, Palestinian NGOs within Israel focus predominantly on campaigns for equal civic rights for their communities. The Development of Palestinian Civil Society in Israel The Pre-State and the Military Government Periods The roots of modern Palestinian civil society may be traced back to the institutionalisation of Palestinian society beginning in the early to mid nineteenth century. The evolution of the national Palestinian movement was much influenced by responses to colonialism, such as the farmers’ rebellion against the Ottoman leader, Mohammed Ali, in the 1830s, the 1929 revolt against the British, and the ongoing struggle against Zionism.145 An analysis of the over a century-long history of the national Palestinian movement goes beyond the scope of this book. Notably, however, the history of the movement is studded with obstacles caused by the inferior position of Palestinians first under the Ottoman and British rule, then under Zionism. The encounters with external powers brought about the impoverishment of Palestinian villages and pushed Palestinian workers to the margins of the economy as cheap labourers.146
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External pressures were made worse by internal rivalries at leadership level.147 For these reasons, the institution-building process of the national Palestinian movement never matched that of the wellcoordinated Zionist settlement in Palestine in the pre-state era. Up to the First World War, Palestinians had established mainly cultural, social and recreational societies, most of which were religious and denominational in nature. Membership in the Jerusalem Literary Society, established in 1848, for example, was restricted to Protestant Christians. The aftermath of the War witnessed the first manifestation of organised political consciousness in the form of newly established Palestinian political associations in 14 cities. However, according to anthropologist Khalil Nakhleh, who has studied the memoirs of activists from that period, this initial spark of political awareness was not translated into a fully developed organised institutional framework.148 The political crystallisation of the Palestinian national movement occurred under the British Mandate. In response to the Balfour Declaration of 1917, which supported the claim of Zionists for the establishment of a ‘Jewish national home’ in Palestine, the Palestinian national movement claimed that Palestine belonged to its Arab residents. These historical conditions brought about the establishment of national Palestinian institutions. Due to British encouragement, prominent notables formed the Arab Executive Committee in 1920. The Committee enjoyed considerable influence with the community but suffered from internal rivalries, mainly between the two Jerusalemite clans: al-Husseini and Nashsashibi. In 1922, the British government established the Supreme Muslim Council to run the religious affairs of the Arabs in Palestine and appointed Haj Amin al-Husseini to head the Council. Al-Husseini rose to become the leading figure in the movement. The Council itself had become by the end of the 1920s the most significant institution to mobilise the general Palestinian public against Zionism. It had also promoted the position of Jerusalem as an Islamic centre. The Arab revolt in Palestine in 1929 enhanced the leading position of al-Husseini and gave back the Executive Arab Committee its political importance.149 Despite this institutionalisation, Nakhleh points out that the discrepancy between Palestinian and Jewish associations grew larger during the British Mandate period in accordance with the huge gaps in the economic, education and health infrastructures of the two communities. The Zionist nation-building project was led by such organisations as the Jewish National Fund and the Histadrut – a paradoxical combination of a trade union and the biggest national employer in one organisation. The Histadrut, established in 1920, also
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assumed a role in the security apparatus. The main military organisation in the Yishuv (the Jewish community in Palestine), Hahagana (established in 1920) was affiliated to the Histadrut.150 In contrast, pre-1948 Palestinian organisations were by and large factional and denominational in character. They focused more on spontaneous responses to immediate needs rather than an overall strategy for Palestinian social development.151 As Rashid Khalidi has argued, the 1936-1939 Arab Revolt, which constituted the most significant event for the Palestinian national movement during the British mandate, led to a major disintegration of its institutions.152 Perhaps most importantly, the Waqf (pious endowments) system lost its autonomous status. Prior to the rebellion, the independent Supreme Muslim Council administered the Waqf resources, in a way that served to advance political goals, by mobilising the population through service allocation and obstructing land sales to the Zionists. Following the rebellion, the Waqf system was absorbed into the mandatory apparatus and ceased to function as an independent vehicle for national political mobilisation.153 In response to the revolt, the British mandatory government outlawed the Supreme Arab Council in October 1937. Its leader, Haj Amin al-Husseini, and some other members escaped to Lebanon, and were not allowed back in the country; others were deported to the Seychelles islands. No leadership has successfully managed to take their place.154 By 1943, when some information about the extent of the Jewish holocaust in Europe was first revealed, Palestinians attempted to reorganise against Zionism. Internal struggles continued, however, to weaken the movement, this time revolving around rivalries between the al-Husseini family and al-Istiqlal, the national Palestinian party. During World War II, new forces emerged in the movement; most prominent of these were workers’ unions. Such unions had existed in the Palestinian society since the 1920s but gained increasing political importance during the war as a result of the employment of thousands of labourers in army camps and accompanying services. Some workers’ activists, like Sami Taha, rose to prominence in the national arena. Others built a long standing political career: Emil Toma and the author Emil Habibi, for example, rose to leadership positions in the workers’ unions and became major political figures in Israel, representing the Communist Party.155 The Palestinian defeat in the 1948 War and the establishment of the State of Israel constituted a major turning point for Palestinian civil society. The history of the Palestinian community as a minority was ‘born of war’156 with the Yishuv. A layer of suspicion and mistrust therefore exacerbated the exclusion of Palestinian Arabs from the
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Zionist collectivism that formed the foundations of Israel’s emerging national identity.157 During the Arab-Israeli war of 1948, 600,000700,000 Palestinians became refugees, leaving only 160,000 Palestinians out of an original population of 870,000 living within the territory of the new state.158 A two-thirds majority in mandatory Palestine had been reduced to a one-sixth minority in Israel. The defeated Palestinian community suffered profound setbacks. Most of its leadership fled during the war, and the majority of Palestinian society was made up of poor and disadvantaged farmers that had nowhere else to go. The main Arab urban centres were lost, dealing a serious blow to the prospects for independent economic development. Furthermore, from the end of the war until 1966, most Palestinians in Israel lived under a Military Government which enforced severe limits on their freedom of movement and expression.159 The restriction imposed by the Military Government on movement and organisation facilitated a policy of divide-and-rule, taking advantage of the fact that the Palestinian community in newborn Israel was divided and dispersed. First, Palestinians were divided along religious lines: 77% were Muslims and the rest a combination of Christian and Druze. Palestinians were also dispersed in the geographically-detached regions of the Negev in the south, where most of the Palestinian population is Bedouin; the Little Triangle, a part of the country annexed to Israel in the armistice agreement with Jordan in 1949 that borders the West Bank, where all the population is Muslim; and the Galilee in the north, where there is a mixed population of Muslims and Christians. There were also internal divisions between different clans (hamula). Internal fragmentation of the Palestinian society posed a formidable obstacle to the creation of national institutions. As Ian Lustick has shown, officials of the Military Government implemented numerous methods to enhance this obstacle, including co-optation of hamula leaders, recruiting the Druze and many of the Bedouin population to military service while refraining from recruiting the rest of the Palestinian population, and separating the Druze educational system from that of the Arab.160 Despite the obstacles set by the Military Government, however, Palestinians in Israel were engaged in a struggle for full citizenship right after the 1948 war. As Ilan Pappe shows, from very early on, community leaders including Knesset members, religious leaders, clan notables and the urban intelligentsia, conveyed a two-fold message. They recognised the state of Israel, but demanded full and equal citizenship. This demand, Pappe argues, validated the state’s sovereignty. Palestinians in Israel were not looking for an alternative framework. They never appealed to the
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patronage of any Arab state nor did they demand from the UN to be excluded from the Jewish state. While identifying with the general Arab and Palestinian cause, the main object of their struggle was improving the community’s civil status. The restrictions of the Military Government as well as the loss of land, resulting from the state’s policy of expropriation, moved people into action during the 1950s and 1960s. As a struggle under the banner of Arab nationalism – the main ideology in the Arab world at the time – often ended in imprisonment or exile, the Communist Party filled the political vacuum for Palestinians in Israel in the first decades following the establishment of Israel. The Communist party was not outlawed because the Zionist government wished to maintain cordial relations with the USSR. In addition, Israeli leaders looked down upon Communists, viewing them as a smaller threat than Arab nationalists. Such was their attitude even though the Communist Party in Israel (CPI) explicitly preferred to represent the national Palestinian cause to internationalism.161 Communist activists were nevertheless marginalised and restricted by the central wing of Zionism. Not only did Ben-Gurion exclude the party from any potential partnership in the coalition, but also party members were under constant surveillance, especially during the 1950s, during which time many party members lost their jobs due to political persecution.162 During the 1950s, Mapam (the left-wing, United Workers’ Party) and the Communist Party initiated the establishment of joint Jewish-Arab associations, such as associations of writers, poets and teachers.163 These associations, along with leftist Jewish activists, campaigned for the end of the military rule. ‘Arab experts’ in the government obstructed their campaign. Most influential of these experts in the first decades of Israel was Yehoshua Palmon, the Prime Minister’s Adviser on Arab affairs. However, following the massacre conducted by a unit of the Israeli Defence Forces in the Triangle village of Kafr Qassem in 1956 and the token punishments its culprits were sentenced to,164 the debate over the military government became the focus of Jewish public opinion. In the Knesset, both left-wing leaders and the right-wing leader of the opposition, Menahem Begin, objected to the continuation of the military government. This wall-to-wall opposition eventually led its termination in 1966.165 A year later, in 1967, an Arab-Israeli war broke out. Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza Strip during the war. The occupation reconnected Palestinians across the former border, and had important political implications for Palestinians in Israel. It exposed them to bookshops, religious institutions, and national organisations. Thus, they
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gained access to the mainstream of Palestinian culture and political activity. Moreover, comparisons with their compatriots across the border did a lot to debunk the message of modernisation Israel had claimed to deliver to its Arab citizens. Palestinian citizens in Israel found out, for example, that their level of education was lower than that of Palestinians previously living under Jordanian rule in the West Bank.166 The 1970s Onwards The Palestinian Arab minority continues to be one of the most marginal and oppressed groups in Israeli society. Discrimination against the minority is entrenched in state laws governing property ownership, access to services, and many other areas of public life. It is legitimised by the ethnic-Jewish definition of the state and reinforced by security considerations, real or perceived. These legal disadvantages are compounded by unequal budget allocations and by the fact that the Mandatory Defence (Emergency) Regulations introduced by the British Mandatory authorities in 1945 are still in effect today. Although they make no formal distinction between Jews and Palestinians, the Emergency Regulations have been employed selectively to limit individual liberties of Palestinian citizens, including restrictions on such rights as the freedom of expression, organisation and movement.167 Israel prides itself as being the ‘only democracy in the Middle East’. But while its political system is formally democratic in so far as it allows competition between parties and free elections,168 Israeli law does not provide for full equality for all citizens. Scholars have applied different terms to account for this paradox. Some, like Rebecca Kook, argue that Israel may still be defined as a democracy despite its internal contradictions. Kook argues that in most democracies, the national identity overlaps with that of a dominant group and excludes others. In the case of Israel, the exclusion of the Palestinian citizens is critical to the narrative of a distinctively Jewish-Israeli national identity.169 At the other end of the spectrum, Maxime Rodinson treats Israel not as a democracy, but as a colonialist settler society. Rodinson argues that the identification of Israeli state interests with those of the Jewish majority reflects the priority of colonists’ interests over those of the colonised.170 Other social scientists developed a unique terminology based on the Israeli case. Sammy Smooha regards Israel as an Ethnic Democracy, a state that ‘combines the extensions of civil and political rights to individuals and some collective rights to minorities, with institutionalisation of majority control over the state’171; Oren Yiftachel, Nadim Rouhana and As’ad
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Ghanem have defined Israel as an Ethnocracy, a regime established by and serving one dominant ethnic group, living both inside and outside the state. It is not a democratic regime, but neither is it authoritarian or totalitarian.172 An insightful analytical concept was developed by sociologist Ella Shohat, synthesising elements from the colonialist and ethnic approaches. Shohat has argued that the main borderline in Israeli society cuts across the First and Third worlds. The representatives of the first world are Jews of European descent, the Ashkenazi Jews who founded the Zionist project in co-operation with colonialist European powers. Shohat’s concept suggests that the ethnic discrimination characterising Israel results from and is legitimised by the Zionist ideology. Similarly to other colonialist projects, Zionism has a historical, cultural, and political mission that identifies the interests of the state of Israel with those of certain classes – the ‘colonialists’ in Rodinson’s terminology, Europeans in Shohat’s.173 The Zionist discourse, in a sketch, takes it as a given that the land of Israel, also known as Palestine, is the legitimate home of the ‘Jewish people’. For Zionists, this assumption legitimises the Jewish claim to the land while de-legitimating the claims of others. Zionism also takes it for granted that Jews are a nation in the modern sense of the word. This assumption represented unique problems to Zionism as Jews were dispersed in different geographical, political, and cultural settings. Hence, one of the strategies employed by Zionists in their effort to represent Jews as a nation was the construction of a national narrative. In place of the previously dominant religious-theoretical narrative of Jewish history, Zionism constructed a secular national one. This narrative contained elements of European culture and a mission of civilising the indigenous population known from other settler projects. Zionist settlers imported the romantic and patronising images of the East from Europe, and these were shaped in conflict with the Palestinian reality. The Bedouin, especially, were perceived as the original Hebrews, yet also as primitive human beings who would benefit from the Jewish civilisation. Palestinians as a whole were seen as cruel enemies, who should also be pitied for their backwardness.174 Therefore non-Ashkenazi segments of society, first and foremost the Palestinians but also Jews of Arab descent as well as more recently arriving work-immigrants from Southeast Asia – have been the victims of Zionism, pushed to live at the margins of the Israeli society.175 The ethno-centric narrative of Zionism explains the integration of hundreds of thousands of non-Jewish Russian immigrants in the early 1990s. These immigrants were perceived to strengthen the
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Ashkenazi elite and the Zionist cause.176 Scholars who view Israel as a settler society see the economic gaps between Jews and Palestinians as a defining feature of colonialism. As Elia Zureik has argued, the subordinate position of the Palestinian economy emerged along with the Zionist settlement in Palestine. First, Zionist political institutions organised the Jewish workforce, and thus gave it an advantage over its Palestinian counterpart. Second, the importation of European technology and know-how by Jewish settlers gave them another advantage over unskilled Palestinian workers. Third, the influx of Jewish capital and the steady increase in the number of settlers marginalized the poor local population. The acquisition of land by the settlers was an integral part of this process. Furthermore, with the encouragement of the Mandatory authorities, metropolitan centres appeared solely in regions populated by the settler group. Regions settled by the indigenous population thus became politically and economically peripheral.177 With the establishment of the state, a series of laws and policies were enacted that exacerbated the dependence of the Palestinian minority upon the Jewish economy and the domination of the latter. Most significant was the confiscation of huge areas of land, which inflicted a serious blow on Palestinian agrarian economy – traditionally, the main source of income – and blocked the development of modern industrial zones. According to the reports of the Israeli Land Directorate, by 1962 Israel had expropriated more than 120,000 acres of land from Palestinians in the northern part of the country alone, which constituted three quarters of the overall Arab land in the area.178 A number of laws facilitate land expropriation, most prominent of which is the 1950 Law on the Acquisition of Absentees’ Property, which allows the state to confiscate the property of a person who did not occupy his or her property on 1 September 1948. This applied to vast numbers of Palestinians, who either fled or were expelled from their land during the atrocities of the 1948 war, and were at that date either in different parts of the newborn Israeli state (and sometimes prevented from returning by the Israeli authorities) or outside the country.179 Whatever the concept applied to describe the Israeli political system, the tension between the democratic and ethnic components of Israeli ideology have had far-reaching implications for the development of Palestinian civil society in Israel. While certain democratic practices encouraged the emergence of Palestinian civic organisations in Israel, opposition to discriminatory policies and laws have constituted a major motivation for the development of Palestinian organisations in Israel. Palestinian civil society in Israel therefore developed in a somewhat
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paradoxical context of continuous discrimination on the one hand, combined with opportunities for political expression on the other. Education and Change One of the main processes facilitating the civic mobilisation of the Palestinian community in Israel was the rapid rise in living standards and education levels.180 Literacy levels among Palestinians, for example, increased from 50 per-cent in 1961 to 90 per-cent in 1994. 181 During the same period, the Palestinian society in Israel was transformed from peasantry to proletariat. In addition, the 1970s saw the coming of age of a new and better-educated Palestinian generation in Israel, more overtly engaged in politics and less restricted in its interactions with the outside world than the generation which had grown up under the Military Government of 1948-1966.182 These changes opened the way for Palestinian citizens to better organise politically and make their voices heard more effectively in Israeli politics.183 Political participation of previously marginalised groups, especially Palestinian women in Israel, also increased in this period. The fact that in 1973 seven out of ten Palestinian university students from Acre were women, for example, directly contributed to the establishment of women-led organisations in the city.184 By the mid-1990s, the percentage of Palestinian women who were enrolled in elementary and secondary education was nearly as high as their proportion in the total population.185 However, the gaps between Jews and Palestinians in most socio-economic indicators remain consistently wide. Moreover, as sociologist Majid al-Haj has demonstrated, the expansion of the Palestinian educational system under Israeli rule has also served as a major tool for political control. The state uses the educational system to control Palestinian society through the curriculum, which emphasises Israeli nationalism and downplays Palestinian culture and national identity; through its use of resources – by underfunding in relation to Jewish schools – as a method of preserving the dependence of Arabs on the central system; and through the control of teachers and other employees in Arab schools. The Ministry of Education maintains a separate division for Arab education, which is managed by Jews. This division effectively and regularly uses the hiring and firing of teachers and headmasters, based on their ‘security classification’, as a way of selecting teachers who will comply with the official policy.186
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Pluralism in the Arabic Press The proliferation of independent Arabic newspapers has also contributed to the development of Palestinian civil society in Israel. The journalist and public-relations agent, Lutfi Mash’ur, established the first commercial, non-partisan Arab newspaper, Al-Sinara, in Nazareth in 1983. Following Al-Sinara, the Al-Bustani public-relations agency started publishing a competing weekly, Qul al-Arab. A third nation-wide commercial weekly, Banarama, is published in Taybeh by Basam and ‘Ayda Jaber. These newspapers, along with the more established partisan newspapers (the most veteran being al-Ittihad, the organ of the Communist Party founded in 1944 and since 1983 the only Arab daily in Israel) and the more recent local newspapers published in Palestinian localities ‘played a crucial role in the emergence of local national culture of Arab society in Israel’.187 Economic Disadvantage Economically, although Israel is considered to be part of the industrial world, scholars have argued that the Palestinian economy in Israel is underdeveloped and bears major similarities to Third World economies on issues such as rapid demographic growth, urbanisation, a prevalence of artisan and small-scale industries, traditional agricultural methods, and labour migration.188 Economists and social scientists have emphasised that the central role played by the state in the Israeli economy has perpetuated the subordinate position of Palestinian economy. State involvement in the economy is far more extensive in Israel than in most Western countries, and is operated through the control of the government, the Histadrut, and the national institutions over the economic services in the state. The rules of the game are therefore not those of a free market, and the state is capable of singling out particular sectors of the population for distinctive treatment in allocating resources. Palestinian citizens are likely to reside in small communities, against which the government discriminates both in terms of the resources it allocates and in terms of its development policies.189 Noah LewinEpstein and Moshe Semyonov show that the integration of Palestinians into the Jewish-dominated Israeli economy has brought about considerable social and economic disadvantages for the Palestinian minority. Palestinians are pushed to work in the bi-ethnic market in Jewish communities. Although Israeli law prohibits discrimination on a religious or national basis, Palestinian workers suffer de facto discrimination by rules regulating the preference of local workers or the invocation of security considerations in hiring practices. The
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segmentation of the labour market by ethnicity has especially serious repercussions for Palestinian women. Many women are constrained by tradition and life-style from commuting to work, and are therefore forced to stay out of employment as a result of the limited work opportunities in Palestinian villages and towns. In 1990, only 12% of Palestinian women in Israel reported that they were working, compared to 45% of Jewish women. Even if the data suffers from downward distortion on account of women who did not state their work or who worked in unpaid jobs as part of a corporate family unit, the gap remains high.190 Palestinians in Israel establish NGOs in response to their economic disadvantage. Many NGOs provide those services the state fails to provide. Others run campaigns to promote equal allocation. Privatisation and economic liberalisation processes that started in Israel with the 1985 Stabilisation Programme encouraged the establishment of more serviceproviding PNGOs. However, privatisation did nothing to close the economic gaps between Palestinian and Jewish citizens. The opposite is in fact true. The programme increased inequalities in the Israeli society and affected the low strata, for example by leading to growing unemployment.191 As elaborated in Chapter Four of this book, although more NGOs were established amidst the privatisation process, they lacked the large-scale resources required to cope with the discrimination. The fact that the state discriminates against such Palestinian NGOs, both in the level of funding it provides them in comparison to JNGOs and in the number of contracts it signs with them, further weakens their ability to bring about effective change to their community. Limited Influence on Formal Politics The influence of Palestinian members of the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, has always been limited. Until 1996, the Israeli political system was a simple parliamentary one. From the first government of 1948 until 1977, Mapai (Israel Workers’ Party) and later its successor, the Labour Party, held power in a coalition government. This situation changed in 1977, when the largest party in the centre-right opposition, Likud, outpolled Labour and headed the coalition on its own or as part of a national unity government with Labour for the next 15 years. Whoever the members and leadership of governing coalitions have been, ‘Arab’ parties (including the Arab-Jewish Communist Party of Israel) have never been part of these coalitions. Hence, although Palestinian citizens are represented in the Knesset, their parties have been relegated to the status of ‘permanent opposition’. According to political scientist As’ad
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Ghanem, this stance was adopted because they were Arab, anti-Zionist or non-Zionist in a parliament that saw itself first and foremost as serving the Jewish people.192 The role of Palestinian Members of Knesset (MKs) in the Jewish parties is also marginal. Until the Druze MK, Salah Tarif, was appointed minister for Arab affairs in 2001, there was never a Palestinian cabinet minister. Palestinian deputy ministers are given, at best, responsibility for matters related to ‘minorities’ issues’ but never to the population at large.193 Palestinian MKs are therefore excluded from the main decision-making mechanisms. Several Palestinian politicians in Israel thus came to appreciate the Palestinian presence in the Knesset as significant mainly as a mechanism for forming public opinion. They view the Knesset merely as a place to voice the minority’s views in a public arena: a tacit acknowledgment that their influence on actual decisionmaking is extremely limited. Both Palestinian MKs and activists outside the Knesset present such arguments. MK ‘Azmi Bishara has argued that his candidacy for the post of Prime Minister in 1999 aimed to challenge the current exclusion of Palestinian citizens from the decision-making process. Raed Salah, head of the northern section of the Islamic Movement in Israel, has argued that the Knesset has two functions: to act on behalf of the Jewish community and to constitute a public relations arena for the Arab public.194 In light of the constraints suffered by Palestinian citizens in both the parliament and the economy market, civil-society organisations have constituted an alternative means of voicing the minority’s views. The Mobilising Role of Political Movements: The Communist Party and the Islamic Movement Political movements have played a central role in mobilising the new generation of educated young Palestinians in Israel and in forming grassroots organisations. Until the abolition of the Military Government, the Communist Party in Israel (CPI) effectively constituted the only legal national institution of the Palestinians. With the help of the party, dozens of Palestinian organisations were established. Many of these were comprised of the academic elite and devoted to their interests, as was manifested by the centrality of the party in mobilising Palestinian university students throughout this period. Other CPI-established organisations, however, served more general interests of the community. The Committee for Defence of Arab Land, which played a central role in organising Land Day events, provides a prominent example of this function.195
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During the 1980s, the influence of the CPI began to wane and the Islamic movement played an increasingly more important role in mobilising different sections of the Palestinian community. As discussed in the previous chapter, the inclusion of religious movements within civil society is part of an ongoing debate in the Middle East. While scholars point to their reliance on grassroots associations as the main channel for activity, there is also concern that their long-term religious vision is in competition with a democratic society on the other. This debate is most commonly associated with the Islamic countries of the Middle East, but it is relevant to the Israeli case as well. Since the 1980s, the Islamic movement in Israel has followed the model of similar movements elsewhere in the Arab world in forming local committees and service or welfare organisations, winning them a considerable degree of influence and support.196 The increasing impact of the Islamic movement is seen in the growing proportion of religious organisations of the total PNGOs in Israel. By 1998, religious organisations represented a quarter of all registered Palestinian associations in Israel.197 Unlike Islamist trends elsewhere in the Middle East, the Islamic movement in Israel does not call for replacing the existing regime with an Islamic one, or the replacement of civil law with shari’a. This reflects an acknowledgment of the minority’s status as Arabs and Muslims in an overwhelmingly Jewish state. As elsewhere in the region, however, the Islamic movement in Israel rejects the democratic-civic vision of society in favour of a religious social order. At the same time, it promotes its interests through democratic practices such as elections, and through civil methods such as grassroots organisations.198 The Islamic movement in Israel emerged as an integral part of the wider Islamic revivalist movement in the Middle East during the 1970s and 1980s. Ideologically, the Movement adheres to the mainstream of Islamist movements in the Middle East. Following the model of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, it regards a social order based on Islamic principles as the means for bringing about a more just society. Other ideological views of the Islamic movement in Israel are more unique. At least officially, the movement accepts the reality of Israel’s existence and does not call for its replacement by an Islamic state. It supports a two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and recognises the PLO as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. It also rejects the use of violence for achieving its goals. The Movement relies on persuasion rather than violence.199 In addition to the rise of political Islam throughout the Middle East following the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran, the growth of the Islamic
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movement in Israel is traced back to the aftermath of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza in 1967. The occupation gave Muslims in Israel access to the holy sites in Jerusalem and introduced them to thriving religious institutions and resources. At the same time, the formal Muslim establishment in Israel was highly co-opted by the Israeli authorities and as such lacked popular respect. Hence, leaders in the Islamic movement who were educated in the West Bank were able to fill the leadership void.200 The movement went through a radical militant period between the years 1979-1981. During this period, some of its members organised an underground movement, Usrat al-Jihad (The Family of the Holy War), believing that only armed struggle could liberate Palestine. The group was involved in minor sabotage of Jewish property. Its members and associates including Sheikh ‘Abdallah Nimr Darwish, the spiritual leader and founder of the Islamic movement, were sentenced and jailed for short periods in 1981. Following this short and unsuccessful experience, the movement shifted its activity to the legal method of local NGOs. Ibrahim Sarsur, one of the movement’s leaders, highlights an additional factor influencing the shift to activity through NGOs: the impact of the 1980 Law of Associations. Sarsur, who rose to a leadership position within the movement when many of its old-guard leaders were imprisoned following the 1981 sabotage trials, explains: ‘We wanted to promise that the movement is not being considered a “ticking bomb” as far as the Israeli society was considered. Thus, one of the tools we decided to use was the Israeli Law of Associations. We did not wish to turn the Movement into a party or an association; we wanted it to remain a popular movement, but one that would control an effective and legal apparatus’.201 Grassroots activism led the movement to major achievements at the level of local municipalities and national politics. In the 1989 local elections, lists affiliated to the Islamic movement won five mayorships, in addition to 45 seats on 11 local councils. In 1996, the movement split over a decision to participate in the elections to the Knesset. Participation was initiated by the ‘moderate’, ‘southern branch’, headed by spiritual leader of the movement – Sheikh ‘Abdallah Nimr Darwish of Kafr Qassem. The ‘northern branch’ of the movement, headed by the Umm al-Fahem’s mayor, Raed Salah, objected. The list supported by the Islamic movement joined the Arab Democratic Party and the ArabIslamic Bloc to form the United Arab List (UAL). The list won 24.5% of
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the Arab vote in 1996, gaining four seats. In the 1999 elections, the UAL increased its representation to five seats. Power Dynamics and Exclusion in Israeli Civil Society Considering the wide agreement over the exclusive nature of the political system, the question remains whether ‘civil society’ constitutes a valid concept for an analysis of Israeli society. Israel saw in recent decades a rapid rise in the establishment rate of civil society organisations, including NGOs. While in 1991 the number of registered associations (amutot) reached 16,728, in 1998 this number grew to 28,885.202 Whether this data indicates the emergence of a free and democratic civil society is open to interpretation. For scholars who view civil society in liberal terms as a by-product of an ideal-type democracy the answer is negative. Adam Seligman holds up Israel as an example of his thesis, reviewed in the previous chapter, that liberal civil society does not exist outside the West. According to Seligman, the development of civil society in Israel is hindered by the absence of the concept of the private subject who enjoys ‘metaphysical equality’, achieved by the explicit legal guarantee of his equality. Seligman goes on to argue that this missing link is a result of Israel’s Zionist and Jewish characteristics, which led Israeli state and society to prefer particularcollectivist definitions of public life to universal-individual ones. National identities and loyalties, in his view, are doomed to fail any attempt to construct a model of civil society along the lines of liberal-individualist ideology.203 In sharp contrast to Seligman, some scholars view Israel as a liberal democracy and therefore interpret the growth of NGOs as an indication of the proliferation of a free civil society. Yael Yishai, for example, argues that the growing number of interest groups in Israel suggests that ‘Israelis have not lagged behind their counterparts in developing the “art of association” within the context of a liberal democracy’.204 Yishai has suggested a linear progression in the level of freedom allowed to civil society by the state. Up to the 1960s, she argues, Israel offered an example of ‘active inclusion’, in which civil society was part and parcel of the national state-building effort, and thus did not enjoy an independent social position. From the end of the 1960s to the early 1980s, the attitude changed to ‘active exclusion’. In this period, the state denied recognition and legitimacy to an increasingly assertive civil society, a denial that led to the consolidation of the state’s power vis-à-vis civil society. A third stage began in the early 1980s and is characterised by ‘passive exclusion’, a state attitude of ‘live and let live’ towards civil society.205
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Uri Ben Eliezer has criticised Yishai’s analysis for overlooking the influence of power dynamics within Israeli politics on the course of action taken by NGOs. He argues that Yishai has based her analysis on a pluralistic theory, which assumes the possibility of settling all conflicts through negotiation and disregards the costs and obstacle of action for social change. According to Ben Eliezer, Yishai’s analysis also fails to account for the role of PNGOs in Israel. 206 Although relations between Palestinian organisations and the state are dealt with later in this chapter, it is worth mentioning here that Palestinian civil-society organisations, unlike their Jewish counterparts, never constituted a part of the ‘national’ – that is, Zionist and Jewish – project. In this respect, exclusion has always been the underlying approach of the state towards Palestinian organisations. Moreover, the experiences of PNGOs in Israel during the 1980s and 1990s show that ‘active exclusion’ remained the dominant state attitude towards organisations of the minority. Scholars have argued that public policy towards the Palestinian minority tends to be incoherent. Although its main characteristic is the aim to exercise control over the minority and its resources, its implementation is dependent upon different decisions by bureaucrats in various state agencies.207 Public policy towards PNGOs in Israel, this thesis shows, was no different. PNGOs in Israel met a variety of responses from state agencies, ranging from support and co-operation to coercive restrictions. However, an active attempt to contain and control their activities was evident at all levels of public policy, including legislation and policy implementation by both civil servants and the security services. The active exclusion of PNGOs in Israel and the state’s attempt to contain and control their activities cast a serious doubt on the portrayal of Israel as a liberal democracy and its civil society as pluralistic. Rather, it accentuates the outsider position of Palestinian citizens in Israel, who are not only excluded from having real influence on formal politics but are also restricted participants of civic life. This exclusion of one sixth of the population, based on ethno-national criteria, attests to the non-universal nature of Israeli civil society. This feature of Israeli civil society goes beyond mere explanation of the marginal position of Palestinians in Israel. Rather, it supports Ben Eliezer’s observation, that the underlying power dynamics between different groups in Israeli society are a given that is not easily challenged by pluralistic negotiation. Despite this fundamental limitation of Israeli civic life, there is little debate about the fact that Israeli civil society has grown relatively more autonomous and free over time, the watershed event being the wave of protests that followed the 1973 war. Benjamin Gidron, for example,
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labels the period following the war ‘the pluralistic age’. Gidron has argued that during the Yishuv period, Zionist institutions were inseparable from ‘third sector’ institutions – welfare services were run by organisations such as the Histadrut, which later became a key semigovernmental institution. While the first period, ‘the statist period’ (mamlakhtiyut), was characterised by oppression of non-partisan NGOs, after the 1973 war, the government surrendered its monopoly in various services, allowed a more pluralistic range of organisations to emerge, and diminished its interference with NGOs’ activities. As a result of growing criticism of the government and the waning of Israeli consensus of the early days, a more independent civil society emerged. The rise in the number of registered NGOs in this period reflected this development.208 The 1973 war, then, brought about the first wave of public protest against the government, and culminated four years later in the downfall of Labour rule after 29 years in power. The Israeli occupation of Lebanon in 1982 increased criticism of the government. The war, presented for the first time by an Israeli prime minister as an offensive rather than a defensive one, also sparked scepticism over tenets of the Zionist project. This challenge did not remain simply ideological. As the war in Lebanon coincided with the opening of state archives documenting the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, historians used the academic discourse to debunk Zionist ‘truths’ regarding such fundamental issues as Israel’s responsibility for the Palestinian refugee problem or Israel’s commitment for peace with its Arab neighbours.209 Similarly, sociologists have challenged the Euro-centric approach dominating Israeli sociology, which ignored the gap between Ashkenazi (European) Jews and Sephardi Jews (Jews from non-European origins) and the gap between Palestinians and Jews in Israel.210 Collectively, these challenges are known as ‘post-Zionism’. According to Laurence Silberstein, who had studied the ideological challenges to Zionism, Post-Zionism is ‘the most effective effort to date within Israel to problematise Zionist discourse and the historical narratives it has produced’.211 The post-Zionist challenge sheds light on the greater space opened in Israeli society for alternatives to the mainstream ideology. This process has resulted mainly in fragmentation and internal rivalry, but also in some pluralism allowing more freedom for organisation of various groups, including the Palestinians. In light of these conflicting developments, Ilana Silber and Zeev Rosenhak attempt to account for what they call the ‘paradox of the Israeli case’ of civil society. Namely, the expanding and diversified range
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of NGOs and the growing freedoms they enjoyed, coupled with an absence of many ‘Western-democratic’ conditions for widespread participation in NGOs. The latter include an emphasis on individualism and localism and a limit on the power of bureaucratic intrusion. The explanation for this paradox, Silber and Rosenhak suggest, has much to do with the strength of the Israeli state, which stifled the development of an autonomous nonprofit sector but at the same time gave rhetorical and financial support for voluntary activities that fitted state ideology, interests and politics. Significantly, however, Silber and Rosenhak refrain from defining civil society in liberal terms. They argue convincingly that the case of Israel confirms the theory that NGOs tend to reinforce the influence of religion, as well as that of the state.212 Joel Migdal’s analysis of Israeli civil society further defines this paradox in terms of a question: ‘Why hasn’t the remarkable growth of civil society since the mid 1960s strengthened the democratic state of Israel?’213 Like Silber and Rosenhak, Migdal believes the answer to be found in the fact that the political arena continues to be dominated by the state, notwithstanding the rise in the number of private or nongovernmental associations. Furthermore, like Silber and Rosenhak, Migdal argues that the exclusive nature of many of the organisations inhabiting civil society in Israel explains why its growth has not led to democratisation. He has argued that many of the organisations established in Israel are neither universal nor inclusive in their ideological appeal and are unable to carve out an agreement over shared civic values, to bypass the deep divisions in the Israeli society. In particular, Migdal points to the polarising effect of protest groups. He also highlights the importance of elements other than formal civic associations in shaping the relationship between state and society in Israel. These elements include the “patriots”. By definition, patriots are not organised, yet they take an active part in civic life quite supportive of the state. Patriots, for example, come to memorial gatherings to remember soldiers who died in war. During the Lebanon War, tens of thousands of them gathered for big rallies in support of the government. Patriots have helped to create common public space, with deeply shared values, for Jews in Israel. They have placed severe limits on the expansion of civil society, however, due to the exclusive nature of the space they construct: a space that is closed to Palestinians in Israel and in the Occupied Territories. It can also be argued that the space inhabited by patriots is male in its values, reproducing military hierarchies in civil life. Migdal also highlights the exclusive role of “complainers” who act from outside formal associations. These run their complaints through channels that exclude
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big sections of the public, and are based on particularism such as familism, friendship groups, old army ties etc. 214 The Legal Situation One of the major obstacles to the development of a strong Israeli civil society is the absence of a constitution or a bill of rights.215 In the absence of these basic legal guarantees, the courts are expected to fill the void by protecting human rights in Israel.216 But while their actual record shows that they safeguard certain liberal-democratic practices, the courts have fallen short of the expectations of human rights activists, especially as far as minority rights are concerned. Scholars who define Israel as a democracy often view the judiciary as a ‘bastion of Israeli democracy in a sea of forces that would hasten the erosion of its foundations’.217 Overlooking major deficiencies in the courts’ protection of civil and human rights, this description is nevertheless faithful to the human rights ethos established by the courts since Israel’s early days. In 1953, the Supreme Court has upheld the right to freedom of speech, even though no law explicitly guaranteed this right. The Court, headed by Justice Shimon Agranat, accepted the appeal of Kol Ha’am and al-Ittihad, the Hebrew and Arabic organs of the Communist Party, against their closure by the Minister of Interior. The closure order, based on article 19 of the Newspapers Ordinance – a British Mandatory law dating from 1933 – was issued following the call made by the two newspapers to resist the Israeli offer to take part in the Korean War alongside the United States (an offer that never materialised). In an unprecedented ruling, Justice Agranat determined that the Declaration of Independence implied that Israel was a democracy, and that all democratic rights and values must therefore exist in its realm; and first and foremost among these rights was the freedom of speech.218 According to Kretzmer, in the Kol Ha’am Judgment the Court established the principle that ministerial orders may be limited by the need to protect civil rights. Throughout the years, this ruling was used to establish two additional principles: first, only an explicit law may restrict a basic civil right; and second, civil rights should be taken into consideration in Court rulings.219 As far as the Palestinian minority is concerned, Ilan Saban notes that Israeli courts have not expressly criticised their inferior status. Nevertheless, Saban argues that decisions of the Supreme Court over general issues of human rights have indirectly had a moderating effect on state-minority relations. In cases such as Kol Ha’am, Saban has argued, the Supreme Court restricted the control apparatus of the Israeli
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authorities over Palestinians, by limiting the power of the executive. The Court has also increased the power of the judiciary as a balance to the government and other authorities. Further, it has contributed to freedom of expression and information, and has led a demand for greater accountability and transparency in governmental decisions.220 In 1992, the Knesset aimed to consolidate the legal protection of civil rights by passing two Basic Laws: Human Dignity and Liberty, and Freedom of Occupation. The concept of a basic law went back to 1950, at which time the Knesset suggested the legislation of a series of Basic Laws as a compromise between the proponents and opponents of a written constitution (the Harari Resolution). It was envisaged that these laws would secure the fundamental rights of citizens, thus forming the basis of an Israeli constitution. Until 1992, however, there was only one Basic Law that guaranteed a human right – the Basic Law guaranteeing the right to vote.221 It is no surprise therefore that the legislation of the 1992 Basic Laws was celebrated, in the words of the president of the Supreme Court, Justice Aharon Barak, as a ‘constitutional revolution’. In the Gal Law opinion, Barak praised this revolution, arguing that the ‘opportunity has arisen to internalise the constitutional change; human rights will become the “daily bread” of each young woman and young man…’222 The Supreme Court’s record in upholding human rights has not been perfectly consistent, and has faced much criticism. As Pnina Lahav analysed, some of the Court’s decisions have contributed invaluably to securing basic rights, but at important junctions, the Court has sided with the Israeli-Jewish elite and preferred the particularism of Israel as a Jewish state to universal values.223 Arguably, the Court’s weaknesses were not addressed – and in the view of some scholars, were even exacerbated – by the 1992 legislation and its interpretation. First and foremost, the court refrained from undertaking a judicial review of primary legislation, thus leaving the main decisions to the discretion of the majority. In a society as diverse and divided as Israel, and in the absence of a written constitution, the rights of minority groups have few legal safeguards.224 Ruth Gavison, Ayeal Gross and Gad Barzilai have argued that in fact the post-1992 civil rights discourse hinders the rights of the most disadvantaged groups in Israeli society for several reasons. First, the focus on economic rights, and especially on the right of ownership, mainly serves the interests of landowners, the majority of whom belong to the Jewish Ashkenazi elite. The new laws do not protect the rights of Arabs whose land was expropriated, nor do they secure equal distribution of land among the Jewish population. Second, enactment of
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the Basic Laws created a myth that the Israeli constitutional system effectively protects human rights whereas, in reality, there exists a hierarchy of rights in which guarantees of economic rights are more strongly protected than those related to other basic human rights. Third, the fact that Israel is defined in the new laws as a Jewish and democratic state reinforces the discrimination of Courts against Palestinians, both in the occupied territories as well as those who are citizens of Israel, and highlights the contradiction between Israel’s democratic ideals and its present reality. Such discrimination has characterised the Israeli judiciary since the establishment of the state. It indicates, according to Barzilai, that the boundaries between justice and injustice in Israel are not the Green Line. Rather, the Supreme Court, as a political institution, has sided with the dominant political discourse of national security and considered any alternative interpretation as presenting a security threat to the state. The victims of this approach were Palestinians in the occupied territories, Palestinians in Israel, and occasionally radical left-wing Jews.225 Regardless of their stance towards the 1992 legislation, there is a consensus among scholars that the new discourse of increased civil liberty has fuelled expectations of change. This in itself has reinforced the efforts to consolidate civil rights as more jurists, interest groups and activists have applied to the Supreme Court against what they viewed as excess of power on the part of the government. This activism has led to the organisation of individuals and groups in new ways in order to put pressure on the system to take greater account of human rights.226 Indeed, this development has had a far-reaching influence on the organisation of the Palestinian minority, as discussed in Chapters Three and Five. Limitations on the Freedom of Associations The ambivalence towards civil rights that characterises the Israeli judiciary is also evident in legislation. Freedom of association is one of the heavily regulated rights in Israel, controlled by three main laws, two of which date from the origins of the state itself. First, the principal statutory provision controlling freedom of association in Israel is the 1977 Penal Law which defines the basic prohibitions for associations and sets out punishments for offences. Second, the 1945 Mandatory Defence (Emergency) Regulations empower the Minister of Defence to declare a group of people a prohibited organisation for whatever reasons he deems fit, and to prosecute members of this group by way of an expedited procedure. Sub-regulation provides for grounds on which an
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association can be declared a ‘prohibited organisation’, including instigating hostility against the government or carrying out acts of terror against the state or its employees. Third, the 1948 Prevention of Terrorism Ordinance deals specifically with terrorist organisations. This law, passed shortly after independence, was originally tied to the interim government’s decision to eliminate the challenge posed by the Jewish underground organisations to the legitimate authority of the sovereign state. The ordinance grants to the government the power to declare a group of people a terrorist organisation. In contrast to the cardinal principle of civil law that a suspect is innocent unless proven guilty, this declaration is sufficient to constitute proof in legal proceedings that the group is a terrorist organisation, unless it can prove itself to the contrary. Until the end of the 1990s, a military court presided over matters under the Ordinance, and after the Minister of Defence confirmed the judgment, the accused had no right of appeal. Until 1980, the government used the Prevention of Terrorism Ordinance only against Jewish organisations that aspired to bring about a change in government through violent means. According to Menahem Hofnung, as long as most Palestinians in Israel lived under the Military Government, the government prevented the organisation of suspected Palestinian associations in Israel merely by using the Mandatory Defence (Emergency) Regulations and the Ottoman Law of Associations enacted in 1909. However, the Ordinance has been used as a tool of control over Palestinian organisations within Israel following the abolition of the Military Government. This trend was enhanced with the changing priorities of the Likud government which came to power in 1977. Soon after, the Knesset approved two major legislative changes in the regulation of freedom of association. 227 In order to limit the PLO’s activities and those of its supporters, a section was added to the Prevention of Terrorism Ordinance in 1980 prohibiting the identification with or sympathy for a ‘terrorist organisation’ by waving its flag, displaying its symbol or slogan or voicing its anthem. Notably, in order to pass the legislation, the government included in the bill principles that were acceptable to most of the parliamentary opposition, including the repeal of the option to bring to trial civilian defendants charged with offences under the Ordinance in a military court. Two months after the Ordinance was amended, the government declared 14 national Palestinian organisations operating outside Israel – including the PLO – to be terrorist organisations. Consequently every act of sympathy with one of them became an offence.228
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The second of the legislative changes, the enactment of the Law of Associations in 1980, radically shifted the organisational pattern of Israeli associations. The Law of Associations replaced the 1909 Ottoman Law of Associations that was more liberal in allowing the establishment of an association without requiring a permit. The Ottoman law did require that the government be notified of the establishment of all associations in order to prevent the existence of secret associations. It also prohibited the establishment of associations if they (1) were unlawful, harming the ‘general morality’, or promoted an illegal ideology; (2) offended the peace and integrity of the state; (3) were subversive and aimed to topple the government or divide the ethnic groups for political reasons; (4) were aimed to serve a race or a nation; or (5) had secret aims.229 The idea of replacing the Ottoman Law of Association with Israeli law that would condition the legal existence of an association at the time of its registration with the state first emerged as a way to outlaw a Palestinian organisation in Israel, the al-Ard (The Land) movement, in 1965. Al-Ard was a non-violent, irredentist Palestinian political movement, which regarded the whole of mandatory Palestine as an Arab territory. In 1960, members of the movement registered a commercial company under the name ‘al-Ard Limited’. The Registrar of Companies refused to register al-Ard on the grounds of security and public interests. The Supreme Court rejected the Registrar’s decision, arguing in two instances that security did not fall under the authority of the Registrar of Companies.230 However, the registration of al-Ard as a commercial company did not satisfy its members, who wished to organise as a political party and run in Knesset elections. In 1964, the District Commissioner rejected their notification of the founding of an association called the ‘al-Ard Movement’, arguing that they aimed to act against the integrity of the state. The Supreme Court of Justice dismissed the petition against the Commissioner’s decision. By doing so, the Court in effect stated a preference for a democracy’s right to protect itself from groups that would seek to undermine it from within over the right to freedom of association.231 Even before the decision was handed down, however, the government, fearing the Court would approve the establishment of independent Palestinian political associations, introduced the first draft of the Law of Associations to the Knesset. The draft law set out the requirement that associations must be registered and gave the Registrar authority to refuse registration if: (1) among the association’s founders there was any person who during the ten years prior to the filing of the request had been convicted of security-related offences or a crime; or (2)
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if any of the objectives of the association aimed to ‘harm the sovereignty or integrity of the state’.232 When the Court dismissed the al-Ard petition and it became clear that it was still possible to ban such associations under existing laws, the bill of associations was dropped from the public agenda for the next decade. Similar to the amendment in the Prevention of Terrorism Ordinance, the Law of Association was only to be revived after Likud assumed power in 1977, not least in order to prevent the establishment of new bodies that supported PLO objectives.233 The Law of Associations was thus born out of an attempt to increase state control over Israeli organisations, the immediate context being the desire to control the freedom of association of Palestinians in Israel beyond what was provided by the original Ottoman Law. In this light, it is not surprising that the new legislation was criticised for restricting freedom of association in Israel, even though many of its articles are ostensibly committed to this democratic principle. Yet there is little doubt that, far from enshrining the right of freedom of association, the law was introduced as a vehicle of control. The 1979 Minister of Justice, Shmuel Tamir, explained that the legislation would ‘increase the supervision (pikuakh) over the methods of activity of the philanthropic organisations’. 234 Although Tamir stated that the law aimed to secure full freedom of association for lawful purposes, he highlighted two of the main control measures the law intended to enact, that is the requirement that associations publish their accounts, and the regulations concerning the disbanding of inactive associations. Members of the Knesset from the left and the right expressed concerns about these and other articles of the law, which they saw as anti-democratic. 235 The main cause for concern was Article 3, which prohibited the registration of an association ‘if any of its objects negates the existence or democratic character of the State of Israel or if there are reasonable grounds for concluding that the amuta [association] will be used as a cover for illegal activities’. MKs expressed concern that authorising the Registrar of Associations to refuse a registry on no other grounds than ‘reasonable suspicions’ would be abused for political reasons. Another worry concerned Article 4(a) of the law, authorising the Registrar to refuse registration if an association’s name is likely to ‘mislead or offend public policy or the feelings of the public…’236 As the following chapters illustrate, these concerns proved to be substantial obstacles to the freedom of Palestinian organisations in Israel. In the two decades since the Law of Associations was passed, advocates and academics have continued to highlight its chilling effect on freedom of association. First, the requirement of registration, which
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determines whether or not an association can legally be established, was criticised as a watering down of the freedom of association compared with the Ottoman law.237 Second, there has been a widespread criticism of the blanket authority of the Registrar of Associations, a new position within the Ministry of Interior created specifically to implement the law. Although the Law of Associations subjects most of the Registrar’s decisions to judicial review by way of an appeals process, scholars have argued that the law nonetheless vests ‘enormous powers in a state official, at whose discretion interest groups rise and fall’.238 In the two decades since the introduction of the post of Registrar of Associations, the decisions of a number of different registrars have been challenged publicly in the courts. The Court restricted the Registrar’s authority to disqualify an association under Articles 3 and 4 concerning ‘reasonable grounds for concluding that the association will be used as a cover for illegal activities’, and ‘offence of public’s feelings’ respectively. The Court limited the Registrar’s discretion based on Article 3, ruling that freedom of association is a basic human right and therefore this article should only be used when the evidence supports the suspicions beyond reasonable doubt.239 The Court also limited the discretion of the Registrar to disqualify an association based on Article 4(a). In 1991, the Registrar refused to register the Israeli-Palestinian Association for Human Rights, arguing that inclusion of the word ‘Palestinian’ might mislead the public into believing that the State of Israel acknowledged the existence of a Palestinian state. The Supreme Court reversed a decision of the regional courts, arguing that the right to choose a name constituted a basic aspect of freedom of association and freedom of expression. 240 As in most state ministries and offices, the Registrar employs an ‘Arabist’, an official who specialises in the ‘minority sector’ and deals specifically with Palestinian citizens using the ministry’s services. As in most other ministries, an Arabic-speaking Jew rather than a Palestinian holds the post. An Arabic-speaking lawyer has run the department for minorities’ affairs at the office of the Registrar of Associations since its inception. Activists in Palestinian associations in Israel have criticised the existence of this post, arguing that it reflects the non-universal, patronising and suspicious attitude of the establishment towards them.241 The non-universal enforcement of the Law of Associations was the focus of public criticism. In an article published in Haaretz, Yossi BarMoha has argued that unproportional number of the Registrar’s investigations of NGOs suspected of financial irregularities in 1998 was directed against PNGOs in Israel and East Jerusalem. Moreover, Bar-
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Moha flags the delay in registering the Palestinian lobby association Mossawa. Following a long delay and a refusal to register the association, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) appealed to the District Court and the Registrar was forced to register the association and pay its legal expenses. Similarly, the registration process of the Arab Centre for Planning took 10 months. On the other hand, PNGOs in Israel were quicker to be obliterated. Out of 130 associations whose obliteration was announced on November 9 1999, 76 (58%) were Palestinian.242 According to Ofir Katz, a lawyer representing associations in Israel as part of his post as the legal counsellor of Shatil (a support and consultancy service for social change organisations established by the New Israel Fund), previous Registrars also tended to interpret the law in a way that allowed them to interfere with the work of PNGOs in Israel.243 Scholars have criticised the law on additional grounds. First, the senior jurist Amnon Rubinstein has criticised the broad discretion given to the Regional Court under article 49(5) to disband any association if it sees fit, as an unwelcome threat to the freedom of association.244 Second, Hofnung points out that the advantages of the new law, compared with the old Ottoman law of associations, are limited by the fact that the law is not universally applied. While the new law stipulates orderly financial management and compliance of associations with the rights of minorities in their realm, these requirements are not universally applied. Article 65 of the law allows the Minister of Interior, with the approval of the Knesset Committee on Constitution, Law and Justice to exempt certain types of nonprofit associations from the law’s requirements.245 Although organising formally is a right, not a duty, groups have a strong incentive to do so since tax relief is only awarded to registered associations. This constitutes another hurdle to freedom of association, according to Hadara Bar Mor, as it burdens activists with the expenses of compliance with the Law of Association.246 The main forms of tax relief offered to nonprofit associations are exemption from value-added tax (VAT) and exemption from income tax if the association is recognised as a public institution under Article 9(2) of the Income Tax Ordinance. To be eligible for this status, an organisation must demonstrate that it promotes a public aim in the field of religion, culture, education, science, health, welfare or sport, or any other aim endorsed by the Minister of Finance. In addition, many municipalities also award an exemption from, or a discount on, property tax to non-profit associations. The VAT regulations are universal: every organisation that can satisfy the authorities of its status is exempt from VAT, paying instead an 8.5%
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payroll tax for each employee (unless earning less that regulated by law). Exemption from property tax, however, is decided by individual municipalities. The other area of taxation where no universal criteria apply is the 35% income tax discount available to donors to selected public institutions recognised as eligible under Article 46 of the Income Tax Ordinance. The Minister of Finance and the Finance Committee of the Knesset decide eligibility.247 Article 46 includes two lists of criteria for eligibility for this status: List A (Criteria for Determining Pubic Aims) states the aims of entitled institutions. Among its 12 criteria, this list states that the association’s goals should not conflict with Israel’s ethos as a Jewish and democratic state. This requirement is an obvious obstacle for Palestinian associations in Israel. It is similar in spirit to Article 7a(1) of the Basic Law: The Knesset, passed in 1985, which states that a list of candidates may not participate in the elections if its aims or activities deny the existence of Israel as the state of the Jewish people.248 In contrast, this requirement is excluded from the Law of Associations. The list of public aims in the Income Tax Ordinance specifically excludes those that affect the security of the public and the state; public regulations and feelings; publicly or politically controversial issues; or the promotion of legislation or interference in legislative procedures. List B sets the criteria for classifying a public institution, specifying the level of management and other conditions it is required to meet, and demanding that the institution serve the welfare of the general public and not a specific social groups. Even though these criteria are extremely detailed, they are by no means comprehensive or definitive, and the Minister of Finance is entitled to add criteria as he or she sees fit.249 Hamutal Guri, the co-ordinator of the Philanthropy Culture Project in Shatil criticises the selective implementation of these criteria and their harmful implications for social change organisations: ‘The selective implementation of regulations and criteria gives the impression that public interest is held hostage by interested parties. But the criteria themselves are disturbing: why prevent the right to award tax exculpation to donors of organisations that promote social change…?’250 In light of the legal and financial obstacles to forming a legally recognised organisation, it is not surprising that out of nearly 2550 associations recognised by Article 46 in May 1998 as public institutions, only seven were Arab or Druze and three were Jewish-Arab associations.251 In addition to the non-universal application of the law, activists criticise the 1996 amendment to the Law of Associations for increasing the state’s intrusion in the affairs of associations. This amendment, dealing with the financial reports of associations, requires
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associations to reveal the names of all their donors (above a minimum level of contribution set by law, except for those who receive special anonymity approved by the Registrar).252 Previously, associations were able to secure the anonymity of their donors and thus retain better autonomy vis-à-vis the state.253 Security Control Not only the legal framework, but also policies of the Israeli security services, set the opportunities and restrictions for action of PNGOs in Israel. Shin Bet, the General Security Services in Israel, is the security institution responsible for supervision of the Palestinian minority in Israel. Ya’akov Peri, head of Shin Bet between 1988 and 1995, argues that these policies are based on a complex approach: in the short term, the security services view PNGOs in Israel as a tool of control; in the long term, however, they view them as a potential strategic threat. ‘If I sum up the issues that trouble Israeli Arabs in the last decade or two, it is mainly local problems… As far as the government is involved, this is a disgrace. But for the Shin Bet, it is fantastic… But although municipal problems are not directly involving security issues, this may constitute a visual mistake. Frustration from standards of living and lack of cash may quickly turn into national protest.’254 Therefore, according to Peri, the Shin Bet presents a strategic threat but not a tactical threat to PNGOs in Israel. The security concept underlying this approach was outlined in a report produced by the Shin Bet and cabinet ministers in 1998. The report identified the Palestinians in Israel as a strategic threat, using officially such a definition for the first time. Notably, the report attributed threat mainly to the emergence of civil ideology, calling for Israel to become a state of its citizens. This ideology, the report stated, negates the Jewish and Zionist ethos of the state and may lead to secession and irredentism. In order to fight its influence, the state must prevent the development of educational autonomy, because it implies an ‘education to foreign national orientation, which may be hostile’.255 The perception of PNGOs in Israel as a strategic security threat, as highlighted in Peri’s words, stems from this classification of any ideology that challenges the exclusive nature of Israel as a Jewish state as a threat to state security. As the following chapters show, such challenges are common to the ideology of PNGOs in Israel.
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While the threat of PNGOs in Israel is viewed in strategic terms, the Shin Bet has always seen the National Committee of Head of Arab Heads of Local Councils (NCALC) as an immediate, tactical and strategic threat to the state. The Prime Minister’s Advisor on Arab Affairs, Shmuel Toledano, initiated the establishment of a national institution representing Palestinians in Israel in 1974. Toledano saw such an institution as a tool to co-ordinate the relationship with the Palestinian minority and as a vehicle for exerting governmental influence on the minority. The Shin Bet, however, opposed their establishment. 256 The Shin Bet has continued to view the NCALC as a threatening institution, as Peri explains: ‘The National Committee of Arab Heads of Local Councils was an inappropriate organisation, because it unites [the Palestinian minority] and may eventually lead to negative ideas. And we have indeed proved these things.’257 The Development of Palestinian NGOs in Israel The Data The available data on the development of PNGOs in Israel reveals five main trends. First, the number of PNGOs in Israel has increased dramatically since the early 1980s. Second, the activities of PNGOs in Israel have expanded to cover a diverse range of issues, locally and nationally; the most widespread types of organisations have been devoted to culture and education, religion and advocacy. Third, an examination of PNGOs in Israel in comparison to the overall NGO scene in Israel reveals the proportion of NGOs to citizens is still much lower than the proportion of Palestinians in the Israeli population. Fourth, the development patterns of PNGOs in Israel were different in some respects from their Jewish counterparts; as noted above, on average PNGOs in Israel employ more people than their Jewish counterparts. There are also more PNGOs in Israel engaged in civil- and human-rights advocacy than Jewish organisations. Fifth, PNGOs suffer from state discrimination which their Jewish counterparts do not. This discrimination explicitly manifests itself in the much lower funding PNGOs receive from the state, compared to JNGOs in Israel. The following figures present the available data on PNGOs in Israel established up to 2001, referring to years of establishment and the scope of their activities. Figure 1 presents the dates of establishment available for 41 organisations that were established prior to 1981. Figure 2 is based on the much more comprehensive data available since the enactment of the Law of Associations in 1981 as analysed by the Israeli Centre for Third Sector Research. It presents the dates of registration for the 1613
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PNGOs registered in Israel by 2001. Figure 3 presents a comparison of the registration rate of Palestinian and Jewish NGOs in Israel. Figure 4 presents the main fields of activity, as revealed for the 186 PNGOs in Israel researched by the Jaffa Research Centre in 1991. Figure 5 presents the main sources of funding for these same organisations. Figure 1: Number of PNGOs Established in Israel, 1948-1981
Number of Organisations.
30 25 20
28
15 10 5 0
2 3
8
up to 1948 1949-1959 1960-1969 1970-1979 Years of Registration
Source: Jaffa Research Centre, Guide to Arab Civil Organisations and Associations in Israel, 1990, Nazareth, 1990 (in Arabic).
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Figure 2: Number of PNGOs in Israel by Year of Registration, 1981-2001
Number of Organisations
140 120
100 80
60 40
20 0
36892
36161
35431
34700
33970
33239
32509
31778
31048
Year of Registration
Source: Benjamin Gidron, Yael Alon and Rinat Ben Noon, Database Report of the Third Sector in Israel, Beersheba: Israeli Centre for Third Sector Research, March 2003, pp. 41-42.
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Number of Organisations.
Figure 3: Registration Rate of PNGOs in Israel Compared with Jewish NGOs, 1981-2001 2000 1500
JNGOs PNGOs
1000 500 0
1981- 1984- 1987- 1990- 1993- 1996- 19991983 1986 1989 1992 1995 1998 2001
JNGOs 1519 1203 1438 1465 1817 1680 1592 PNGOs
22
41
70
71
108
103
122
Years of Registration
Source: Benjamin Gidron, Yael Alon and Rinat Ben Noon, Database Report of the Third Sector in Israel, Beersheba: Israeli Centre for Third Sector Research, March 2003, pp. 30, 39. These three figures point to a major increase in the number of PNGOs established in Israel since the 1970s. Overall, the number of PNGOs in Israel continued to rise steadily over the following decades. Comprehensive annual data is available only for the years following the enactment of the Law of Associations in 1981,258 revealing that the cumulative number of Palestinian organisations registered in Israel from then until 2001 reached 1613. Excluding organisations registered in East Jerusalem, which are mostly run by Palestinians from the West Bank, in 1998 there were 900 PNGOs within Israel proper out of 1248 PNGOs registered that year.259 In the first four years after the enactment of the law, the rate of registration of PNGOs in Israel lagged behind that of their Jewish counterparts. But this situation changed after 1985. Following that date, the rate of increase in the registration of PNGOs in Israel was consistently higher than that of Jewish NGOs. Nevertheless, the proportion of PNGOs in Israel to the total number of NGOs in Israel remained smaller than the proportion of Palestinians in the population. PNGOs in Israel constitute only 4.7% of Israeli registered
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organisations: 1613 out of 34,291 NGOs by 2001.260 While this percentage is significantly lower than the per-centage of Palestinians among the overall population in Israel (18%), it still represents a high ratio of 1 NGO per about 1,000 people – one of the highest NGO-per-people ratios in the developing world.261 As noted in the previous chapters, the period in which PNGOs in Israel started proliferating – the second half of the 1970s and onwards echoed a similar development throughout the developing world. To use Korten’s terminology, this proliferation marked the transition, evident in the Palestinian community in Israel as in other parts of the world, from first-generation organisations focusing on welfare and relief to the more political activities of ‘conscientisation’ and mobilisation characterising second, third and fourth-generation NGOs.262 As Clarke has convincingly argued, the development of NGO-state relationship needs to be placed in the context of the overall institutional arrangement prevalent in individual countries.263 In the case of PNGOs in Israel, the figures highlight three periods in which the number of PNGOs registered in Israel was particularly high relatively to previous periods: 1987-1991, 1993-1994, and 1996-1997. Further, after a drop in 2000, there was an increase in 2001. These increases were not incidental but were influenced by developments in state-minority relations and other institutional arrangements in Israel, and they are explained in the analysis section below.
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Figure 4: Fields of Activity (1990)
Number of Organisations.
50 40 30
50 20
37
38
10
9 0
Women
10 Heritage
Advocacy
Religion
Culture/ Education
Field of Activity
Source: Jaffa Research Centre, Guide to Arab Civil Organisations and Associations in Israel, 1990, Nazareth, 1990 (in Arabic) 264 Figure 4 demonstrates the variety of issues dealt with by PNGOs in Israel. It should be noted, that in all categories, the majority of organisations provide services to the population. Overall, 70% of PNGOs in Israel provide services.265 This is true even to organisations that are predominantly advocacy NGOs, as many of them combine advocacy activities with the provision of services in a variety of fields, including health, legal advice, and student support. Notably, the single largest category of PNGOs in Israel is engaged in community and cultural and educational affairs. The stronghold of the Islamic movement among Palestinian NGOs in Israel is evidenced in this data in the high number of active religious organisations, most of them (30 out of 38) being Islamic. A large proportion of the reviewed NGOs aimed to assume a role in the advocacy campaign undertaken by the Palestinian minority for elevating its civil rights. The number of advocacy organisations among PNGOs in Israel remained high throughout the period. In 1998, 10% of all PNGOs in Israel registered in Israel dealt with advocacy. The proportion of women’s organisations (5%) is also notably high. A comparison of the activities of PNGOs in Israel to their Jewish counterparts further
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exposes the relatively high proportion of advocacy and civic organisations among PNGOs. In 1988, 10% of PNGOs in Israel were engaged in advocacy, but only 6% of Jewish organisations were dedicated to this activity. This proportion is also much higher than the rate of civic/advocacy NGOs elsewhere in the Arab world.266 Funding Only 15% of PNGOs in Israel out of the 1,067 associations registered in Israel in 2000 received some kind of government funding (either directly, or indirectly in the form of tax benefits for donors). This rate is low in comparison with the rate of 24% for Israeli NGOs in general.267 This discrimination is one of the reasons that external funding is a necessity for PNGOs in Israel. The availability of such funding since the early 1980s has thus constituted another motivation for the proliferation of PNGOs in Israel. Figure 5 below presents the main sources for funding of PNGOs in Israel. It summarises the sources of funding for 186 Palestinian organisations in Israel, reviewed in 1990 by the Jaffa Research Centre in Nazareth.
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Number of Organisations.
Figure 5: Sources of Funding (1990)
40
30
20
40
21
10
9
6
0 European Donors
Welfare Jewish Association Organisations (Except NIF)
NIF
5 Islamic Organisations
Field of Activity
Source: Jaffa Research Centre, Guide to Arab Civil Organisations and Associations in Israel, 1990, Nazareth, 1990 (in Arabic). European donors have been the main donors of PNGOs in Israel, providing 24% of total funds. One of the most important European donors is the Netherlands-based Protestant organisation, Interchurch Organisation for Development Co-operation (ICCO), which began supporting organisations in Israel in the early 1970s. In these early years, ICCO’s policies in the Middle East were based on solidarity with Israel and were generally opposed to the Palestinian perspective of the IsraeliArab conflict. However, in subsequent years, ICCO started supporting programmes for Palestinian refugees as well as PNGOs in Israel specialising in human rights issues. By the early 1990s, ICCO funded six Palestinian organisations in Israel, one Israeli Jewish-Palestinian organisation and one Israeli organisation with an outreach component for the Palestinian community.268 The second biggest source of funding was the Geneva-based Welfare Association (called in Arabic Ta’awun), which provided 12.5% of the total funds for PNGOs in Israel at the time. Ta’awun is a Palestinian
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organisation set up to fund Palestinian NGOs throughout the Middle East. It aims to provide ‘humanitarian and developmental assistance promoting self-reliance of the indigenous Palestinian community’.269 Ta’awun operates local Resource Development Committees in Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Oman, Bahrain, and Qatar.270 Most of the humanitarian activities it funds take place in Lebanon’s refugee camps, whereas developmental activities are supported only in Israel and in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.271Ta’awun does not fund lobby organisations. It supports PNGOs in Israel provided that they promote ‘Palestinian culture’ among the Palestinian minority. In the decade following its establishment in 1983 Ta’awun donated $2 million to children-oriented projects initiated by Palestinian NGOs in Israel, a sum comparable to its investment in children’s services in the West Bank during the same period, and more than double the funding of similar services in the Gaza Strip.272 Suheil Mi’ari, Ta’awun’s programme co-ordinator for Palestinian NGOs in Israel since 1993, explains that the increasing focus on culture and art within Israel resulted from assessing the Palestinian minority as a group that enjoyed improving capabilities of organising itself, but suffered from weakening bonds of national identity.273 Ta’awun is an independent organisation, but avowedly ‘close’ ideologically and institutionally to the PLO. Following the Oslo agreement of 1993, this proximity had a practical implication when the Development Department, serving up until then both Palestinians within Israel and Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, split into two different departments. This step has a clear political meaning. As Welfare adopted the mainstream PLO’s recognition of Israel in its 1967 borders, the status of Palestinians within these borders came to be viewed as different from that of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. The anthropologist Dr. Khalil Nakhleh, who was the Director of Programmes in Welfare from its establishment, quit his job following Oslo. Nakhleh believes that Welfare’s position in the Palestinian community in Israel went through a major shift of priorities at the time. ‘Welfare has come closer to the mainstream in Fatah’. Nakhleh argues, ‘Inside Israel, they seem to think that it is better to co-operate with state authorities, because it changes the system from inside. I think this is a clear trend in the PLO’s thinking, of which Oslo was a part’.274 This change of policy manifests itself in the demand of post-1993 Ta’awun that beneficiaries register with the Ministry of Interior. Prior to 1993, registration was not a requirement, as Nakhleh explains:
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‘We made a conscious effort to support local initiatives of Palestinians. Some of them found it difficult to register. Others could not register at all, because they had radical political activists who served time in jail in the past, and it is against the Israeli Law of Associations for those who were imprisoned to register themselves as an association. We assisted them, although it required high logistics and strong presence in the field’.275 Suheil Mi’ari argues that registration with the Ministry of Interior Affairs has generally become easier for PNGOs in Israel in recent years, although some difficulties still prevail. Nevertheless, Welfare decided to insist on full registration of all the organisations it supports with the local authorities, regardless of the constraints they impose, in order to secure a fair use of its funds.276 Jewish organisations funded around 5% of the PNGOs in Israel. The New Israel Fund (NIF), an American-based Jewish fund that supports organisations for social change in Israel, decided in 1989 to support PNGOs in Israel in addition to the Jewish ones they have supported ever since the Fund’s establishment in 1979.277 The NIF has since become one of the most important donors for PNGOs in Israel. Another important contribution of the NIF is the professional and administrative support it offers to organisations in the early stages of their activity. In 1992, the NIF established the Equal Access Initiative, a project run by its daughter organisation, Shatil, and dedicated to ‘help Arab citizens and their municipalities gain equal access to government services and resources, especially education, health care, and economic opportunity’.278 These aims are achieved through the funding of PNGOs in Israel. In 1996, for example, this Initiative awarded over $194,000 to such organisations (out of Shatil’s total budget of $1,599,774).279 The relationship between PNGOs in Israel and donors faced criticism within the community. Lutfi Mash’ur, the editor and publisher of alSinara, is a staunch critic of the corruption and mismanagement he identifies in the PNGOs in Israel. He calls NGOs by the derogatory name of dakakeen (corner-shops), and argues that ‘no intended plan to corrupt the Palestinian minority in Israel could have been more successful than these organisations’.280 In January 1993 he wrote in alSinara’s editorial: ‘I heard this week a new story about the huge salaries, and the even far greater benefits accompanying them (whether published or kept secret), of some officials, managers, and workers in some of the so-
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called national organisations. […] I heard that the rivalry over personal benefits in some of these organisations resembles a war’.281 The importance of NGOs in providing sought-after jobs for educated Palestinians is unquestionable. The role of PNGOs in Israel in their society is evidenced by the fact that they employ nearly double the rate of employees than their Jewish counterparts. In 1998 7.6 per cent of the total employees in Israeli NGOs (2,323 people) were employed by PNGOs in Israel. Three-quarters of the PNGOs in Israel employed paid staff, and 65% of them employed one to 10 employees.282 Analysis: The Political Effects of the Proliferation of PNGOs in Israel Despite the impressive rise in the number of PNGOs in Israel in recent decades and their growing visibility in the Israeli public sphere, scholarly interest in their activities has remained limited. Scholars have tended to underestimate the importance of PNGOs in Israel for three reasons. First, it is argued that Palestinian civil society is underdeveloped. Political scientist As’ad Ghanem, for example, views Palestinian civil society within a ‘predicament developmental approach’, contending that democratic development among the minority is hindered because of its political, economic and social constraints.283 Second, it is argued that PNGOs in Israel concentrate on supplying the services the government fails to provide, rather than negotiating a change of policies. This ‘alternative civil society’ has resulted from systematic discrimination against the minority, and is therefore limited and distorted.284 Finally, other scholars contend that Palestinian civil society in Israel is totally detached from its Jewish counterpart, so has little impact on Israeli society at large. Gideon Doron outlines the argument thus: ‘While the two civil societies [Jewish and Palestinian] emerged roughly at the same time, about the mid 1970s, the impetus behind their respective development is different, and their scope and internal characteristics are also different’.285 This last view is contested by Baruch Kimmerling, who has argued that only a joint Jewish-Arab system can ‘suffice to explain processes which took place in the Jewish and Arab communities, respectively’.286 In other words, analysis of one community which does not consider its inter-dependence with the rest of civil society by definition is incomplete. Similarly, scholars of the Israeli Centre for Third Sector Research argue that a more realistic approach would be to see PNGOs in Israel as part of Israeli civil society in spite of the division of the latter along national lines.287
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The Evolution of Palestinian NGOs in Israel
Insofar as the rise in Palestinian activism in Israel has been acknowledged and discussed, scholars have given two conflicting interpretations. One approach has termed this phenomenon ‘politicisation’, arguing that Palestinians in Israel have aimed first and foremost to advance their civil rights as a national minority within Israel. This approach highlights the non-violent nature of the campaign and its use of democratic channels.288 Ian Lustick has taken the politicisation view a step further. He argues that Israel has already become a binational state with the increase in the number of political opportunities open to the minority and the coming of age of a Palestinian leadership capable of responding to these opportunities and promoting the minority’s interests: ‘In the 1970s Israeli Arabs were calling for non-discrimination and civil rights, as did the American Negroes in the 1950s and early 1960s. In the 1980s, Israeli Arabs are demanding their share of political power, as did American Blacks in the 1970s… What this means, in a phrase, is creeping binationalism’.289 The opposite approach, labelled ‘radicalisation’, contends that the civil-rights campaign masks a process of nationalism, that aims at an irredentist solution for the Palestinian minority and act as a catalyst for rising levels of violence amongst the minority. This is best characterised as a zero-sum game, which views minority rights as a threat to the Jewish majority and to the integrity of the state.290 Advocates of the radicalisation concept argue that aspirations for territorial autonomy are the logical conclusion of the growing sense of confidence among Palestinians in Israel, stemming from their rapid demographic growth and their territorial concentration in Israel. They view NGOs as the organisational infrastructure for a national entity, and therefore a central means to facilitate the irredentist vision.291 The campaign of PNGOs in Israel seems to contradict the zero-sum hypothesis of the radicalisation approach and to support the politicisation analysis. In particular, the alleged association between NGOs and irredentist activity has no basis in fact. While PNGOs in Israel voice the increasing demand of Palestinians in Israel for ‘cultural autonomy’, this demand is neither territorial nor statutory.292 It is only ‘radical’ in its aim to extend minority rights from the individual to the collective realm; it does not threaten the territorial integrity of the state of Israel, neither does it deviate from the historical campaign of the Palestinian citizens for civil equality within Israel. Moreover, as
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registered, formal organisations, NGOs emphasise the civic nature of the campaign. The high proportion of PNGOs in Israel explicitly active in the field of civil equality further emphasise this function of NGOs. Yet, as social-geographer Oren Yiftachel has argued in a critique of the radicalisation-politicisation dichotomy, this campaign has often gone beyond merely demanding better rights within the existing political system to incorporate a reconstructed conception of national identity.293 Moreover, the portrayal of Israel as a bi-national state seems to be farfetched. In fact, Jewish domination over state institutions remains solid. Consequently, the demands of PNGOs in Israel for civic equality are not confined to the framework of the State of Israel. As Minns and Hijab have argued, the activities of PNGOs in Israel and the discourse they develop may serve as a basis for demands for a future democratic civil state.294 Notably, however, the most immediate focus of PNGOs in Israel is to further the civil and human rights of Palestinians within the constraints of the existing political system. The Formative Years: 1976-1982 The mobilisation of the Palestinian minority against land confiscation during Land Day 1976 marked the beginning of a period that witnessed protest campaigns more frequent than at any previous time in the history of the state.295 Land Day shaped the nature of the subsequent activities of PNGOs in Israel throughout this period of awakening. Palestinian organisations in this period followed an ad hoc strategy, responding to policies and events mainly by organising mass demonstrations and nation-wide strikes. The institutional level of these campaigns was characteristically limited, as the leadership’s response to events often lagged behind spontaneous responses of the community. However, a number of permanent Palestinian organisations were established during this period. These organisations eventually took the lead in mobilising many of the large-scale protest campaigns of the time. Many of them have continued to exist up to the present, providing the institutional foundation for the extra-parliamentary Palestinian organisation. The 1970s’ wave of institution building culminated in the establishment of two organisations that organised Land Day protests: the Committee for Defence of the Arab Lands and the National Council of Heads of Arab Local Councils (NCALC). The Communist Party established the former in October 1975, as a non-partisan committee. Its existence was crucial to the practical co-ordination of Land Day demonstrations. However, it was the NCALC that established a leading position among Palestinians in Israel following Land Day. The NCALC
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had been formed as early as February 1974 to advance equality in the government’s policies toward Arab local authorities. The prime minister’s Jewish adviser on Arab affairs, Shmuel Toledano, initiated the establishment of the committee as part of his attempt to widen the basis of support for the Zionist establishment. However, the committee soon took on a life of its own as an independent forum concentrating first on local issues, then later assuming a significant national role.296 Hence, as the government’s plans to confiscate around 5,000 acres of Arab land in the Galilee became public knowledge; the main political forces in the Palestinian community were able to co-ordinate a united response. Although it initially discouraged the protest, the NCALC came to be associated with Land Day as it led the negotiations with Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin following the protest.297 Protest against the Israeli occupation of Lebanon in the early 1980s was the other major campaign of PNGOs in Israel in these formative years. The protest, which followed the massacres of Palestinians at the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatilah in 1982, bore similarities to Land Day both in its ad hoc nature and in the methods of mass demonstrations and strikes that it utilised. The leadership, which had until then refrained from responding to the war, was forced to react after the spontaneous demonstrations that erupted as news of the massacres arrived. This protest campaign concluded the phase of focus on spontaneous response, and marked the movement’s shift to a more institutionalised and structured activism. Like Land Day 1976, the protest against the Israeli occupation of Lebanon was jointly organised by most of the political bodies representing the Palestinian minority. This unity brought about the next stage in the institutionalisation of the NCALC, when the Follow-Up Committee for Arab Affairs was established as an umbrella organisation in October 1982. This body is not affiliated to any political party. Its members are the leaders of the Palestinian minority in Israel, including all Palestinian mayors, MKs, members of the Central Committee of the Histadrut, and others. 298 The adoption of ad hoc mass protest methods throughout the awakening period reflected the pressing need to give a visible response to discriminatory state policies and political events. However, the ad hoc pattern characterising this response can only be fully understood in light of the limitations imposed on Palestinian mobility by the state. State authorities consistently obstructed attempts to establish representative institutions. Thus, the Prime Minister and Minister of Defence in 1980, Menahem Begin, banned the congregation of a ‘congress of Arab masses’, that was to take place in Nazareth at the beginning of December. The Communist Party initiated
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the Congress, aiming to form a multi-partisan body to represent the Palestinian minority in Israel outside the Knesset. As the influence of nationalist parties grew among the minority, the congress was part of the Communists’ attempt to institutionalise the non-nationalist camp they had led by electing a representative number of delegates from each Arab town in Israel. According to the plan, these delegates would meet regularly to discuss the affairs of the Palestinian minority and represent it vis-à-vis the government. The government decided to ban the congress due to fears that the new body, popularly known as the parliament of the Arabs in Israel, would be hostile to the state, and that congress members would express sympathy with the PLO.299 Official attitudes towards the NCALC and the High Follow-Up Committee have been more complex. While reluctant to grant them official recognition, the fact that the state has been willing to negotiate at all constitutes a de facto recognition.300 Despite the state’s reluctance to engage in negotiations with these organisations, the practical recognition has strengthened their role as negotiators on behalf of the Palestinian minority. Certain achievements, such as the increase in budgetary allocations to Arab cities in 1991, further enhanced their position. At the same time, the reluctance of the Israeli government to permit a representative body for the Palestinian minority had a significant effect on their activities, constraining their practical bargaining power and restricting their ability to achieve tangible gains for their community. The NCALC did not seek registration as an association until 1999. Rather, it aimed to represent the minority and negotiate with the authorities while standing outside its institutions.301 Registration may have contributed to the ability of the NCALC to attract external funding. Nevertheless, the attempt was criticised as giving up the dream of a representative body that would be able to negotiate with the Israeli authorities from a stronghold outside its institutions.302 The Registrar, Amiram Bogot, for his part, refused the application, allegedly ‘without explaining his reasons’.303 Notably, when the Follow-Up Committee established subcommittees in 1980 to deal with specific problems of the minority, but betrayed no aspiration to act as representative bodies, the state raised no objection to their registration as associations.304 This case illustrates a fundamental weakness of PNGOs in Israel vis-à-vis the state: authority to decide which organisations may register (and consequently which organisations enjoy the freedom of association protected by law and encouraged by economic benefits) is reserved exclusively to the state.
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1982-1993: Institutionalisation and Growth As Figure 2.2 above indicates, the 1980s saw the establishment of increasing numbers of PNGOs in Israel. These organisations tended to be more institutionalised and to have a more professional administration than the NCALC and the High Follow-Up Committee. Unlike the NCALC and the High Follow-Up Committee, they are registered with the state, and often focus on a single issue or a group of issues over a prolonged period of time. Neither being elected nor possessing a strong local political base, the new generation of organisations lacked such autonomous sources of legitimacy as enjoyed by the High Follow Up Committee and the NCALC. Consequently, they can only be judged by the quality of services they provide, and – when lobbying is involved – by the responsiveness of the relevant state agencies to their demands. The rationale behind the shift from ad hoc protest activities to institutionalised and organised activism was usually not verbally articulated, but expressed through activities. However, in December 1980, the London-based Arabic newspaper al-Hayat published a commentary with the title ‘Palestinian Struggle Under Occupation’, which spelt out the central rationale behind this change. The article called for the establishment of PNGOs in Israel as a political vehicle to mobilise the community as an interest group both in Israel and abroad. The author, the anthropologist Khalil Nakhleh, is a Palestinian citizen of Israel who was co-ordinating at the time the programmes of the Holy Land Fund, which supported PNGOs in Israel and elsewhere. In the article, Nakhleh outlined the steps he believed would lead to the ‘cultural and political liberation’ of the Palestinian community in Israel. He suggested that the community stop looking at the Knesset as the forum for articulating the minority’s grievances and bestow a greater role to Arab local councils and municipalities. In addition, Nakhleh called on Palestinians in Israel to ‘consolidate the regional organisations which we have created into bodies that have the means to articulate our aspirations, defend our interests and disseminate the information nationally and internationally’. Finally, he advocated strengthening and enlarging the ‘network of existing associations, movements, clubs and committees that already perform invaluable tasks in the political socialisation of our people’.305 As the project co-ordinator of Holy Land and since 1983 of the influential Ta’awun organisation, Nakhleh was in a position to see his vision partially come true.
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The Test of the Intifada The growing importance of PNGOs in Israel, gained throughout the 1980s, was revealed through the response of the Palestinian minority in Israel to the Intifada. The uprising of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip which broke out in 9 December 1987 placed Palestinians in Israel in a difficult situation. Palestinian citizens of Israel neither initiated nor actively participated in the Intifada, yet they were caught between conflicting loyalties to their people on the one hand and their citizenship in the Israeli state on the other. Whatever the response of Palestinians in Israel to the Intifada, it would almost certainly be scrutinised for any sign of hostility or betrayal by fellow Palestinians and fellow Israelis. Scholars have debated whether the Intifada ‘crossed the Green Line’ and was shared by Palestinians in Israel. Nadim Rouhana has argued that the Intifada ‘not only ended at the Green Line, it resurrected the Green Line in the consciousness of both Palestinian communities’.306As’ad Ghanem and Sara Ozacki-Lazar, who accept this interpretation, stress that disagreements within Jewish public opinion regarding the policies of the government and the military during the Intifada made it easier for the Palestinian minority to sympathise with the struggle but still retain their Israeli civil identity.307 Geographer Arnon Soffer on the other hand contends that the Intifada did indeed cross the Green Line in that Arab youth in Israel increasingly turned to violence to express personal, local, or national frustration, as well as feeling shame that they did not participate in the heroic acts of the Intifada.308 Elie Rekhess shares Soffer’s view and argues that the Palestinian minority attempted to transfer the methods of the Intifada to Israel.309 Yet an examination of PNGOs in Israel during the Intifada seems to support the interpretation of Rouhana, Ghanem and Ozacki-Lazar. They argue that despite the solidarity felt by Palestinians in Israel, the Intifada enhanced the distinctions between Palestinians in Israel and those in Gaza and the West Bank. As Figure 1 (on page 88) illustrates, more Palestinian associations were registered in Israel during the Intifada than ever before. 1991 was the year in which the largest number of Palestinian organisations was registered (84) compared to any previous year. Far from suggesting that the confrontational methods of the Intifada were imported into Israel, the establishment of more NGOs is itself a sign of increased reliance on civic methods of protest. As we shall see, the response to the Intifada reinforced the process of institutionalisation and co-ordination among Palestinian organisations that had begun in the late 1970s. Significantly, these processes took place despite the greater use of
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coercion by the state, exacerbated amid the security threats of the uprising. 1. Institutionalisation. The backdrop of the Intifada provided the impetus for the establishment of new organisations as well as for the activity of existing Palestinian organisations, both of which were engaged in coordinating humanitarian relief for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. Grassroots organisations also took part in recruiting participants in events organised by the High Follow-Up Committee and the political parties.310 Dan Rabinowitz and Khawla Abu Baker have defined the generation that grew active during the years of the Intifada as the ‘stand tall’ generation: a generation of young people who grew on the Land Day heritage and the successful campaigns of the Palestinian national movement, and identified themselves as Palestinians.311 Many of the organisations established by Palestinians in Israel during the Intifada reflected this sympathy. However, although organisations were initially established to aid Palestinians in the occupied territories, the process of institutionalisation reinforced the impact of PNGOs in Israel on stateminority relations in Israel. Consider, for example, the case of the Arab Association for Human Rights (HRA). This Nazareth-based organisation was established in 1988 by a group of lawyers led by the late activist Mansour Kardoush. It was formed with the purpose of offering legal advice to Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. However, according to HRA’s current chairman, Muhammad Zeidan, members found out within a year of the establishment of the HRA that its help was not necessary; Palestinian lawyers from the occupied territories were already fully acquainted with the system and took upon themselves the task of representing their people. It was then that the organisation reoriented itself towards campaigning for human rights for the Palestinian community in Israel through education and lobbying.312 2. Increased Co-ordination. The rising level of political participation among Palestinians in Israel during the Intifada manifested itself not only in the number of associations established, but also in the dramatic rise in the level of protest. In the Galilee region alone, the number of protest demonstrations grew from 20 in 1996 to more than 80 in the second half of 1997, and then to more than 110 in mid-1990. This data represents national events in addition to local ones.313 Already on 21 December 1987, a few days after the outbreak of the Intifada, the High Follow-Up Committee organised a national strike. Although planned as an act of solidarity with the Intifada, the strike was named ‘Peace Day’ in order to distinguish the means of protest associated with Palestinians in Israel
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from those of the Intifada. Throughout the Intifada, the High Follow-Up Committee acted as the central ‘headquarters’ for mobilising the protest of Palestinians in Israel. The tone it set for the protest included solidarity with Palestinians in the occupied territories, but focused on demands for equality for the Palestinian minority. This two-fold message was symbolically expressed on 15 November 1988, following the PLO’s declaration of an independent state at the Palestinian National Council meeting in Algiers. The declaration effectively accepted a two-state solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict, and was interpreted by the leadership of the High Follow-Up Committee as a marker of the different political futures of Palestinians inside and outside the Green Line.314 On the same date, Palestinians in Israel organised the ‘House Day Strike’, in protest at the demolition of houses in Taybeh, an Arab city within the Green Line. In light of the coincidence, Follow-Up committee members found it necessary to deny any connection between the two events.315 The dual message of Palestinian protest in Israel continued throughout the Intifada, predominantly in the annual commemoration of Land Day that now expressed sympathy with the uprising in addition to the demand for equality within Israel.316 Notably, the campaign for promoting this message involved the co-operation of many and different types of Palestinian NGOs, a method that was also a significant feature of Palestinian resistance in the West Bank and Gaza during the Intifada. 3. Facing ‘Active Exclusion’. The campaign of PNGOs in Israel took place in an atmosphere of unusual tension and uncertainty. The activity of PNGOs in Israel was facilitated, on the one hand, by the democratic ethos of the state, which allowed these NGOs to foster the minority’s unique identity, express its opposition to state’s policies, and bargain for its civil rights. These were enhanced by co-operation between Jewish and Palestinian activists in Israel. Regardless of these opportunities, however, the state’s response to the challenge posed by Palestinian activists was predominantly one of ‘active exclusion’: denying the Palestinian leadership in Israel access to the avenues of publicity or decision-making. State authorities at the time invoked security considerations to justify the restriction of publications and organisations deemed a security risk. There were numerous examples of this practice, including the prevention of the movement Abna al-Balad (Sons of the Country) from organising nationally during the Intifada and the detention of some of its activists.317 Palestinian and joint Palestinian-Jewish student organisations were constrained, and students who were active against the occupation were severely punished by their universities.318 The parliamentary immunity of
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MK Hashem Mahamid (CPI) was suspended for three months on 6 January 1993, following a speech he gave in Gaza in which he called for demonstrators to fight the occupation ‘by every accessible means’.319 A Palestinian poet from Nazareth, Shafiq Habib, was arrested for publishing a book of poetry, ‘Awda Ila al-Ati (Return to the Future), which professed support for the Intifada.320 It is notable, therefore, that PNGOs in Israel have proliferated at a time when other institutions and movements of the Palestinian minority were subject to restriction by the state. This contrast underlines the importance of NGOs as a political channel that entails lower risks for its activists. Their legal status provided at least some protection from state coercion. 1993-1999: Consolidation and Disillusionment This period witnessed two simultaneous, and to some extent contradictory, developments. On the one hand, PNGOs in Israel responded to increased political opportunities at the time. On the other hand, their activities reflected disillusionment of the Palestinian-Jewish partnership within the peace camp. The number of PNGOs in Israel established during the 1992-1996 Labour-led government was relatively high, as Figure 2 (on page 77) above indicates, diminishing temporarily after its replacement by a Likud government. The Labour government was probably the most responsive government to the Palestinian minority in Israeli history due to its dependence on the vote of the Communist and Arab parties.321 Similarly, PNGOs in Israel increased the number and scope of their appeals to the Supreme Court as part of the general rise in human-rights appeals to the Court following the legislation of Basic Laws in 1992. These developments support the theoretical hypothesis, suggested in the previous chapter, about the correlation between the existence of political opportunities and levels of NGO activism. At the same time, it is hard to overestimate the disappointment of Palestinian activists at the limited access they have enjoyed to the Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations. The peace process, which formally began with the Madrid Peace Conference of 1991, and reached a peak in the 1993 Oslo Declaration of Principles,322 excluded the Palestinian minority from any direct role in the negotiations. Similarly, their political future was not negotiated. The peace process has thus frustrated the long-held expectations of Palestinians in Israel that they could serve as a bridge for peace between Israelis and Palestinians. It destroyed the hope that peace between Israel and the national Palestinian movement would inevitably bring about improvements to the civil status of Palestinians in Israel.323 The
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alternative approach, which emerged during the Intifada, of putting Palestinian rights in Israel at the centre of the struggle has therefore come to be grasped by many Palestinian activists as preferable to the slogans of ‘peace and equality’. Further, an open discussion has evolved among activists as to the political solution that would best secure the rights of the Palestinian minority in Israel. This developing discourse of rights inspired two opposite, though often complementary, methodologies for PNGO activism in Israel: community empowerment separate from Jewish-Arab co-operation on the one hand, and enhanced use of Israeli institutions on the other. The debate over the two approaches was especially prominent in the arena of national organisations, and is discussed at length in the next chapter. Suffice it to say here that the years immediately following the signing of the Oslo accord saw the establishment of organisations active for achieving two types of goals. On the one hand, more organisations attempted to take full advantage of available democratic channels in Israel and to increase the visibility of PNGOs in the Israeli public sphere. On the other hand, more organisations focused on community activism and international campaigns as a counter-balance to the centrality of the state. The debate cut across organisational lines, and inspired new methods of activism, such as appeals to international institutions. The 1990s saw the increasing availability of those resources defined by Aldon Morris as essential for the development of any social movement: well-developed internal organisations and social institutions that provide the community with encompassing communication networks, organised groups, experienced leaders, and social resources including money, labour, and charisma.324 Indeed, the era beginning in the mid-1990s was characterised by increased professionalism of PNGOs in Israel, and by enhancement of the creation of coalitions – especially of feminist organisations. The next chapters deal extensively with these issues. Post-October 2000: the Struggle for Human Rights and Recognition as a National Minority In August 2001, a Preparatory Committee of PNGOs in Israel headed by Ittijah (The Union of Arab Community Based Organisations) submitted a declaration to the United Nations World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance (WCAR). The declaration included three demands: a call upon Israel to respect the civil rights of Palestinian citizens; a demand to recognise the Palestinian citizens of Israel as a distinct national minority group and consequently respect their collective rights in addition to individual ones; and a call for
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the UN to ensure the human dignity and liberty of Palestinian citizens of Israel, as enumerated for all peoples in UN human rights conventions.325 The last two demands were voiced by NGOs representing Palestinian citizens of Israel for the first time in an international forum, and they mark the diminishing trust in the power of citizenship alone to ensure the human rights of Palestinians in Israel. This is hardly surprising: less than a year after Israeli police shot dead 13 Palestinians in Israel (12 of them citizens of the state and one a resident of Gaza) during demonstrations in the north of Israel. Although it is still difficult to evaluate the long-term impact of the October 2000 events on PNGOs in Israel, it seems that the demands put forward in the WCAR, for recognition of the Palestinian minority as a national, indigenous minority and for international protection of the human rights of Palestinian citizens of Israel, are likely to instruct much of their work in the near future. As expressed in the statement of the Preparatory Committee of PNGOs in Israel to the WCAR, these demands do not exclude but rather complement the campaign for civic equality, in which PNGOs in Israel have been engaged since 1976. In fact, this campaign was enhanced in the face of the conflict between state agencies and the Jewish majority on the one hand and Palestinians in Israel, on the other, since the outbreak of the al-Aqsa Intifada in 30 September 2000. On that date, Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip demonstrated against the political visit of Ariel Sharon, then leader of the Israeli opposition, to Temple Mount. To the dismay of the Israeli authorities, Palestinians in Israel organised their own protests to coincide with those in the West Bank and Gaza. The National Council of Heads of Arab Localities called a national strike for 1 October, and the Islamic Movement played a pivotal role in organising the protest. Nevertheless, many of the protests in Israeli Palestinian communities that took place over the next three days were unorganised and spontaneous. Several ended in the destruction of property and blocking of roads. The police response was swift and brutal: 13 Palestinian demonstrators were killed and dozens of others wounded. PNGOs in Israel got involved in the conflict as soon as its scope was revealed. Thus, for example, I’lam, a communication centre operated by the Haifa-based NGO Mossawa, video-filmed acts of police violence towards demonstrators and distributed the pictures in Israel and abroad. When the State of Israel decided to probe the events, PNGOs in Israel exerted pressure for the establishment of a high-level and official commission of inquiry. When such a commission was initiated, several PNGOs in Israel – headed by Adalah, The Legal Centre for Arab
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Minority Rights in Israel – assisted the Commission’s work by submitting witnesses to the events. The Commission, the Or Commission of Inquiry into the October 2000 Events, released its report in 1 September 2003. It criticised Israeli governments for their consistent discrimination of Palestinian citizens of the state, stating: ‘The state and generations of its government failed in a lack of comprehensive and deep handling of the serious problems created by the existence of a large Arab minority inside the Jewish state. Government handling of the Arab sector has been primarily neglectful and discriminatory’. 326 The Or Commission also strongly criticised the police, stating that it suffers from prejudice, which exists even among officers who are experienced and admired. The Commission further stated: ‘The police must learn to realize that the Arab sector in Israel is not the enemy and must not be treated as such.’327 Notably, police forces often stand at the front line of conflicts between minority groups and state establishments. This is not only the case in the context of ethnic democracies such as Israel, but also in civic democracies, when ethnic or racial conflicts evolve. This results from the direct contact of the police with local communities. More than any other state agency, the police force is engaged with the community, implementing policies that may be seen as unfair towards the minority, and inevitably finds itself in conflict with at least some parts of the community. When the police are seen as partial and racist, these elements may lead to clashes. Thus, for example, racial protest erupted in Los Angeles in 1991 following a police beating of a Black suspect, Rodney King. And in 1981 in Britain, the Black community of Brixton broke into protest that spilled into inter-ethnic, violent clashes followed by a dramatic increase in the number of arrests in the neighbourhood.328 The October 2000 clashes between Palestinian protestors and the police in Wadi ‘Ara were not the first to erupt in this region in recent years. In September 1998, a dispute developed over 6000 dunams (about 1500 acres) of land near Umm al-Fahem, known as the Roha Lands. These lands were the last reserves of non-built lands for the city whose 33,000 residents occupy over 35,000 dunams of land (8500 acres). They were cultivated at one time by local farmers, growers of olives and almonds. On 19 May 1998, the government notified the farmers of the Roha lands that those lands were soon to become a military training
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area. Some farmers set up a protest tent on the land, with the aid of the municipality. On 27 September, the police approached the tent in an attempt to end the protest. Police officers were prepared for a large-scale response to their move, putting hospitals in the area on alert. When protesters refused to leave the tent, policemen started beating them – including the then mayor of Umm al-Fahem, Sheikh Raed Salah, who was taken to the hospital. News of the attack quickly spread. Youngsters gathered and began throwing stones at passing traffic on the Wadi ‘Ara road. Almost immediately a massive police force attacked the city, firing tear gas and bullets, both rubber and live. The violence peaked at the high school, where club-wielding officers broke in and attacked hundreds of students. Many were taken to hospital, while others joined the stone throwers. The clashes went on for three days. While the government excused the confiscation of the land by the need to use it for army training, it seems that the real reason behind the move stemmed from plans to establish a Jewish city there. Israel's master plan for 2020 (Tama 35) projects the building of a new Jewish city by the name of Iron, where 70,000 people would live, on the Roha land.329 In the years that have passed since October 2000, the violence in Israel/Palestine has dramatically escalated and relations between Jewish and Palestinian citizens are marked by tension and suspicion. Following the October 2000 events, Arab businesses are by and large empty of Jewish clientele, worried about entering Arab towns and villages; more Palestinian citizens of Israel have been found guilty of involvement in acts of terror than in any previous period; and some Jewish politicians have been quicker than ever to collectively accuse Palestinian citizens of disloyalty. Amidst these immense threats to civil society, it is notable that the registration rate of PNGOs in Israel remained high in this period. After a drop in the number of registered PNGOs in Israel in 2000 (109 associations registered, in comparison to 131 in the previous year), there was a rise in 2001, when 125 PNGOs registered in Israel.330 The biggest proportion of PNGOs in Israel registered in the years 1999-2001, 37.3%, were dedicated to cultural issues, and can be seen as organisations that help to assert the identity of the community. The two major issues that most concern the Palestinian society in Israel – land and housing, and education – are also reflected in the NGO sector. PNGOs have a much higher presence among land and housing organisations than their proportion among the overall NGOs in Israel would suggest: 12% of land and housing NGOs in Israel by the end of 2001 were Palestinian. As for education, a growing proportion of
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PNGOs in Israel is dedicated to this issue: while Arab educational NGOs overall make 3% of all education-related NGOs in Israel, this proportion grew to 8% of all the newly-registered education NGOs in 2000-2001.331 It is also interesting to note that despite the obvious crisis of trust between the Palestinian minority and state institutions, the number of advocacy PNGOs in Israel is also steadily increasing: while in 1996-1998, 8 such associations registered, in 1991-2001 this number grew to 14.332 The events of October 2000 and the tension between Jews and Palestinians in Israel in their aftermath unsurprisingly affected organisations in which Jews and Palestinians are jointly active, as well as PNGOs in Israel. A few days after the October clashes ended, Shuli Dichter, the Jewish co-manager of the joint organisation Sikkuy, dealing with advocacy for civic equality, told Haaretz that the co-existence had ‘died’. Dichter explained that old forms of co-existence activities retained Jewish dominance and were irrelevant for sincere and constructive dialogue between Jews and Palestinians in Israel.333 His note signalled and reflected a process of reconsideration that still continues in many joint NGOs in Israel. This process is elaborated upon in Chapter Five of this book. Comparison with Jewish Israeli NGOs As discussed above, Palestinian and Jewish NGOs in Israel emerged around the same period, responding to similar political opportunities. However, while the state attitude to JNGOs has increasingly changed to passive inclusion, PNGOs in Israel continue to suffer from active exclusion. The data on Jewish and Palestinian NGOs in Israel illustrates this argument. The data reveals two main differences between the two sectors. First, the percentage of advocacy NGOs out of the overall registered associations is more than double among PNGOs in Israel compared with their Jewish counterparts. In 1998, 10% of PNGOs in Israel registered explicitly as advocacy organisations, in comparison with 4% only among the overall registered associations in Israel (of which 96% are Jewish associations). A similarity, however, exists in the activity of the majority: most PNGOs and JNGOs in Israel are service providers. In fact, 70% of the overall registered associations in Israel focus on service provision.334 Second, an enormous gap exists between the funding provided by the Israeli government to JNGOs compared with PNGOs in Israel: while in many fields, JNGOs are predominantly financed by the state, governmental funding to PNGOs in Israel – as noted above – is scarce. The Israeli government heavily funds health and
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welfare organisations – 49% of health and 31% of welfare organisations are funded by the state. It even provides funding to 26% (just above a quarter) of all advocacy organisations.335 As noted, the rate of PNGOs in Israel receiving funds from the government is much lower and amounts to 15% of the overall number. Looking at specific fields, the gaps between funding received by JNGOs and those received by PNGOs in Israel are even bigger. According to Amiram Bogot, the Registrar of Associations, and political scientist Nitza Nachmias, 80% of the government grants transferred by the government to NGOs is allocated by two ministries: Education and Religion.336 Indeed, the Ministry of Education funds 35% of Israeli NGOs dealing with education-related issues. However, only 1% of all NGOs supported by the Ministry of Education are PNGOs in Israel.337 There is a disagreement in the literature whether heavy governmental funding provides NGOs with stability and strength or creates dependency that affects NGOs’ autonomy. Those who argue for stability and strength suggest that government funding leads to partnership between NGOs and governments, and may strengthen the position of the NGO in this partnership.338 Other scholars argue by contrast that heavy governmental funding, such as evident in the case of Israeli NGOs, leads NGOs to develop strong ties with the bureaucracy, often becoming increasingly “state-oriented” and politically aligned with the government.339 Despite the contrast between these views, it is clear that governmental funding is based upon a high level of agreement, ideological and practical, between government and NGOs – whether it leads to constructive partnership or to more controversial dependency. While the high levels of JNGO’s funding indicate that such agreement exists between the Israeli government and JNGOs, it is clearly missing from the relationship of PNGOs in Israel and the state. It is significant to note the practical effect of this difference on the level of services received by Jewish beneficiaries of JNGOs in comparison with Palestinian beneficiaries of PNGOs in Israel. During the 1980s and 1990s, Israel went through privatisation processes that shifted many government responsibilities in the fields of public services of health, welfare and education to NGOs. This process may explain in part the high percentage of service organisations among both JNGOs and PNGOs in Israel. Channelling services through NGOs has allowed governments to fund services on a selective, non-universal basis. The funding patterns of JNGOs compared with PNGOs in Israel illustrate these selective considerations. In the bottom line, the limited funding of PNGOs in
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Israel means that the level of services received by Palestinians in Israel is lower than that received by Jews. Comparison with Islamic Associations in Israel The majority of the registered Palestinian associations in Israel are secular. A large minority of 25%, however, is composed of religious associations – mainly those affiliated to the Islamic movement in Israel. As argued above, the focus of the Islamic movement on the establishment of formal associations since the legislation of the Law of Association in 1980 has encouraged other Palestinian activists in Israel to establish formal organisations as a means for mobilisation and service provision. The modus operandi of Islamic and secular PNGOs in Israel is similar as far as their adoption of management formalities dictated by the Law of Associations is concerned. Their political worldview, however, is different. Islamic organisations avowedly view the ideal regime as one based on shari’a (Islamic Law) with its exclusionary aspects, including inferior rights to women and non-Muslims, whereas their secular counterparts act to further civil rights and equality. The Islamic movement in Israel, as anthropologist Dan Rabinowitz argues, has adopted the modern methods of NGOs without engaging in the civil discourse that underlies their emergence.340 It can be argued, then, that Islamic associations, affiliated to the Islamic movement, represent continuity with the movement’s goals and practices. The movement mobilised a religious duty for donation (zakat) to fund its activities, whether organised through formal registered associations or through more popular committees, often operating next to the local mosque and in affiliation with it, as Muslims have done everywhere for hundreds of years. This reliable source of funding has enabled the movement to form effective organisations from its early days. For example, in Umm al-Fahem (one of the two largest Arab cities in Israel), the movement had already formed a committee for conciliation in domestic conflicts by 1978. The success of this committee soon brought to the establishment of other committees dealing with varied social and cultural issues, from organising Islamic weddings to educational classes and an Islamic football league.341Islamic associations act under the umbrella of the Union of Islamic Associations, an organisation of the Islamic movement. As Rabinowitz notes, this affiliation contrasts with the Tocquevillean vision of civil society as composed of independent organisations with unique voices. If De-Tocqueville’s view is adopted, Islamic associations weaken this aspect of civil society.342 Despite this limitation, the orchestrated operation of Islamic associations, in addition
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to their access to grassroots funding, has allowed them to run development projects unrivalled by secular PNGOs in Israel. Going back to the example of Umm al-Fahem, the Islamic movement formed the first clinic in this town to operate 24 hours a day and a culture hall encompassing 2000 square metres including a library, sports hall, prayer rooms and lecture theatres.343 As argued by Charles Elliot, development projects are a key component of civil society, because they improve the capacity of a community to provide for its own basic needs.344 In conclusion, most Islamic associations in Israel are affiliated to the Islamic movement and can be seen as part and parcel of the movement’s mechanism and vision. This, as well as their religious worldview of politics, sets them apart from the mostly independent secular PNGOs in Israel. As discussed in the next chapters, the state views the Islamic movement as a threatening organisation and watches its associations closely. In fact, at the time of writing, the head of the Southern wing of the Islamic movement, Sheikh Raed Salah, and the mayor of Umm alFahem, Dr Suleiman Aghbariya, are awaiting trial on security accusations. In this case, however, the state is trying Salah and Aghbariya in a civil court, where in the past it would have resorted to mandatory detention of activists and closed Islamic associations based on the Emergency Regulations. Above and beyond the limitations of Islamic associations themselves, these measures indicate the fragile legal position of Palestinian associations in Israel. They also serve as a warning signpost for non-Islamic associations. Hence, although this book focuses on the work of secular PNGOs in Israel, the following chapters discuss some of the clashes between state authorities and Islamic associations. Comparison with Palestinian NGOs in the West Bank and Gaza Strip The 1948 war found the Palestinian society in organisational disarray, following years of life under the British mandate, internal difficulties and the conflict with the yishuv. As noted above, the Palestinian community suffered from weak associational life, characterised mainly by charity and relief associations rather than political or development based ones. This was the case for the community that stayed as a national minority in newly established Israel as well as the communities in the West Bank under Jordanian rule and in the Gaza Strip under Egyptian rule. In the passing decades, organisational patterns of Palestinian communities have changed dramatically, both inside Israel – as described above – and in the territories that came under Israeli occupation in 1967. Modern Palestinian NGOs across both sides of the Green Line therefore do not
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represent a continuous line of their shared organisational roots. Rather, they have been shaped by and responded to the different political and social circumstances in which they developed. Discussing the differences between the development of Palestinian civil societies in Israel and in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, sociologist Salim Tamari has identified three main distinctions. First, he points to the different degree of colonial domination imposed by Israel. Since the abolition of the military government in 1996, Israel has imposed its rule on the Palestinian citizens of Israel mainly by political control. Coercion is only secondary to the mechanism of control. This, as Tamari has argued, is strikingly different from the extensive use of coercion in the Occupied Territories. Second, Tamari draws attention to the differences between the social compositions of the two communities. While Palestinians in Israel lost their agricultural land and traditional leadership, Palestinians in the West Bank maintained their rural and urban hierarchies, albeit in a modified way, and continued to live on agriculture. Third, the West Bank and Gaza are the arenas over which Palestinian sovereignty is being contested. This naturally affects the political mobilisation of their residents, setting it apart from the struggle of Palestinians living within the generally uncontested pre-1967 borders.345 In the absence of state institutions, NGOs in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip have gained social, economic and political importance. In a 1996 survey, the World Bank estimated that some 1,200 NGOs were active in these territories. They provided about 60% of the health care services, and ran all the disability and pre-school programmes, most agricultural services, low cost housing and micro-enterprise credit schemes.346 Most Palestinian NGOs active today (76% of the overall) were established after the Israeli occupation of 1967.347 Following the occupation, the focus shifted from charity to civic activity and resistance to the occupation. In the early 1970s, popular organisations were established, including women’s groups, and student and labour unions. Those were predominantly independent at first, but soon became affiliated to parties such as the Communist Party and factions of the PLO. The 1978 Camp David peace agreement between Israel and Egypt encouraged Palestinians to establish more associations, following the realisation that effective resistance to the occupation can only be based on self-reliance, and not on the expectation for help from the Arab states. Increased availability of European and Arab funding has contributed to the proliferation of NGOs, leading to the founding in the 1980s of more developmental organisations, such as agriculture and health committees.348
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Despite the harsh attitude of the military government towards community organisations, especially since the rise to power of the Likud in 1977, human rights activist Joost Hiltermann argues that the military government found it difficult to crack down on formal NGOs, for three reasons. First, until 1994 – when responsibility to NGOs shifted to the PNA – organisations should have applied for license by the military government. Those NGOs that applied declared their intention to work openly and legally, even if failed to receive such license. Second, criticism in Israel over the mechanism of the occupation made it harder for the military government to stop legally operating organisations. Third, because of Israel’s democratic posture, lobby in Europe and America, among supporters of Israel, proved effective in containing its use of coercion.349 The period of the Intifada (1987-1993) saw the greatest increase in the number of NGOs established in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. 30% of all NGOs active today were established during these years.350 This is hardly surprising, of course, in the face of the crisis met by Palestinians during this time. Thus, for example, an alternative educational system followed closure of schools and universities – until the Israeli authorities stopped many of these activities and arrested activists.351 Political scientist Rema Hammami has argued that the Intifada had first strengthened the popular and mass nature of NGOs. The experience and resources of NGOs, she argues, provided the basis for the popular committees co-ordinating activities in the first two years of the uprising. By 1991, however, most of these popular initiatives had transformed into professionally based, foreign-funded and development-oriented organisations. This transformation resulted from a combination of causes, including the militarisation of the intifada, which excluded popular non-violent organisations; external funding by donors who pressured Palestinian NGOs to institutionalise and meet developmental rather than political goals; and the demise of the political left following the collapse of state Communism in the Soviet block since 1989. This institutionalisation of Palestinian NGOs during the 1990s distinguished them from both the grassroots and the political parties to which many were previously affiliated, according to Hammami. This process, on the one hand, created ‘natural havens for disaffected party cadre’ as Israel did not specifically target them during the last years of the intifada, and donor funding allowed autonomy from party domination. On the other hand, it led to the alienation of NGOs from the grassroots and brought about much criticism of the life style NGO activists have come to enjoy.352 The establishment of the Palestinian National
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Authority (PNA) in 1993 imposed on Palestinian NGOs yet another adjustment to a new and dramatically different political context. Anticipating for conflict with the PNA over autonomy and donor funding, 70 NGOs in the West Bank and Gaza established an NGO coalition, the PNGO network, in the immediate aftermath of Oslo. The coalition gained a major achievement when it led a successful campaign against a restrictive NGO law drafted by the PNA. The law that the Palestinian Legislative Council finally legislated in 1996 was based on the PNGO draft. It is considered the most liberal NGO law in the Arab world, guaranteeing the rights and freedom of NGOs. Despite this and other achievements since Oslo, Palestinian NGOs’ worries about conflict and competition with the PNA have largely materialised. According to Hammami, the PNA could not ignore NGOs because of the involvement of international organisations (in 1995, the World Bank created a $15 million Palestinian NGO trust fund, in which the PNGO network got a consultant position), the high profile of human rights organisations and the legal strategies of NGOs. It therefore attempted to co-opt and coerce NGOs. Co-optation attempts included the establishment in 1996 of a government-controlled Higher Council of NGOs in Gaza and later that year in the West Bank. Coercion included interference in the 1997 elections for the PNGO network, warning interrogation of NGO activists, and arrests which sometimes involved torture of prominent human rights figures like Iyad Sarraj and Raji Summani.353 The outbreak of the second, al-Aqsa Intifada, brought about a direct clash between the Israeli authorities, that once again occupied most of the West Bank and Gaza, and PNGOs. During ‘Operation Defensive Shield’ (April 2002) and in its aftermath, the Israeli army raided several NGO offices, including the offices of Al-Haq, a human rights organisation based in Ramallah. Al-Haq is the West Bank affiliate of The International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) – Geneva, and has a special consultative status with the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations. It was established in 1979 with the goal of protecting and promoting human rights and respect for the rule of law in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. In another case, Israeli forces broke into Al-Amal Centre for the Handicapped Care and Rehabilitation in 26 August 2002. The raid was justified as a search for armed men. Human rights activists were also detained during this Intifada. An employee of al-Haq, Yasir alDidi, was placed in administrative detention, allegedly because of his involvement in human rights work. And so was a researcher of Defence for Children International, Dawoud Darawi.354 The tension between the
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Israeli authorities and international organisations supporting the Palestinian cause is also immense. In 29 April 2003, two British suicide bombers murdered three Israelis and injured dozens more in the coffee shop Mike’s Place in Tel Aviv. The murderers entered Israel as members of the International Solidarity Movement, an international peace organisation.355 This incident intensified restrictions on international peace activists. Israel restricts their movements, and has arrested and detained activists. Most tragically, an American activist, Rachel Currie, was killed while protesting the demolition of a house in the West Bank in 16 March 2003, and a British activist, Tom Hundell, is clinically dead after being shot while trying to protect children in Rafah.356 Palestinian NGOs in the West Bank and Gaza Strip have therefore developed direct responses to the Israeli occupation. Their services filled much of the void of state institutions until the Oslo agreement was enforced. Since 1994, the Palestinian National Authority is their legal point of reference, and resistance to the occupation continues to be an important motive for action. All of these conditions are different from the situation of PNGOs in Israel. PNGOs in Israel act in conditions of statutory democracy rather than occupation, in a state in which Palestinians constitute a minority rather than a majority. The emergence of the two NGO sectors has therefore been separate and geared towards different aims. Nevertheless, the two have influenced each other, cooperated and shared some of their funding sources. These are discussed in the following chapters. Notably, the two sectors emerged as part of the global ‘associational revolution’ that facilitated funding resources and responsiveness to their work in international forums. Co-operation between NGOs from across the Green Line has been on the whole quite limited. Yet it influenced the development of secular PNGOs in Israel in terms of discourse, timing and methods of activity. Thus, for example, the empowerment of feminist PNGOs during the first Intifada was acknowledged as a source of influence by activists in several feminist PNGOs in Israel established at the same period. As far as religious organisations are concerned, there exists a similarity between the percentage of Islamic associations out of the overall Palestinian voluntary sector in both Israel and the Occupied Territories. While in Israel Islamic associations constitute some 25% of the overall number of Palestinian organisations, the rate of Islamic associations among West Bank and Gaza Strip organisations is estimated to be anywhere between 10 and 40%. However in some sectors, such as education, their rate is much higher (estimated to be 65% in Gaza). Islamic organisations in the Occupied Territories mix military and
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welfare networks. During the first and second Intifada, organisations like Hamas and Islamic Jihad focused on military resistance to the occupation. During the Oslo period (1994-2000), however, they felt that their military and political strategies had been defeated and concentrated their efforts on welfare activities, both as a tactic to avoid the suppression of the PNA and Israel and as a strategy, to prepare the ground for an Islamic state in the next generations. In this period, their activities were more like the work of Islamic organisations in Israel, focusing on helping the poor and the peripheral segments of the society. Like their counterparts across the Green Line, welfare Islamic PNGOs act legally and register with the PNA to avoid a clash.357 Conclusion Palestinians in Israel started their struggle for civil rights, or ‘full citizenship’, immediately following the establishment of the state. This campaign did not seek any alternative framework for the community other than citizenship in Israel. Therefore, its main focus lay in negotiations with state institutions over civil rights. This Palestinian campaign legitimised the sovereignty of the new state in spite of its exclusionary ideology, but also made use of democratic channels in order to demand a change in the system. The growing centrality of formal PNGOs in Israel both resulted from these characteristics of the struggle, and contributed to their continuity. Modern PNGOs in Israel, however, do not merely represent continuity with the past. Rather, they are a new phenomenon, mirroring similar trends elsewhere in the developing world. Similarly to other countries, the 1980s witnessed a proliferation of NGOs among the Palestinian minority, and a shift from organisations that were either informal or initiated by political parties, to formal and explicitly apolitical NGOs. The proliferation of PNGOs in Israel during this period represented to a large extent a response to a combination of developments in the relationship of the state and the minority. On the one hand, new opportunities opened up, including increased competition in the political system that gave more weight to Palestinian voters, rising levels of education and standards of living and availability of external funds. On the other hand, the proliferation of NGOs owed much to the growing gaps in the level of state services offered to Jews and Palestinians in Israel, the withdrawal of the state from providing key services in a universal way as a result of privatisation processes, and the constraints to which other forms of political mobility were given. Thus, for example,
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the influence of the Palestinian minority on parliamentary decisionmaking remained marginal. Secular PNGOs in Israel predominantly act individually, focusing on politics of allocation and struggle for rights within the existing social order. Although many PNGOs in Israel declare their will to become a social movement, thus fundamentally challenging the system, this transformation has faced to date major obstacles. The ethnic characteristic of Israel, although accompanied by a formal commitment to democracy, is probably the greatest of these obstacles, blocking the influence of PNGOs in Israel on public opinion and political institutions. As a result of these obstacles, the campaign of the Palestinian minority for equal citizenship was increasingly channelled through individual NGOs rather than ideological and comprehensive social movements. Most symbolically, the transformation from popular, representative organisations to issue-specific NGOs manifested itself in the NCALC’s choice to establish subsidiary NGOs to campaign on specific issues when its influence as a representative forum waned in the 1980s. The example of the NCALC, however, also demonstrates the fact that NGOs, with their accommodationist means, remain only one option to carry out the minority’s struggle for civil rights. Although it has suffered from internal deficiencies and although it has not been recognised by the state as representative of the Palestinian minority, the NCALC continues to be active in organising national demonstrations and strikes, attended by large number of participants. This transformation from popular institutions to NGOs also manifests itself in the fact that proliferation of PNGOs in Israel came at the same time as the weakening of the Communist Party, which for three decades was the single most important representative of the equality cause in Israel. In this case too, the establishment of NGOs neither aimed to fill, nor succeeded in filling, the vacuum created by the party’s shrinking role. In fact, it was the Islamic movement that mostly filled this void. However, the pool of activists in PNGOs in Israel has been drawn from similar social strata as the leadership of the CPI – the urban intelligentsia. Moreover, NGOs have dealt with much the same issues that concerned the CPI in previous decades, such as education and Jewish-Arab relations. In contrast to the CPI, which based its legitimacy on its constituency, NGOs’ legitimacy is based on their registration with the state and the funding they receive from donors. NGOs, then, have also embodied a transformation from community support to upward accountability. Similarly to NGOs in other part of the developing world, PNGOs in Israel are dependent on external funding.
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Notably, much of this funding comes from Palestinian or Jewish resources abroad. Despite these unique resources, PNGOs in Israel share with NGOs elsewhere the opportunities associated with funding – most importantly, a degree of independence from state resources. They also share, however, the resulting constraints of funding, including state control through registration and the channelling of accountability away from the grassroots. From its early stages, the Palestinian struggle for civil rights met mixed responses from the Jewish public and decisionmakers, ranging from partnership at the marginal left to outright rejection and mistrust in the Zionist centre. State authorities have demonstrated inconsistency. While channelling some of its projects through PNGOs in Israel, the state on the whole discriminates against PNGOs in budgets and uses much more coercion against them than against their Jewish counterparts. This is not surprising in light of the paradoxical nature of Israeli politics, which is based on both ethnic and democratic principles at the same time. Hence, while some laws and policies have facilitated the Palestinian struggle for civil rights, others have prohibited the campaign and imposed punishments on its activists. In this atmosphere of uncertainty and discrimination, registered NGOs have provided a comparatively ‘safe’ channel for Palestinian activism in Israel. As discussed in the following chapters, however, activists and critics have debated the ‘price tag’ that has been attached to this safety in terms of the possibility of challenging Jewish hegemony and discriminatory policies in Israel.
Chapter Three
NATIONAL PNGOs IN ISRAEL
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his chapter analyses some major aspects of the relationship between national PNGOs in Israel and the state. National organisations are defined here as those which act nation-wide and seek to meet the needs of large sectors of the Palestinian minority beyond the boundaries of local communities. In addition, these organisations often have an agenda that is national in its representation of collective interests of the Palestinian minority. The chapter grades the demands of national PNGOs from the state along the continuum identified in the introduction, which grades the different approaches in terms of how fundamental the changes are that they promote. At one end of the continuum, the chapter locates organisations that limit their challenge to specific interests. At the other end it locates those that demand a regime change. The continuum helps to demonstrate the dynamic nature of NGOs’ campaigns, since the demands they represent change over time and in response to the needs of their community, state reaction to their activities and changing political circumstances. The means used by Palestinian organisations correspond to their position on the reform continuum. The first generation of organisations to explicitly articulate demands for change in the status quo of state-minority relations were The National Committee of Heads of Arab Localities (NCALC) and The High Follow-Up Committee. Both embody a demand for some institutional autonomy for Palestinians in Israel. The representative role they assume has led them to act as informal and non-registered organisations. The NCALC and the High Follow-Up Committee have been continuously active since the 1970s. However, they had little success in changing state policies, largely due to the state’s refusal to accept them as representatives of the Palestinian society in Israel. This relative failure is one of the causes leading the next generation of organisations, established during the 1980s and 1990s, to adopt more limited demands for reform and more formal means of activity. As argued in the previous chapter, these organisations tend to be formal and registered with the state. They focus on campaigns for specific issues, often conducted in state institutions such as the Knesset and the courts. In contrast to the NCALC and the High FollowUp Committee, then, these organisations attempt to promote a reform
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from within the system, often accompanied by the provision of missing services. The chapter examines one of the most prominent organisations embodying the inclusion agenda – The Galilee Society (GS): The Arab National Society for Health Research and Services. The GS was one of the first PNGOs to register following the enactment of the Law of Associations. It has run major health operations first in the Galilee region and later throughout Israel. In addition, the GS has assumed an important role in the institutionalisation of PNGOs during the 1990s, when it initiated the establishment of three other nation-wide PNGOs. The GS illustrates the strengths of activity for inclusion and ‘reform from within’. It boasts the achievement of tangible benefits for the community as well as the creation of new opportunities for activism. However, the GS also demonstrates the weaknesses of the ideology of inclusion, especially due to its implication of leading to a focus on technical – rather than political – projects. Activists in second-generation PNGOs indeed debate the goal of inclusion and the methods of activity associated with it. The chapter discusses this debate mainly in the context of Adalah: The Centre for Arab Minority Rights in Israel. As a legal organisation, Adalah works through Israeli institutions and demands inclusion and equality within the system. Activists as well as Israeli officials consider Adalah’s activity in the Israeli courts to validate the system. Hence, as Adalah’s public profile became more prominent, its own activists and others have openly conducted a debate on its ideology and methods. The debate is not unique to Adalah. The chapter reviews two further organisations that are positioned at two different ends of the reform continuum. At one end, the lobby organisation Mossawa focuses on activities within the Knesset, an activity that epitomises an attempt to work within the system. At the other end, the Arab Association for Human Rights aims to develop an alternative approach by challenging the Israeli system in the international field.The final part of the chapter deals with the impact of the feminist discourse on the national agendas of PNGOs in Israel. Feminist activists in PNGOs have challenged the dichotomies underlying much of the work of nation-wide PNGOs. First and foremost, they have challenged the dichotomy of the Palestinian minority versus Jewish majority. Rather, they have claimed that oppression cuts across national lines. Feminists have exposed shared interests to oppressive forces in the Palestinian society and some Israeli authorities. Hence, feminist activists in national PNGOs reinforced the demand for reform, not only as an external demand directed towards the state but also as a demand for social change in the Palestinian community itself. The discussion of the feminist discourse in nation-
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wide PNGOs revolves around feminist activism within Adalah as well as the cases of the feminist PNGOs al-Fanar and Kian, and the activists’ coalitions, Working Group on the Status of Palestinian Women in Israel. In addition to exploring the range of organisations’ agendas, the cases discussed in this chapter serve to examine the attitudes and responses of the state to their demands. From this point of view, the chapter argues that the state did not develop an even-handed attitude toward national PNGOs, similarly to the evolving approach toward NGOs in the Jewish sector.358 Rather, the cases in this chapter suggest that responses of the state to activities of national PNGOs in Israel were predominantly characterised by an attitude of ‘active exclusion’, an attitude that is characterised in the exclusion of the state’s challengers from the centres of power.359 Extra-Parliamentary Representation The first major national PNGO to rise to prominence following the 1976 Land Day events in Israel was the National Committee of Heads of Arab Localities (NCALC). This organisation, later constituting the main party in The High Follow-Up Committee for the Arab Masses in Israel, has remained the sole representative non-partisan organisation of the Palestinian minority in Israel. As such, the High Follow-Up Committee/NCALC set much of the agenda for the extra-parliamentary campaign of the Palestinian minority in Israel. The NCALC and the High Follow-Up Committee have primarily drawn their legitimacy from the elected public figures who compose their membership, as well as from popular support of and consent to their leadership, evident especially during protest campaigns and strike days. Their dominance relies on their ability to mobilise the street, their success in setting up a national calendar (the obvious example of which is the turning of the 30th of March into an annual commemoration of Land Day), and above all, the establishment of a unified institution for the leadership of Palestinians within Israel.360 Although their unity was often fragile, it nevertheless served to mark the common interests of the minority as a whole. The agenda of the NCALC and the High Follow-Up Committee has set the frame for the civil struggle Palestinians in Israel have conducted to elevate their collective status in society. This agenda, which crystallised mainly during the 1987-1993 Intifada and its aftermath, emphasises the civil status of the Palestinian minority within Israel and challenges the marginalisation of Palestinians in Israeli society. The High Follow-Up Committee and the NCALC were not the only Palestinian organisations active in the Israeli public sphere during the
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1970s and early 1980s. Local organisations, student committees at the universities, and a few nation-wide organisations such as the National Committee for Defence of Arab lands, were also influential. However, it was the national activity of the High Follow-Up Committee and the NCALC that bestowed on the extra-parliamentary protest clear methods and aims. Their contribution also lies in co-ordinating the participation of Palestinians throughout Israel in protest events. Yet the achievements of the High Follow-Up Committee and the NCALC were limited. Both focused on ad hoc, defensive responses to events beyond their control rather than formulating clear strategic goals, and both failed to sustain their campaigns over long periods of time. These organisations fell short of achieving a consistent impact on governmental policies in favour of the Palestinian minority; their achievements were incidental; and their campaigns short-lived. Moreover, both the Follow-Up Committee and the NCALC suffered from internal and organisational weaknesses. These included the lack of a rotating leadership (a problem that became acute with the changing composition of Arab heads of localities in Israel during the 1980s361), budget difficulties, and the failure to conduct internal elections, regular meeting dates, or a coherent constitution and strategy.362 As the previous chapter notes, state attitude towards the NCALC and the High Follow-Up Committee has been one of a de facto recognition. While reluctant to recognise them officially, negotiations over the years attested to state acknowledgment of their representative role, as Lustick points out.363 Despite its reluctant nature, state recognition has strengthened the position of these organisations as representatives of the Palestinian minority. Certain achievements, such as the increase in governmental budgetary allocations to Arab localities in 1991, further enhanced their position. The reluctance of the Israeli government to officially approve a representative body for the Palestinian minority, however, had a significant effect on their activities, constraining their practical bargaining power and restricting their ability to achieve tangible gains for their community. Significantly, the state was consistent in its reluctance to allow the formal establishment of a representative Palestinian forum in Israel. As noted in the previous chapter, in 1980 state authorities issued a warrant against a conference aiming to elect a ‘parliament’ of the Palestinian minority in Israel. Together with the refusal to recognise the High Follow-Up Committee, this represents an ongoing policy of objection to the existence of an autonomous Palestinian representative forum within Israel.
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The mixed fortunes of the High Follow-Up Committee and the NCALC have contributed to the fact that their role has so far remained mainly one of influencing Palestinian and Jewish public opinion and setting up guidelines for an extra-parliamentary campaign, leaving space for other groups and associations to translate this agenda into more concrete achievements. These organisations tended to be more institutionalised and to have a more professional administration than the NCALC and the High Follow-Up Committee. Unlike the NCALC and the High Follow-Up Committee, they are registered with the state, and often focus on a single issue or a group of issues over a prolonged period of time. In fact, the Follow-Up Committee itself established four subsidiary NGOs to meet the challenge of a professional and planned work. These NGOs, established and registered with the state in the early 1980s, deal with issues of education, health, welfare and sport. Not being popularly elected or possessing a strong local political base, the new generation of organisations lacked such autonomous sources of legitimacy as enjoyed by the High Follow Up Committee and the NCALC. Consequently, they can only be judged by the quality of services they provide, and – when lobbying is involved – by the responsiveness of the relevant state agencies to their demands. Institutionalisation of Palestinian civil society The Galilee Society: The Arab National Society for Health Research and Services The Galilee Society: The Arab National Society for Health Research and Services (GS) is one of the first and most successful examples of institutionalised national PNGOs in Israel. There are many indications of this success, including its sustained activity since the early 1980s; an impressive list of projects benefiting the health situation of Palestinians in Israel; the securing of funds and international support from a host of respectable organisations including the UN; and the involvement of the government in some of the society’s projects. Nevertheless, as an explicit example of an NGO acting at the level of ‘politics of interests’, the GS also demonstrates the limitations of this strategy in achieving a sustainable change of policies. This shortcoming, it is argued, stems first and foremost from the non-political and even anti-political nature of the society’s work. The GS was established in 1981, aiming to close the gap between the health situation of Palestinians and Jews in Israel. In the years that have passed since its establishment, the GS has become one of the most
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institutionalised PNGOs in Israel. Regularly supported by a variety of funds, it managed to own a building that has become a centre to several NGOs and NGO activities and expanded the scope of its services. Consequently, it grew to play a major role in the Palestinian community in Israel. The GS also succeeded in involving the Ministry of Health in new projects, on behalf of the Palestinian community. Yet, the GS does not only constitute an example of success. Firstly, its relationship with state institutions was complex. The society has faced coercion and oppression as much as co-operation. Secondly, funding and the influence the society has acquired led to internal conflicts among the leadership and to allegations, finding their way into the Arab press in Israel, of corruption and mismanagement. The GS therefore provides an intriguing case study for the examination of the institutionalisation process of PNGOs in Israel, and the contradictory role played by interest organisations in the Palestinian struggle for civil equality in Israel. The GS was established by a group of Palestinian doctors who worked for the Ministry of Health in the Galilee region, and a Scottish doctor who was working for a Nazareth hospital. Dr. Hatem Kan’aneh, a public health specialist, led the group of founders and functioned as the GS’s chairman since its establishment and until 1995. Kan’aneh attributes much importance to the contribution of the Scottish volunteer, arguing that her previous experience with NGOs, acquired while working with the hospital, motivated the group of Palestinian doctors to lead the change they wished for through a registered, institutionalised organisation. Prior to the establishment of the GS, Kan’aneh worked as the public health administrator of the Galilee region in the Ministry of Health, but felt that the ministry failed to transform the poor situation of public health of the Palestinian population in the Galilee. Since its establishment, the GS has indeed protested against the poor quality of sick fund facilities and medical equipment in the Arab localities in Israel, the lack of emergency care access, the low doctor-patient ratio, and the lack of appropriate frameworks for children with special needs. Under the 1995 National Health Insurance Law, every Israeli citizen is guaranteed basic primary medical care. However, these disparities attest to the unequal implementation of this law. (For some comparative data on the health situation of Palestinians and Jews in Israel, see Appendix 2.)364 The bureaucratic burdens imposed on the installation of modern sewage systems in Arab villages in the Galilee was the main reason convincing Kan’aneh that an independent action was urgently needed to counter the exclusion of Arabs from developmental plans in the region.
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By contrast to the situation in all the Jewish settlements in the Galilee, virtually no Arab settlement was provided with sewage systems. (The numbers nation-wide are striking: in 1976, a sewage system was installed in only one of 104 Arab villages.365) According to Kan’aneh, during his post as the regional public health administrator, he found out that this disparity stemmed from two major reasons. First, in order to construct a sewage system, the local authority must submit a building plan to the regional building authorities. The cost of such a plan may reach up to US$ 70,000, an expense that most Arab municipalities could not sustain.366 Secondly, it was not the government, but different Jewish organisations, that paid the initial building and running costs of local sewage systems of new settlements in the Galilee region. The residents then paid back some of the money through taxes, collected over a long period of time. The reliance on these organisations, including the quasigovernmental Jewish National Fund, enabled the Israeli government to apply a non-universal development policy. Lustick points out that from 1948 through 1977, the Jewish Agency alone invested over $5 billion in the economic and social development of the Jewish sector. These revenues have come from contributions of world Jewry, German reparation payments, and donations of the Israeli government itself. These funds and funds by the Jewish National Fund (JNF) have facilitated selective development along ethnic lines. Since these funds have been operated according to ideological norms (of which development of the Jewish community in Israel is central), Jewish settlements were provided with infrastructure, while Arab sectors were bypassed.367 In the absence of equivalent PNGOs, however, Arab localities failed to deliver sewage systems to their residents. Once established, the GS indeed took upon itself the task of installing sewage systems as its first major project. The Welfare Association (Ta’awun), discussed in the previous chapter, provided funding of around US$ 300,000, sufficient for the construction of sewage systems in five Arab localities in the Galilee. In following years, the GS obtained further funding for the building of sewage systems for 25 more Arab villages, nation-wide. Despite the significance of this project, Kan’aneh points out that it had an unexpectedly negative impact on the struggle of Palestinians for equal services. As a result of the immense costs of building a sewage system, the GS was able to provide this service for a small – however impressive – portion of the villages that needed it. Moreover, there were technical faults and high expenses resulting from the complexity of the infrastructure involved. Consequently, those who did not receive the service and those who were unhappy about any
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aspect of the new infrastructure directed the complaints against the GS, not the government. 368 In other words, only a small portion of the population benefited from the expensive project whereas the Israeli government benefited from reduced pressures. Those who received the service from the GS had one less reason to complain; those who did not, had the GS as an additional address for complaints. Most significantly, although it identified the method used by the government to avoid providing services universally (namely, the use of Jewish organisations as sub-contractors), the GS refrained from a political struggle to challenge it. This case seems to support James Ferguson’s argument, discussed in Chapter One, regarding the antipolitical mechanism embodied in NGOs’ work. As Ferguson has argued, the tendency of NGOs to come up with technical solutions to problems that are essentially political weakens the struggle against the roots of those problems.369 The geographical scope of GS’s activities has expanded throughout the 1980s and 1990s,370 and with it increased the variety of its activities. This increase led to the receipt of more funding, which in turn led to further expansion in the societies’ activities. By 1992, the society was accredited an NGO status by the UN. In 1996, the long list of donors included the Interchurch Organisation for Development Co-Operation (ICCO), Christian Aid, the European Union, EZE, the Bernard Foundation, Bilance, Dunchurch Aid, Diakonia, the New Israel Fund, and the Abraham Fund.371 The society’s official aims have broadened from dealing with health issues in their narrow sense to include the achievement of ‘equitable health, environmental, and socio-economic conditions, and to increase development opportunities for Palestinian Arabs within Israel, as individual citizens and as a national minority’.372 As part of this strategy, the GS has expanded its databank department, aiming to increase public access to previously unavailable data on the health situation of the Palestinian minority.373 In 1995, it founded the Regional Research and Development Centre (R&D Centre) as the scientific arm of the association. Its scientists conduct independent applied research in a wide range of fields including toxicology, biochemistry, environmental sciences and engineering, plant pathology and agriculture, microbiology, bioremediation, food technology, biotechnology, molecular and tumour biology, gene regulation, physiology and pharmacology, and information system. The Galilee Society is one of eleven R&D Centres in Israel that have achieved official recognition by the Ministry of Science and are eligible for Ministry support to cover part of the operating costs. Regional R&D Centres were established to achieve economic benefits to outlying regions in
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Israel by employing scientists and engineers residing permanently in each region. The GS’ Centre is the first R&D Centre in the Arab community in Israel.374 According to Basel Ghattas, the chairman of the society since 1995, the GS aims to function mainly as a professional consulting institution, achieving its goals through mediators in the community. Since its establishment, the GS worked in co-operation with Arab local councils along the lines that were set in the sewage systems project. According to Ghattas: ‘We prefer our local partners, for instance – a group of people who suffered from a factory work near home to determine the type of struggle they want, whether it is confrontational like demonstration or, alternatively, it focuses on raising funds for community work and education’.375 The mediating role of the society has broadened to include capacity building as well since the mid 1990s. This shift may be attributed to the new emphasis given to capacity building by two of the GS’ main donors: ICCO and Christian Aid since 1995, 376 as well as to local initiatives within the GS and among community activists elsewhere. As a result of this strategy, the GS established sister organisations, in view of their rise into independent activism. Two of these organisations successfully gained independent sources of funding: Adalah, the Legal Centre for Arab Minority Rights in Israel (established in co-operation with the Nazareth-based Arab Human Rights Association), and Ittijah, an umbrella organisation of PNGOs in Israel. Ittijah was established jointly with Shatil, the capacity-building armour of the New Israel Fund. It is the only apex association of PNGOs, alongside the exclusive-membership umbrella organisation of the Islamic movement’s associations. Ittijah represents only 44 PNGOs,377 hence enjoying only limited influence as a representative body. A third organisation, the Committee for Strategic Planning – set to draw professional building plans for Arab settlements in Israel – has so far failed to become independent and is still funded by the GS. In the heyday of its growth, however, the GS was shaken by internal conflict that was driven by ideological and personal reasons, and enhanced by financial crisis and allegations of mismanagement. Ideologically, the society was split over the issue of project expansion. According to Kan’aneh, one of the GS’ biggest donors objected to the expansion of the GS to the international arena, a position that was supported by a group of younger activists.378 In April 1993, a report of an internal comptroller committee leaked to the Arab press, accusing Kan’aneh of being paid ‘outrageous salaries’ (10,317.28 shekels a month; about £1300) and accompanying benefits, travelling privately abroad at
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the expense of the society’s budget, and taking credit for studies he did not conduct.379 In January 1993, al-Sinara published some of the allegations without naming the society or Dr. Kan’aneh. The allegations served as the basis for the leading editorial criticising salaries in NGOs, quoted in the previous chapter.380 The GS’s board of directors did not respond immediately to these allegations; rather, they decided to back Kan’aneh up. In 1995, however, the internal conflict reached its peak, the society faced a financial crisis, and Kan’aneh was forced to resign. The crisis revolved over the construction of the new building. A few years into the construction, in March 1995, the Society’s board found out that funding was mismanaged and that the organisation did not hold sufficient resources to complete the operation. The construction of the wide, new marble building across the main road of Shafa ’Amr had to be stopped. In an attempt to cover debts that came to about half a million US dollars and complete the building in spite of the crisis, the society asked its donors (ICCO was the biggest of the society’s donors at the time) for urgent extra funding. Consequently, donors demanded that the GS nominate an internal committee of investigation, as well as an independent accountant to investigate the society’s accounts for the previous five years. Investigators did not find Kan’aneh to have embezzled. However, they pointed at mismanagement that resulted from unregulated working methods. Following the investigation, Kana’aneh’s contract with the society was not extended beyond July 1995.381 Kan’aneh, on his part, calls the allegations an internal ‘rebellion’ and says that whereas the construction of the building was indeed accompanied by financial difficulties, the end result justified his efforts to bring the construction to a conclusion. ‘It is the existence of the building that enforced the position of the GS as the key NGO of the Palestinian community in Israel’.382 The ideological conflict was not completely resolved with the leaving of Kan’aneh. The implications of this conflict go beyond the GS to shed light on the role played by donors’ agenda in the activities of PNGOs. Samar Zeidan, a woman activist, graduate of the health administration Masters program in the University of Huston who joined the GS in its early days and acted as the GS’s de facto manager for a short period in 1995 after the resignation of Kan'aneh, left the organisation soon after, arguably because she felt that priorities were continued to be dictated by donors and were unsuitable for the local community. The involvement in women’s issues seems to her to be one of the main indicators of this tendency. Zeidan points out that the involvement of the GS on women’s projects resulted from a new emphasis of ICCO, the GS’ main donor, on the subject.383 ‘At first, I
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though our new emphasis was a positive development’, she says, ‘but later I came to appreciate two problems. First, it distracted the Galilee Society from its main aims, which are related to direct health focus. Secondly, we were taking somebody else’s place. And this was politically wrong’.384 Ghattas rejects this criticism, and argues that the development of the GS to fields that exceeded the narrow definition of health matters, including women’s issues, were essential in light of the leading position the GS acquired and has aimed to bolster within the community.385The GS assesses that the financial crisis was more successfully overcome. ‘The GS has evolved into a more mature organisation that is more willing to admit mistakes and failures, learn from them, and move forward’, argues the society’s own publication. According to this publication, the society overcame the crisis as it ‘institutionalised its functions by establishing clear lines of decision-making; decentralising the authority of the General Director; developing a mechanism of checks and balances; engaging in participatory planning, monitoring, and evaluation of process; formulating and working in accordance with annual plans’.386 The GS remained a functioning NGO and even grew in size following these difficult financial and credibility crises. It seems that the forced resignation of the director regained the trust of donors and the public for the society. In a conference on the activities of PNGOs in Israel held in Nazareth in 1996, for example, the Galilee Society was mentioned as the most prominent of these NGOs.387 Although investigation and reorganisation were held under donors’ demands, there can be little doubt that the public pressure exercised through the articles in the Arabic press constituted a major trigger for undertaking these steps when board members revealed the real scope of the crisis in the society two years after the first publication. In retrospect, the unfortunate crises of the Galilee Society brought about a mature and critical attitude of the Arabic press towards PNGOs in Israel, emphasizing the commitment of these NGOs to the public. It also brought about the reorganisation and enhanced professionalism of the Galilee Society. Yet, these crises also exposed the weakness of internal and external control mechanisms operated on the financial management of PNGOs in Israel. According to Ghattas, the damage made to the society’s public image is a negative consequence the GS will have to cope with for years to come.388 Co-Operation versus Conflict with the State The GS’s relationship with the state has posed additional challenges to its management over the years. These challenges evolved both from the need to settle conflicting aims in the society’s work vis-à-vis the state,
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and the need to cope with incidents of the state’s oppression. Although the GS often confronts the Ministry of Health for its neglect of the Palestinian population in Israel, it also co-operates with the Ministry in several of its projects, and is dependent upon the Ministry’s funding for the persistence of those projects. This dependency naturally makes the GS more vulnerable to governmental pressures directed against its confrontational activity. Such pressures were felt by the organisation from its early days. The chair and founder Kan’aneh kept his post in the Ministry until 1992, when these pressures mounted and he was forced to choose between the two activities. Kan’aneh left the Ministry of Health after a very limited struggle, and decided to dedicate most of his time to the GS.389 In 1998, the fragile relations of the GS with the Ministry of Health were put to another test, when the GS publicly criticised the Ministry for withdrawing its funding from the operation of a mobile clinic in the Bedouin villages in the Negev – a project run by the GS and partially funded by the Ministry. In response to the criticism, the Deputy of the Regional Health Administration in the Northern Region, a department of the Ministry of Health, Nazim Ibrahim, sent a letter to all the sub-regional managers in the North on April 2, demanding, by the instructions of the Managing Director of the Ministry of Health, that ‘any alliance (hitkashrut) with the Galilee Society must be cut off. Additionally, any employees who are members in this association must immediately resign from this membership and present a copy of the resignation letters to myself, no later than April 15 1998’.390 In this case, the Ministry soon withdrew its demands following the society’s protest. In a response to the Ministry, Ghattas mentioned the co-operation between the Ministry and the GS, and the mutual interest in promoting the health situation of the Arab population in Israel. ‘It would have been reasonable to expect that the Ministry [of Health] would encourage its workers to be active and assume leadership roles within their community. A membership in the Galilee Society is considered a honourable and positive way to contribute to the community’, he wrote, ‘therefore we see with great severity Ibrahim’s letter [sic]. [Its demands] violate basic human rights and in my view are illegal, and we do not intend to accept them without a struggle. We innocently believed that such undemocratic acts are no longer in place’.391 Members of Knesset also interfered in favour of the GS, among them MK ‘Abd al-Malik Dahamshe, head of the United Arab List, who wrote to the Minister of Health, requesting to withdraw the instructions.392 On April 26 1998, the Head of the Public Health Services in the Ministry of Health, Alex Levental, announced to Ghattas that the
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instructions were not valid. ‘The Instructions of the Manager of the Administration in the Northern Region went too far, and there was no intention to do it’, he wrote in an internal memo sent to Ghattas.393 Notably, the complex relationship of the GS with state authorities is not unique. Some co-operation with government ministries characterises the work of many PNGOs in Israel attempting to gain tangible achievements for their community, even when criticising the policies of the ministries involved. This kind of complexity characterises the relations of The Committee of Guidance for Arab Students (a Haifabased PNGO) with the Ministries of Science, Education, and Communication. The Committee runs an advocacy campaign, demanding equal opportunities and rights for Palestinian and Jewish students in Israeli universities. A team, predominantly composed of lawyers, identifies regulations of the universities in Israel with discriminatory implications for Arab students. In these cases, the Committee sends letters to the university itself, to the National Council for Higher Education in Israel, to Members and committees of the Knesset. In addition, the Committee runs a media campaign through the Hebrew and Arabic media in Israel as well as the international media. In 1997, for example, the Committee successfully campaigned against a regulation of the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa – which demanded that candidates have the full results of the matriculation exams prior to their registration. This regulation mostly affected Arab candidates, who go to university immediately after school and therefore tended to miss an academic year, as the results are not available in time for them. Most Israeli Jews, in contrast, serve in the army and therefore do not require school results immediately after they finish their studies. While criticising these ministries and their agencies for discriminating against Palestinian students, the Committee co-operates with each of the ministries to operate its projects. For example, the Ministry of Education supports its main project: The Committee translated software for educational guidance that the Ministry of Education operates in Jewish schools in Israel into Arabic. With the software, it runs counselling days in 15-20 Arab schools a year in the Galilee and the Triangle. In addition, the Committee operates an ‘Academic School’ project, which offers after-school courses in subjects such as English, mathematics, art, video photography, and journalism. This project has so far been operated in the school sites of three villages, Jat, Kafr Qara, and ‘Arabeh. The local municipalities fund the project, with partial funding of the Ministry of Science and the students themselves. The funding and professional aid of the ministries is extremely limited.394 Thus, the Ministry of Education
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refrains from providing Arab schools with similar services to those offered to Jews. At the same time, the government can claim credit for the project. It also secures the dependence of the involved PNGO and contains criticism. This example, similarly to the GS project of sewage infrastructure outlined above, sheds light on the mechanism by which NGOs may hinder change in the relationship between the state and the Palestinian minority, and weaken the Palestinian campaign for civil equality. While the example of The Committee of Guidance for Arab Students reflects a subtle mechanism of co-optation and control, the state sometimes resorts to outright coercion against PNGOs. A recent and prominent example for the use of coercion against an Arab association is provided by the closure of the Islamic Relief Committee in 1996. The Committee was established in 1991 in order to provide financial relief to orphans whose father died during the Intifada. It was based in Nazareth and directed by Suleiman Aghbariya, vice mayor of Umm al-Fahem municipality, elected on behalf of the Islamic Movement in Israel. According to Aghbariya, the Islamic Relief Committee supported 10,000 orphans by 1996. It then decided to extend its support to Palestinian detainees and their families, and received finance from abroad for this purpose.395 Funds were donated to the association by, among others, Britain-located P.L.R.P and Interpal, USA-based Holyland Foundation, Germany-based Helfen Muslim, and French-based CBSP. Israeli security services argued that these overseas funds used the Islamic Relief Committee to transfer money to the Islamic organisation Hamas in the West Bank and Gaza. Most of the Committee’s beneficiaries were family members of Hamas activists, who either died during a terror attack, were arrested by Israeli security services, or were among the 413 Hamas activists deported to Lebanon in 1992.396 During a wave of Hamas terror attacks in the heart of Israel, throughout March 1996, Israeli Security Services opened an investigation of the Committee. Consequently, on 4 December 1996, the Commander of the Northern Tier in Israeli Defence Forces, Major General Amiram Levin, warranted the closure of the committee for 45 days by the authority of the Emergency Regulations (1945). By the same authority, Aghbariya was arrested for 10 days. On 12 January 1997, the decree was extended for another two years.397 This case illustrates the limited authority of the civil laws in regulating the relations between the Israeli state and Palestinian associations. The state’s use of Emergency Regulations that allow it to act against an association without a trial – although rare – implied the
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arbitrariness of the state’s approach to Palestinian civil society within its borders. The Debate Over Campaigning through State Institutions Campaigning for Palestinian minority rights in Israel through institutions of the state represents one of the major challenges for national PNGOs in Israel. Similarly to the issue of Arab representation in the Knesset, contested by Arab nationalist movements in Israel,398 participation of PNGOs in Israel in the state’s institutions such as Courts, the public media, or the universities sparks a debate among activists of these organisations over the possible implications of such participation, which may be understood as an acceptance of the exclusionary rules of these institutions. Adalah, the Legal Centre for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, is an organisation that consciously works to challenge the power relations in Israel from within, through the Israeli legal system. Its activists also direct their campaign to influence the Israeli public discourse, through high visibility in the Hebrew media, regular participation in conferences organised by Israeli universities, and by participation in human rights campaigns – including open petitions and demonstrations – led by Jewish organisations. Yet its activists debate these strategies of integration, wary of real or perceived assimilation within Israeli institutions. The internal discussion in Adalah is representative of the dilemma faced by many PNGOs in Israel, namely: to what extent does the struggle for the rights of Palestinian citizens from within Israeli institutions legitimise these very institutions and by implication, the discriminatory ideology they represent? The establishment of Adalah in 1996 by the Galilee Society and the Arab Human Rights Association followed the aim of both to enhance their capacity building role in the community. One of the initiators of the idea of establishing a legal centre to specialise on campaigning for the rights of the Palestinian minority in Israel was the lawyer Hassan Jabareen, a recipient of New Israel Fund Law Fellowship in 19941996,399 who worked for four years as a staff attorney with the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) in charge of the Haifa branch. Jabareen became the general director of Adalah. While fully funded by the Galilee Society in its first months of activity, Adalah soon managed to obtain independent funding from Western foundations and from the New Israel Fund, and became an altogether independent organisation before the end of 1997. Adalah’s central activity is the representation of Arab citizens in Israeli courts. Since its establishment,
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it has assumed a leading role in a process, occurring since the early 1990s, of increased petitioning over issues of discrimination against the Palestinian minority. Adalah’s data indicates that whereas no more than two to three such petitions were filed in Israeli courts on an average year until the 1990s, throughout the decade this number has risen to an average of two petitions a month. By the end of the decade, the number of Arab lawyers in Israel exceeded 2000, many of whom engaged in civil rights cases, independently or in co-operation with Adalah or ACRI.400 One of the main reasons for this rise lies in the 1992 legislation of ‘The Basic Law: Human Dignity and Freedom’ and the activist approach of Israeli courts over human rights issues, both thoroughly discussed in Chapter Two of this book. Salem Jubran, a lecturer in the Institute for Peace in Giv’at Haviva, and previously a senior member of the Communist Party in Israel, explains that the large number of civil rights petitions filed by Arabs indicate a tendency to take ‘full advantage of the legal opportunities the government allows to its citizens’. Jubran believes this tendency attests to increasing trust of the minority in the state’s institutions.401 Along the same lines, Jabareen argues that turning to legal procedures emphasises the importance of citizenship and civil rights issues for defining state-minority relations. He associates the choice of PNGOs in Israel to emphasise these issues with the outcomes of the Oslo peace process. ‘Oslo made clear to the Arabs in Israel that we were not part of the Palestinian-Arab movement, we only belonged here [in Israel]’, he says, ‘Oslo took the Arabs in Israel away from the circle they used to see themselves in: the circle of the conflict. As a result of the process and its outcomes, we realised that we were not an integral part of any of the parties, and citizenship appeared as the greatest definer of our situation’.402 According to Jabareen, the idea to establish Adalah followed the Oslo agreement, and stemmed from similar considerations to those mentioned. The time that passed between the signing of Oslo (in September 1993) and the materialising of the idea, he says, resulted from the need to translate the complexities of the vision into a feasible organisation.403 Adalah selects its court cases on the grounds that they involve first-time legal challenges that ‘significantly affect the rights of the Arab community as a group in Israel’.404 These include in particular nine fields of rights: land and housing, education, language, culture, Arab women, employment, political and religious rights.405 The response of the state to Adalah’s activities has been mixed. Essentially, the two represent opposing sides and confront each other directly at the Courts. Adalah’s activists feel, however, that state officials are largely supportive of the organisation’s methods and means. This
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attitude was reflected, to mention but one prominent example, in a meeting invitation made in mid 1997 by the Attorney General in Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, Elyakim Rubinstein. The Attorney General explained in the meeting his wish to know the organisation, as it served the same aim as his ministry – protecting the rule of law. ‘This meeting was not exceptional’, says Jabareen, ‘We receive many requests from academia and the Hebrew media, to write and participate in events they organise. The presence of Arabs is significant to Jewish left activists. The Jewish left sees our work as an expression of the strengths of a Jewish-democratic state. We speak its language’.406 It is worth noting that the status quo of the state’s respect of Adalah’s autonomy was seriously threatened in December 2000. Following the clashes between Palestinian citizens and the Israeli police starting from September 29, 2000, Adalah represented the first Palestinian citizen to be placed in administrative detention in six years, Ghassan ‘Athmaneh. On December 8, five General Security Service and Galilee Police officers arrived at the offices of Adalah with a court order signed by President of the Nazareth District Court, authorising them to claim two ‘secret documents’, which allegedly the police handed earlier to Adalah’s lawyers representing ‘Athmaneh by mistake. The officers attempted to search the offices without notifying the organisation or the Israeli Bar Association, and without being accompanied by a representative of the Bar, as required by law. Eventually, they refrained from proceeding with the search plan when Jabareen complained on these violations, and as he notified the officers that copies of the documents in question had already been distributed to all Adalah’s lawyers who were interested in the case. The withdrawal of the police from the plan to search the offices does not blur the threat posed by the initial plan to the confidentiality of materials in Adalah’s offices and to its freedom of activity in general. Several Jewish (as well as Arab) human rights organisations – including the New Israel Fund and ACRI – indeed protested against this threat in an advertisement published in Haaretz the next Sunday (10 December 2000).407 As noted above, similarly to the state’s mixed approach towards the challenges Adalah poses to the system using its own institutions, Adalah members themselves view the integrationist aspects of their project as bearing risks to the minority’s stand vis-à-vis the state. Board member Raef Zureik is critical of the fact that Adalah leads to the ‘legalisation’ of Arab demands in Israel. Zureik argues that appeals to Israeli Courts do not threaten the exclusionist Israeli political system. ‘The Court is not a neutral institution, but an armour of the state, committed to laws that prefer the common good of Jews to that of Arabs’, he notes. ‘The
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legalisation of political issues constrains our narrative; it assumes the existence of the state and our citizenship within this state as a basic tool, whereas I believe that Arabs in Israel deserve their rights not only because they are eligible citizens, but based on moral and historical arguments’.408 Zureik explicitly pronounced his unease with Adalah’s alignment with the Jewish left, which sees the Supreme Court as its fort, following the participation of Adalah in a Zionist-organised demonstration supporting the Supreme Court against ultra-Orthodox (haredim) attacks: ‘The difficulty is that... Arab organisations are partners in producing the consensus for secularism, although it excludes not only haredim but also, to no small extent, the Arabs. In order to combat the haredim, I have been asked to give high marks to the Israeli legal system, a system that continues to discriminate cruelly against me’.409 In another occasion, Zureik criticised the joining of Adalah to a campaign against the refusal of the Supreme Court to interfere with the appointment of a general who allegedly killed a handcuffed suspect during a battle in Lebanon. Zureik argued that Adalah should not have taken part in this discourse, which he identified – ironically, in Hebrew – as an ‘occupiers' discourse’ (siyakh kovshim). In both cases, Adalah acted differently from Zureik’s views and took part in the campaign. Jabareen, who supported the participation, felt it was important that Jews heard the Arab voice in such matters.410 Moreover, in spite of his doubts, Zureik identifies with Adalah’s goals and remains an active member. Privately, he decided to become a lawyer following a weeklong arrest by Israeli police at the age of 17, when participating in demonstrations after the Sabra and Shatila massacre in Lebanon. Zureik chose the legal profession in order to avoid being helpless vis-à-vis the Israeli authorities, and he still thinks that fighting this state of powerlessness is the main significance of legal Palestinian organisations in Israel. ‘Within the space left by Israeli democracy, there is a lot we can still do for our community through the legal system’, he says. ‘The problem, however, is that segments in the Arab community reduces our struggle to a legal one. This is not the way Adalah sees its own role, but there is a risk that this is how its work would be interpreted by the public’.411 Jabareen fends off these claims. He believes that Adalah offers a progressive model of integration in Israeli institutions, as its activities promote group rights of a national minority. He articulates self-determination as Adalah’s strategic vision, and argues that the organisation only appeals to court over cases
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that somewhat advance this long-term goal. ‘We aim to influence Israel into becoming a state that facilitates co-existence, as a first stage in its becoming into a pluralist state, one that tolerates the existence of two nations. The pluralist model forces the state to be neutral towards the nations inside it. This could not be achieved without the real institutional equality that we promote’, says Jabareen.412 Jabareen believes that integration is harmful when it involves Arab individuals who are willing to be part of ‘institutions that highlight national divisions’, such as the security services or any other branches of the defence establishment. In the current stage of the conflict, he has written, such integration attempts may lead to the opposite result from that desired by the advocates of integration. True equality will not be achieved in this way. ‘…only [the Jewish] identity will be celebrated, autonomous, free… The integrated Arab identity… is doomed to suffer from internal conflict’.413 In contrast to these attempts, Adalah’s work, in Jabareen’s view, does not involve such apologetics and compromises and thus promotes true equality. Adalah’s involvement in the 1999 elections campaign for the Knesset further illustrates the fundamentals in the organisation’s approach towards participation in the state’s institutions, and the inconsistencies it involves. Toward the elections, Adalah defined representation in the Knesset as a strategic aim of Palestinians in Israel, and as such a strategic aim of the organisation. As a non-partisan organisation, it set itself an aim to represent all Arab parties, in order to ‘empower them, protect them, offer them the power of self determination, and enable them to smoothly take part in the elections’.414 According to Jabareen, Adalah succeeded in preserving a balanced aid to the different parties, as it represented each of the three Arab parties in the Knesset in the forum of the Central Elections Committee, over various conflicts. Adalah successfully represented the demand of the Democratic Front to publish the official ‘announcements to the voter’ in the party’s daily organ, alIttihad, due to its status as the only daily newspaper in the Arabic language; it represented the National Democratic Alliance (Balad) in rejecting a demand of a Jewish citizen to disqualify the head of the party, ‘Azmi Bishara, from running for the office of prime minister, and won the case; one case it lost was an appeal against the censor who disqualified several words from the United Arab List’s (Ra’am) TV propaganda. At the same time, Adalah refrained from interfering in favour of an Arab list that eventually did not get enough votes to enter the Knesset, the New Arab list. The list asked Adalah to represent it against the Broadcasting Agency for omitting its name while listing the participating Arab parties. Adalah rejected the case on grounds of alleged
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implications on the intra-parties relationship. The golden rule was interfering only when the conflict occurs between Arabs on the one hand and state institutions on the other, to avoid political criticism. Jabareen summarises Adalah’s involvement in the elections campaign as a necessary experience. He believes the organisation contributed to the Arab position in the national elections in two levels. First, by offering legal defence to Arabs on the basis of national belonging, the organisation empowered the minority vis-à-vis the majority’s dominance. Jabareen interprets the conflicts of Arab parties with state authorities as a violation of minority’s rights, and has chosen to represent them on national grounds. Secondly, Adalah appreciates its job as offering the litigation tool for Arab political parties for the first time, as crucial in creating professional standing and a more co-operative position in coping with the Jewish establishment.415 Naturally, though, the interference on behalf of some Arab parties but not the others exposed Adalah to justified criticism. The experience on the whole revealed the difficulty of separating internal debates in the community from dealings with the state.416 The intensifying conflict between Palestinians and Jews in Israel following October 2000 and during the Intifada made the dilemma of participation more acute for Adalah just as for other PNGOs in Israel. Adalah took a clear position in favour of co-operation with the Commission of Investigation the state established in order to probe into the October 2000 Events. When the government first proposed the establishment of a Committee of Examination, Adalah as well as the NCALC opposed it, arguing that it was ‘vaguely defined’ and the authorities would not be committed to the implementation of its conclusions. However, when Prime Minister Ehud Barak changed his decision and established a formal Commission of Inquiry, The Or Commission for Probing into the October 2000 Events, Adalah aided its work by representing the Arab witnesses. Adalah took upon itself this representative role with deliberation with the NCALC, since its legal staff was highly experienced in public struggles and its position uncontested in Palestinian eyes. Adalah’s role was significant for the Commission’s work, since individual witnesses did not trust the Commission and did not come forward when the announcement of its work was published in the Arab press. Jabareen puts it bluntly: ‘Without Adalah, there would be no Or Commission. They had no chance to get to the truth’.417 While Adalah’s role in the Or Commission no doubt helped to legitimise the efforts of the establishment to probe into the October 2000 Events and fell within the organisation’s focus on equal
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citizenship, Adalah also took a central role in phrasing the statement of PNGOs in Israel at the August 2001 United Nations World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance. As noted in the previous chapter, the statement went beyond demands for citizenship rights and asked for the protection of human rights of Palestinians in Israel and an acknowledgment of their rights as an indigenous national minority. Jabareen explains that the perception of indigenous rights instructs Adalah’s work. Thus, for example, the organisation objects to any restriction of Palestinians’ rights to visit an Arab country based on the fact that this is an enemy state, because Palestinians in Israel are part of the Arab nation and would not have seen Arab states as enemies had the state of Israel not been established.418 This position outlined in the statement led to a debate between Adalah, Ittijah that headed the forum and the rest of the members, and some activists in Jewish NGOs in Israel. The latter feel that the statement represents a watershed for members of the forum, who abandoned the joint struggle for equal citizenship. In Adalah’s management conference, the organisation’s chair, Ghassann Agbaria, replied to these arguments, summarising the ideology of Adalah in this matter: ‘Whoever likes to correct inequalities can act in the same way that white South Africans acted to cancel the Apartheid in South Africa. Many of them joined the National African Congress and the African cause in order to act for full equality… Fifty-five years after its establishment, Israel is strong enough for liberal democratic streams within it to join our cause and fight with us to change the regime’.419 Ameer Makhul, the general manager of Ittijah, says the position of the PNGOs from Israel in Durban was a huge achievement, as it presented the case of the Palestinian in Israel for the first time as no less important than that of Palestinians in the Occupied territories or the Diaspora. A conference that Ittijah organised in Cairo continued this line, and enhanced the connections between PNGOs in Israel and Arab NGOs elsewhere. However, according to Makhul, the two conferences led to a conflict between Ittijah and member organisations and several Israeli, European and American donor funds that resented the ‘political voice’ of PNGOs in Israel as manifested in these two conferences.420 The centrality of the legal tool in the campaign for equality was recently demonstrated by one of the most challenging cases brought by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) to the Supreme Court of
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Justice on behalf of Palestinian citizens – ‘Adel and Iman Ka’adan v. the Israel Land Administration, popularly known as the Katzir Case (for a map of Katzir and the Wadi ‘Ara area, see the next page.) The Ka’adan family appealed to the court, through ACRI, after the membership committee in the settlement of Katzir in Wadi ‘Ara rejected their application to purchase land in Katzir. The importance of the case stemmed from the explicit reason given for the rejection of the family. The Committee argued that since the Jewish Agency owned the land, it had the right to sell land to Jews alone. By challenging this right, the petitioners cast doubt on a fundamental pillar of the Zionist project, namely the acquisition of land – before and after the establishment of the state – purely for purposes of Jewish settlement. Although the appeal specifically emphasised its interest in future arrangements, rather than in criticism of the past, the significance of the case for Jewish-Palestinian relations was obvious to the court and explicit in public discussions, in the media and elsewhere.421 Map Two: Jewish and Arab Localities in the Wadi-‘Ara Region
Jewish settlements Arab settlements
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Katzir was established in the early 1980s. By 1986, it was decided to turn it into a city as part of the policy of ‘Judaisation’ of the Wadi ‘Ara region, in which the majority of residents are Palestinians. As part of this policy, Jewish settlements surround Palestinian ones in the region. This way, the natural expansion of Palestinian settlements is blocked. (See Map Three above). Katzir is composed of two neighbourhoods, one of which is settled by the Ministry of Housing, and is open to all citizens; in
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the other, a committee composed of the Jewish Agency, the Israeli Farmers Union and the Community Union of Katzir approves membership. During the trial, these organisations justified their decision to accept only Jews to Katzir by the fact that the community settlement of Katzir is a ‘chain in a line of Mitzpim [literally: observation settlements] that were established to guard the Israeli landscape on behalf of the Jewish people’. They explained that these Mitzpim were set up to settle Jews throughout Israel, and especially in the countryside where Jewish presence is sparse, and to spread the population in order to increase Israel’s security. In the specific case, they argued that Arabs may find it difficult to guard the settlement, which faced dangers of terrorism, and that the presence of Palestinian residents may push away Jews and turn an intentionally Jewish settlement into an Arab one. Five judges, headed by the president of the Supreme Court, Justice Aharon Barak, rejected these claims. The Court acknowledged the special position of the Jewish Agency in Israeli law, as an agent of the government, but argued that discrimination in land distribution through the transfer of land to the Jewish Agency is illegal. Justice Barak recognised the historic weight of his decision and fenced it by emphasising that the case of every settlement is different and should be separately judged. Barak also fenced his ruling by stating that it does not challenge past policies. Within these limitations, Barak ruled that the government had no lawful right to allocate state land to the Jewish Agency for the establishment of the community settlement Katzir on the basis of discrimination between Jews and non-Jews.422 By the time of writing this thesis, the Ka’adan family has not yet been able to live in Katzir. The court left the decision whether to let the family live in Katzir to the discretion of the government, as it argued that the 14 years that had passed between the establishment of the settlement and the Court ruling created not only social but also serious legal problems. For example, the Jewish Agency invested money in Katzir viewing it as a Jewish settlement, and Jewish residents bought houses there based on their understanding of the place as exclusive for Jews. ACRI since won an appeal against the Israel Land Association, arguing that they have acted in contempt towards the Court by not implementing its decision to reconsider the Ka’adan’s application. Nevertheless, the application is still unresolved and ACRI plans an additional appeal.423 Palestinians in Israel did not match the enthusiasm with which the ruling was met in the liberal-Jewish sector, according to Adalah’s lawyer Jamil Dakwar. Dakwar has argued that the Katzir ruling has barely discussed it, and underestimated its importance when it did. The reason, Dakwar has
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argued, is that in contrast to the Jewish depiction of the case, the ruling may in fact have negative effect on the collective demands of Palestinians in Israel. The ruling, he argues, does not alter fundamentally the situation of Palestinians in Israel. First, it does not accept any of the core historical-political claims of the Palestinian minority, such as the demand to stop land expropriation or allow the return of internal refugees to their land. Second, it does not lead an immediate political change. Even the petitioners did not get to live in Katzir, let alone other Palestinians in other settlements. At the same time, the ruling may constitute a political obstacle to the demand to establish an Arab town, as it may now be argued that Jewish towns are all open for Arabs. It is not incidental that Palestinians in Israel never demanded integration in Jewish settlements. Their agenda is different. The Katzir case reflected an agenda that was dictated by liberal Jews on behalf of Palestinians, but without involving the Arab representative and leadership. The ‘victory’, therefore, was celebrated mostly in Jewish – but not in Arab – circles.424 The legal field is not the only state institution in which PNGOs are campaigning for minority’s rights. Ja’far Farah, the chairman of the lobby organisation Mossawa, contends that playing Israeli and international political games is an essential interest of the Palestinian minority in Israel. ‘The Israeli system uses every possible tool to justify its position: the Supreme Court, foreign aid, and media. We, on the other hand, were not using any of these for years. The Palestinian minority was ‘out’ of the Israeli democratic game, and the establishment wants us to remain ‘out’. If you take part in decision making, if you know the government’s strategic plans and understand the procedures, you can fight them. The Israeli establishment prefers us, as well as other marginal groups in society, in a state of unawareness and passivity’.425 Mossawa aims to challenge discriminatory Israeli policies. It focuses mainly on lobbying for minority rights within the Knesset, by contacting individual MKs, analysing the annual governmental budget, and preparing documents that either encourage or call off certain legislation initiatives. These documents are available for the public as a whole. Mossawa is a registered association, whose members are representatives of organisations that focus on advocacy, such as the Follow-Up Council for Education in the Arab Sector. Its steering committee is also composed of advocacy organisations, both Jewish and Arab, including ACRI, Adva, and Sikkuy. The organisation often provides information to foreign embassies and media. In 1998, its leadership aided the organisation of a professional communication centre for the Palestinian community in Israel, I’lam.426
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Another counterpart organisation of Adalah, the Arab Association for Human Rights (HRA), chose to avoid the dilemma resulting from participation in state institutions, by removing the contest with the state to international institutions, such as the UN and its committees, rather than using the institutions of the state itself. This Nazareth-based organisation was established in 1988, at the height of the Palestinian Intifada in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, by a group of lawyers led by the late activist Mansour Kardoush. The group was set to offer the legal assistance of Palestinian citizens in Israel to their co-nationals in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, aiming to acquaint the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza with the labyrinth of the Israeli legal system. However, according to HRA’s current chairman, Muhammad Zeidan, members found out within a year from the establishment of the HRA that this help was not necessary; Palestinian lawyers from the occupied territories were fully acquainted with the system and took upon themselves the task of representing their people. It was then that the organisation changed its goals for acting towards human rights for the Palestinian community in Israel. The HRA aims to fulfil its goals by both (1) educating the Palestinian community in Israel about its rights, through courses to teachers and school children, given by university students who receive scholarships from the organisation for this purpose; and (2) lobbying for human rights of the Palestinian minority in Israel. Similarly to Adalah, the HRA aims to represent the Palestinian minority as a collective group. Unlike Adalah, however, it emphasises human over citizenship rights,427 therefore refraining from what Zureik has defined as ‘recognising the state as the basic work assumption’.428 The international policy of the organisation has been enforced since 1996. As part of this policy, the HRA prides itself for having ‘monitored Israel’s compliance with international human rights standards and its international human rights treaty obligations; provided evidence on the situation of the Palestinian Arab minority in Israel – women and men – to UN human rights Committees, Working Groups, and Special Rapporteurs by submitting written reports and oral statements; and used UN and international channels to network with international human rights NGOs and institutions, sharing and exchanging information and conducting joint activities’.429 Like the HRA, PNGOs in Israel have increasingly seen international institutions as a viable option for coping with the state. Indeed, Ittijah leadership grades such activity as one of the most important achievements of PNGOs in Israel, as its website states: ‘The Arab NGO sector is the first movement to break the state-imposed isolation of the
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Arab community and to establish relationships internationally’.430 Meetings of PNGO activists with their compatriots from across the Green Line and the Diaspora are among the significant features of the role NGOs have indeed played in challenging the isolation of Palestinians in Israel. Thus, in 1987 – when the Israeli law still prohibited meetings with PLO representatives431 – NGO activists from both Palestinian and Jewish organisations in Israel participated in the UN annual conference of NGOs on the question of Palestine. The conference was held in Geneva and there were many Palestinian activists from the West Bank and Gaza among its 1000 participants. Moreover, the head of the PLO, Yasser Arafat, was the speaker who opened the conference. This conference created but one meeting opportunity for NGOs from across the Green Line. Such meetings have been quite commonplace since the second half of the 1980s.432 Gender and the National Agendas of PNGOs in Israel Palestinian women in Israel often refer to their position in society as a ‘triple’ discrimination, suffered by them as women in Israel, as members of the Palestinian minority, and as women within the Palestinian society.433 This emphasis on the unique marginality of women highlights the importance of gender to the political experiences of women, yet the specific role of gender issues in ethnically divided societies such as Israel is highly debated. While liberal feminists have traditionally viewed gender as a cross-community agenda, distinguishing between ‘gender’ and ‘communal’ interests, critics of the liberal view have argued that communal interests – in the case of Palestinian women in Israel, the fact that the state discriminates against its Palestinian citizens – must constitute an integral part of the feminist campaign.434 This section focuses on feminist activism in national PNGOs in Israel, and some of the ways in which Palestinian feminists in Israel promoted the latter approach.435 The section argues that the acknowledgment of the mutual influence of gender and national issues was not only significant for feminist Palestinian activism in Israel. Rather, the introduction of gender issues to national PNGOs in Israel, mostly by women activists, has challenged the male-dominated national discourse of these organisations. Men have tended – as a generalisation – to promote the national cause of the Palestinian minority within Israel through the single-minded dichotomy of ‘us’ (the Palestinian minority) vs. ‘them’ (the Jewish majority and the Zionist state), as Adalah’s mainstream policy clearly illustrated. The more complex identity perceptions of Palestinian feminists led them to assert, in contrast, that any empowerment of the
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minority’s status within Israeli society or vis-à-vis the state must be accompanied by internal changes within the Palestinian society in Israel. Women’s activism, both in women-only organisations and in joint men/women groups, is a prominent phenomenon among national PNGOs in Israel. In a report submitted to the UN by a group of PNGOs in Israel in 1997, the role of women NGOs in the Palestinian community was highlighted. The report has argued that these NGOs ‘play a very important role in building support systems for women, and at the same time creating spaces for Palestinian women in public and political life’.436 Notably, the report, and the forming of the Working Group on the Status of Palestinian Women in Israel (WG) for its creation, themselves provided evidence for the growing prominence of Palestinian women in the NGO realm, for their impact on the agenda of PNGOs in Israel, and their relevance to the relationship between the state and the minority. The group is a national network of Palestinian NGO representatives and activists who work on Palestinian women’s human rights issues in Israel from various perspectives and in various fields of expertise. 437 It was formed in June 1996 after individual members learned that Israel had submitted its Initial Report to the UN Committee for the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), to be reviewed by the Committee in January 1997. Having found that Israel’s Initial Report ignored the situation of Palestinian women in Israel, group members decided to submit an alternative NGO Report. The report prides itself on having compiled the available resources and on having documented the experiences of Palestinian leaders in working with Arab women. It attempted to offer a widely accepted perspective on the three forms of discrimination faced by Palestinian women in Israel.438 As such, this report was a pioneering experience that gathered previously unavailable data, raised the issue of Palestinian women in Israel in an international setting, enhanced cooperation between women’s PNGOs in Israel, raised the Palestinian perspective vis-à-vis the state’s narrative, and the feminist perspective vis-à-vis the general narrative of Palestinians in Israel. The WG’s report contrasts the participation of women in PNGOs in Israel with the ‘extremely limited elected or appointed representation’ of Palestinian women in Israeli public life.439 Similarly, activist Shahira Shalabi, one of the founders of the feminist organisation al-Kian (‘being’), argues from her own and fellow-activists’ experiences, that Palestinians women activists in Israel turn to NGOs because of their limited impact within Arab parties. ‘I used to be an enthusiastic activist in the Communist party’, she says, ‘but gradually I have become frustrated at being unable
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to make an impact on the feminist agenda of the party. On the other hand, I have been active in feminist organisations since 1988, and felt that we reached out to our community much more efficiently’.440 Another possible explanation for the prominence of women in PNGOs in Israel may lie in the central role NGOs play in both national politics and social affairs of the community; in other words, in their activity on the borderline between the sphere defined as private (mainly inhabited by the female-dominated family) and the public sphere. According to sociologist Hanna Herzog, largely owing to the pretext of the ArabIsraeli conflict, the dichotomy between the private and the public ‘has shown a good deal of resilience and immunity to change’ in Israel. This in contrast to most Western societies, which tend to blur the boundaries between the spheres. Consequently, women in Israel (both Jews and Palestinians) face more obstacles in entering the traditional public spheres, but find it easier to participate in fields that are not defined as strictly outside the private.441 The position of NGOs as “borderline institutions” between the private and the public is enhanced by the image of voluntarism traditionally attached to NGOs, differentiating them from partisan politics, and facilitating the participation of more women. Significantly, as argued above, the feminist contribution to the national agenda of PNGOs in Israel also lies in the blurring of the boundaries between public and private: between demands for change in issues defined as family and community affairs to demands for change in the national sphere.442 As the following case of the feminist-national organisation Al-Fanar (“Lighthouse”) illustrates, relations between intercommunity development and national affairs have constituted one of the main foci of feminist Palestinian activism in Israel.443 Al-Fanar was the first Palestinian feminist organisation in Israel to fight against both women’s discrimination within Palestinian society and against the minority’s discrimination by Israeli authorities. The organisation was established at the beginning of 1991 by ten university-educated women in their 20s and 30s as a feminist think tank. In June that year they decided to protest against a murder of a pregnant woman from the village of Iksal near Nazareth. The woman was killed by her father, allegedly on grounds of ‘violating family honour’. The demonstration they held, being the first of its kind in the Palestinian community in Israel, provoked much public attention both in the Arab and Jewish streets. Ever since this demonstration, al-Fanar became a prominent campaigner against violence suffered by women in the Palestinian community in Israel. The organisation led public campaigns against the phenomenon, but also offered practical assistance to victims of violence
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within or outside the context of domestic abuse. This assistance ranged from alerting the police to cases of potential domestic violence and to visiting women hospitalised as a result of violence, to the more risky act of hiding women away from threatening families. While campaigning for women’s rights within the Palestinian community, al-Fanar conducted a struggle against Israeli authorities. Ideologically, the organisation linked the liberation of women to the national cause. This is how Manar Hassan, one of the founders and main activists, defined this association: ‘As far as we were concerned, the national struggle was the struggle for democracy, which had to include all classes. We did not believe in a struggle of flag and national anthem. As long as the deprived classes, such as women or workers continued to be deprived, and all we replace is the hat of the oppressor – this is not liberation. We live in a patriarchal society, and we insisted that women’s struggle should be taken into consideration’. Hassan believes that Israeli authorities were interested in the persistence of what she dubs ‘backward traditions’ in the Palestinian society, as these make the minority easier to control. She claims that the organisation often faced practical manifestations of the association between women and national oppression, for example on occasions where policemen returned to their homes women who had run away from domestic violence. ‘We witnessed it happening again and again’, Hassan said, ‘either directly or through the traditional Qadi and Mukhtar leaders who had close relations with the Israeli establishment. I came to the conclusion that this was not incidental’.444 It should be noted in this context that even in places where the Qadi and Mukhtar have long lost their formal significance in the community’s life, such as in the cities and in many of the rural villages, the police often opt for compromise between the families rather than pressing charges in cases of violence against women. By achieving such compromises, it often preserves close relations with local social workers.445 Al-Fanar’s militant activism both on the feminist and national fronts led activists into conflicts with their own community as well as with state agents. Within their community, activists were involved in obvious conflicts with victims’ relatives. In the first stages of their public protest, they also faced much criticism and very little co-operation from male and female activists in the Palestinian community. According to Hassan, however, the suspicious attitude of the minority’s elite towards their activities has shifted with time into increasing co-operation and participation of former critics in their activities. The open conflict with the state started when al-Fanar sought to register as an association with the Ministry of the Interior. Al-Fanar applied to be registered under the
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title of a feminist-Palestinian organisation. The request was rejected on the basis of 4 (a) in the Law of Associations – 1980, which articulates the general prohibition on registration of an association if it may harm the public’s safety ‘or feelings’.446 The title ‘Palestinian’ in the organisation’s name was interpreted as a potential threat and violation of this article. The struggle of al-Fanar against the Registrar’s decision reached a climax only three years later, when the government and registrar changed their tune under threats of appeal to the Supreme Court. The organisation was finally registered under the name it requested, thus becoming the first organisation in Israel to include ‘Palestinian’ in its registered title. In their struggle against the Registrar, al-Fanar’s members were also the first Palestinian activists to explicitly promote the intersectionality between gender and the national cause. As noted in Chapter One, scholars saw the authority vested in the Registrar of Associations by law as endangering the freedom of association.447 The success of al-Fanar to challenge the Registrar’s decision by a threat of appeal to the Court points to the limits of this authority. However, the long struggle in itself was costly in human and financial resources, and highlighted the ideological aspect in the Registrar’s work. Al-Fanar disintegrated temporarily in 1998, following a decision to refrain from accepting external funding. In an attempt to retain their independence, activists had to compromise their paid jobs and personal relations, according to Hassan. She emphasises that none of the activists was dependent upon a parent or husband for her living, and this made the need to balance between their personal life and intensive political activism almost impractical. Currently, individual members (they are no longer organised) are considering re-applying for funding in order to renew their activism in a more supportive background.448 Dealing with gender issues did not remain the province of women PNGOs in Israel alone. An example of the involvement of general (men and women’s) organisations in the promotion of women’s human rights was given by the participation of such a general organisation – the HRA – in the WG. This participation draws attention to the fact that many of the national PNGOs in Israel run women’s rights projects. The three main PNGOs reviewed in the previous sections (the GS, Adalah, and the HRA) are all involved in women’s rights issues. The GS started a Bedouin women’s education project in 1997; in Adalah’s case, women’s rights constitute one of the nine fields on which the organisation focuses; and the HRA runs a project for women’s empowerment. Whereas the involvement of these and other PNGOs in Israel in women’s issues have undoubtedly promoted public interest in the
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subject, these projects have also been the target of criticism – as highlighted earlier by Samar Zeidan, in the context of the GS – as they were often initiated due to pressures from external donors rather than as a result of internal choice. It may further be argued – as advocate Samera Eismeir, a member of Adalah, has maintained regarding the role of her organisation – that it is the role of PNGOs in Israel to ‘expose the intersectionality of national and gender-based oppression’.449 It seems that the expansion of this task from women’s only organisations, such as al-Fanar to the realm of the general PNGOs in Israel, is important for challenging traditional gender relations in the community as well as traditional patterns of the relations between the minority and the state. Nevertheless, the criticism raised in the context of gender activity implies limitations in the decision-making processes of some national PNGOs in Israel, or at the very least in the way some activists perceive these processes. These limitations should not be overlooked. Conclusion The cases in this chapter highlighted some of the ways in which national PNGOs challenged the exclusionary Israeli political system. These methods fall along a continuum which grades the different approaches in terms of the extent of the changes they promoted: the left-hand side of the continuum represents the most specific demands, whereas the righthand side represents the more radical views, advocating a change in the regime: Figure 6: Levels of Change Campaigned for by National PNGOs (1 )
‘P O L IT IC S O F IN T E R E S T S ’ W IT H IN T H E S Y S T E M
(2 )
C A M P A IG N IN G F O R R E F O R M
(3 )
D E M A N D IN G R E G IM E C H A N G E
The first category (‘politics of interest’ within the existing system) includes such organisations as the Galilee Society, which provides some of its services to the community in place of the state. However, as argued above, and as the example of the Galilee Society illustrates, national PNGOs tend to combine the provision of services with lobbying campaigns, which locates them closer to the second category on this continuum (that is, the category of promoting change from within). The provision of services familiarises PNGOs with the daily needs of their community and facilitates knowledgeable and practical lobby campaigns.
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These are led by the same organisations, but often as part of a larger coalition that combines the experiences gained through service provision with the expertise of more distinct lobby organisations. The second category – organisations that promote a reform in the system from within – is predominantly composed of national PNGOs focusing on lobbying within Israeli institutions and vis-à-vis the Jewish public. Adalah and Mossawa represent this type of organisation. Similar to organisations in the previous category, which focus mainly on service provision, these organisations also face the dilemmas stemming from the need to seek inclusion in the institutions of a system that they highly criticise and resist. National feminist organisations also belong to this category of promoting reform. The change that they promote, however, is multidimensional. It includes reform within the Palestinian society itself, and emphasises the interdependence of power structures within this society and Jewish domination in Israel. The third category, campaigning for a change in the regime, is the least practical of the three for PNGOs. First, challenging the Israeli regime is a difficult task as Israeli state institutions are strong, and the majority of Jews in Israel support the Zionist ideology. Second, registered NGOs base their legitimacy, at least to some extent, on certain practices and institutions of the Israeli democratic system, hence their campaigns tend to enhance these practices and institutions rather than calling for a dismantling of the system. Third, as their main method, PNGOs often use state and Jewish-dominated institutions to challenge discriminatory policies. Campaigns in the Knesset, the courts, Israeli academia or the Hebrew press dictate a preference for contents of reform rather than a wholesale change.Appeal to international organisations is therefore an important arena to express more radical demands. Notably, most of the lobbying PNGOs in Israel also use this strategy occasionally and some organisations, like the HRA, focus on international campaigns as their main strategy. International organisations, such as the UN and private funds, offer NGOs one of their unique advantages vis-à-vis the state as well as other institutions in the society, as they provide a source of legitimacy and recognition that stands outside state institutions. Restricting the field of contest with the state to international organisations, however, bears some risks for PNGOs. First, it may limit the tangible, short-term achievements of PNGOs in Israel, as those are often required from the state. Second, unlike the judgement of the Supreme Court, for example, the judgement of international institutions such as the Human Rights Committee of the UN do not commit the government to action. Third, preferring international public opinion to
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public opinion in Israel also rules out the possibility for much of a continuous dialogue with the Jewish- Israeli public like the one conducted by Adalah, for example, which opts for local activism. Several national PNGOs view their role as establishing alternative institutions to those of the state, which are unique to the Palestinian minority in Israel and which may form a basis to a future autonomous rule of the minority within Israel. The activities of the NCALC and the High Follow-Up Committee may be ascribed to this category. These organisations were often described as the ‘parliament’ of the Palestinian minority, a description that feeds on the participation of Palestinians in Israel nation-wide in their campaigns and on their ability to organise regular events, unique to the Palestinian minority in Israel.450 Adalah also sees its own and other PNGOs’ role as institutions of a further Palestinian autonomy, if such a possibility ever materialises. However, the choice of Adalah to focus on legal campaign in Israeli courts highlights the extent to which PNGOs recognise the impracticality of the autonomy vision, at least in the short term, and therefore adhere to more accommodationist methods of campaigning as a practical way to reduce disparities in Israeli society.451 Regardless of their different approaches to change, the activities of nation-wide PNGOs expand the boundaries of Israeli citizenship, challenge the exclusion of Palestinian citizens from central realms of public life, and force state agencies to cope with the discrepancy between ethnicity and democracy. The success of these activities requires internal coherence and co-operation, management ability and success in fund raising. National PNGOs in Israel have increasingly developed these skills and improved co-operative practices. Nevertheless, their impact on state-minority relations is still limited by shortcomings in public accountability, co-ordination of campaigns and management difficulties. The state’s response to the challenges posed by national PNGOs has contributed to these shortcomings. Although this response was dynamic and varied, it was mainly characterised by control and exclusion. The experiences of national PNGOs in Israel show that ‘active exclusion’ (denial of recognition and legitimacy to challenging components of civil society) remained the dominant state attitude vis-à-vis these organisations throughout the 1980s and 1990s. The obvious example of ‘active exclusion’ was provided by the closure of the Islamic Relief Committee by the authority of the Emergency Regulations. This usage of extra-civic laws against a registered association, although rare, consolidated the control of the state over civil society. This use of coercion marked the boundaries of civility in state-NGOs relations.
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Notably, the threat for the freedoms of PNGOs in Israel also manifested in less extreme cases, such as the police attempt to search Adalah’s offices. These threats are acknowledged as a policy by the Security Services, who view secular PNGOs in Israel as a ‘strategic threat’ and NGOs that are run by the Islamic Movement a ‘strategic threat’.452 Registrars of Associations have also played a role in restricting the freedom of Palestinians to mobilise themselves in the frame of NGOs. Different registrars prevented, delayed, and cancelled the registration of PNGOs in Israel for bureaucratic and ideological reasons, in a way that burdened the development of Palestinian civil society in Israel. The refusal of the Registrar to register the High Follow-Up Committee is perhaps most striking of all, implementing a long-held governmental policy of refusal to officially recognise a representative forum of the minority. No doubt that the success of al-Fanar to register under the name Palestinian-Feminist Association, thanks to a threat of appeal to the Court, points to the limits in the authority of arbitrary discretion vested in the Registrar. However, the long struggle in itself was costly in human and financial resources, and highlighted the ideological aspect in the Registrar’s work. In contrast to the situation in the Jewish NGO sector, the state’s attitude towards PNGOs did not change in the 1980s to passive exclusion. Rather, in some cases, the state’s attitude shifted to ‘active inclusion’, for example in cases where the state provided some funding to PNGOs. The state discriminates against PNGOs in its funding allocation. Even so, funding is used as a control tool: organisations that criticise state policies are threatened by the elimination of governmental funding – as was indicated for example in the case of the Galilee Society. Active inclusion, when implemented, has contributed to the development of several of the national PNGOs reviewed in this chapter, and is undoubtedly a more positive policy from the point of view of the organisations. Yet, similarly to the relationship between the state and Jewish civil society in Israel of the early years, this policy bears for PNGOs the risk of co-optation and loss of independent stance vis-à-vis the state.
Chapter Four
LOCAL PNGOs IN ISRAEL
T
he majority of Palestinian NGOs in Israel act locally, to provide for the needs of a community in a particular geographic location – whether a single neighbourhood, village or town, or a particular region.453 Like national Palestinian NGOs in Israel, local NGOs – in their modern, formal sense – have emerged mainly since the 1970s and proliferated since the 1980s. Their proliferation resulted from the same historic processes that influenced the emergence of national PNGOs in Israel. These included developments in the Palestinian society in Israel, such as the rise in the level of education; connections with Palestinians and Palestinian movements outside Israel; and the role played by the Communist Party and later the Islamic movement in forming associations. Developments in Israeli society – including the growing legitimacy for protest after 1973 and the legislation of the 1980 Law of Association – have also encouraged the establishment of local PNGOs in Israel. Economically, more local NGOs were established as a response to the privatisation process, occurring since the 1980s, which involved the transferring of service operation from the government to local organisations. International developments, including the growing availability of foreign financial resources, have also been pivotal. More than any of these factors, however, the establishment of local Palestinian NGOs in Israel responded to the continuous discrimination against Palestinians. Local organisations emerged as a form of self-aid, aiming to provide services the government and the local authorities have failed to provide. The evidence shows that local PNGOs in Israel have made a real contribution in this area of community development by providing a wide range of services, which improved the lives of their community. It should be emphasised, however, that NGOs themselves were unable to close the economic gaps between Jews and Palestinians in Israel. These gaps have in fact widened with time, owing much to the consequences of the privatisation process. By shifting responsibility for services from its own agencies to the private sector, the state was able to offer a selective support to service organisations. As indicated in Chapter Two, state funding to PNGOs in Israel is much more limited in comparison to their Jewish counterparts. Significantly, the state allocates far fewer contracts for service provision to PNGOs than it does to JNGOs in Israel: In 2001, 30% of JNGOs in Israel had a contract with the state, while only 19% of PNGOs in Israel had such a contract. Scholars have noted that
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this limited funding from the state can be seen as a discouragement to the establishment of more PNGOs in Israel.454 This is especially true in the field of service provision. The activities of local Palestinian NGOs in Israel have not been limited to the provision of services. Rather, they have also been engaged with lobby activities, in order to pressure the authorities to meet the needs of the Palestinian community. In addition, they have had a prominent role in organising cultural events and activities to assert the Palestinian, Arab, and in some cases religious identity of the community. Amina Minns and Nadia Hijab argue that the three levels of activities of local PNGOs in Israel – service provision, lobbying and culture – are interconnected. They have convincingly argued that the Israeli discrimination against Palestinian citizens amounts to more than a simple neglect, often representing an attempt by the state to pressurise Palestinians to abandon their lands and their roots. Hence, the struggle to preserve Palestinian identity and the attempt to develop the community on the basis of self-reliance are both integral components of the campaign for equality.455 Minns and Hijab further argue that the various community organisations established by Palestinians in Israel since the 1980s in fields as diverse as medical care, education, agriculture and culture are similar to the associations established by Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip before the intifada to carry out their social development independently from the Israeli occupational structures. The difference, according to Minns and Hijab, is that ‘the [19]48 Palestinians are fighting as yet not for independence but for equality’.456 These different political aims promoted by rather-similar organisations serve as a reminder of the relevance of the political context to NGO work. Examining the interaction between national politics and community organisations, this chapter explores some of the questions common to the NGO literature: 457 Have NGOs brought about the political participation of groups in the community that were otherwise excluded from the public sphere? And by doing so, have they empowered the community in relation to other segments of society? These questions underlie the discussion. They are discussed first through the examples of two individual local PNGOs in Israel, both active in the Palestinian communities of ‘mixed’ Jewish-Palestinian cities: The League for the Arabs of Jaffa (al-Rabita Min Ajli ‘Arab Yafa) and the Acre Arab Women’s Association (Mu‛asasat Niswan ‘Arab ‘Akka). Both these organisations demonstrate the variety of tasks dealt with by local NGOs, their professional achievements in fulfilling these tasks, and their contribution to participation of formerly excluded groups in the political
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process both within their community and in their cities. At the same time, both organisations also shed light on the limitations of the empowerment process – as a result of restrictions imposed on local Palestinian NGOs in Israel, their complex relationships with authorities on the one hand and the community on the other, and their limited resources. Despite their limitations, this chapter argues that the significance of local organisations is not restricted to their specific communities. Rather, local NGOs contribute directly to the nation-wide campaigns of Palestinian NGOs in Israel in two ways. On the one hand, they represent grass-roots communities and local interests at the national level. On the other, they provide a means for national movements and campaigns to gain support at the local level. Several examples demonstrate this relationship between local and national activism. First, the chapter discusses the choice of the Islamic movement – a national organisation – to operate through an array of formal local NGOs since the early 1980s. Second, it analyses the importance of local organisations in crystallising nation-wide agenda. This section first examines the work of a local organisation in Nazareth, Sawt al-‘Amel (“The Voice of the Worker”), which was established to fight for the rights of local workers in the Nazareth area but soon discovered that the problems faced by these workers owe much to systemic discrimination against Arab workers rather than to mere local conditions. The section then analyses two national campaigns that were based on local organisations. The first campaign was conducted in protest against an intention to amend the 1948 Prevention of Terrorism Ordinance in a manner that would have restricted the freedom of association in general and the freedom of PNGOs in Israel in particular. The second campaign discussed is that of the Bedouin ‘unrecognised’ villages, which appeal for recognition. The campaign, which made a national impact, involved a wide array of organisations and took place in the north as well as in the southern regions of Israel. Both at the level of individual local PNGOs in Israel and at the collective level, their contribution to participation of underrepresented communities is clear. As in the case of national Palestinian NGOs in Israel, the contribution of local NGOs to the empowerment of their community in relation to other groups in society is less clear-cut. Their contribution to the achievement of this goal is limited both by the technical nature of their work on the one hand, a characteristic that restricts their political significance; and, on the other, the limitations imposed on their activities by the authorities. Nevertheless, local NGOs make an important contribution to the development of a Palestinian social movement in Israel, by representing grassroots interests and
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linking these interests to nation-wide campaigns. Through this linkage, they contribute to the empowerment of the communities they represent. Local NGOs and the Institutionalisation of Palestinian civil society The 1970s witnessed the establishment of increasingly more Palestinian NGOs in Israel. This process was manifested in growing organised protest at the national level, as discussed in the previous chapter, but was also reflected in the establishment of increasingly more local PNGOs in Israel. As happened at the national level, these newly established NGOs became more formal and institutionalised during the 1980s. The League for the Arabs of Jaffa (al-Rabita Min Ajli ‘Arab Yafa) and the Acre Arab Women’s Association (Mu‛asasat Niswan ‘Akka), established in 1979 and 1974 respectively, demonstrate the local channel of this institutionalisation process that Palestinian activism in Israel has undergone. Both these NGOs have constituted a channel for educated activists to work for their communities through organisations that have grown professional and institutionalised. Both also illustrate the unique contribution of local NGOs to the political mobility of their communities. In the case of Jaffa, The League for the Arabs of Jaffa united members of the different religious denominations in the city, whose political life, until then, had been conducted through separate and often rival organisations. In Acre, the Arab Women’s Association provided an arena for political participation of women. As a result of the reputation it gained with time, the impact of the Acre Arab Women’s Association exceeded the immediate community, as the organisation served and consulted to women in surrounding villages as well. The League for the Arabs of Jaffa Al-Rabita Min Ajli ‘Arab Yafa (The League for the Arabs of Jaffa, hereinafter al-Rabita) boasts some unique achievements. It has been continuously active since 1979, it conducts regular elections for its leadership – open to all the Palestinian population of Jaffa, without distinction of denomination; it won several battles on behalf of the Palestinian community in Jaffa against the authorities; and in 1993 it was the major force behind a list representing, for the first time, the Palestinian residents in the Tel-Aviv-Jaffa municipality, an achievement that materialised thanks to the votes of Jews as well as Arabs. The causes for the establishment of al-Rabita are entrenched in the history of the city of Jaffa. Jaffa lost its independent municipal status with the establishment of Israel in 1948, and was affiliated to the municipality of Tel-Aviv. According to Tel-Aviv-Jaffa Annual Statistics
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Book, 15,800 Palestinian citizens were living in Jaffa in 1994, constituting 4.4 per cent of the overall population in the municipality. The discrimination against the Palestinian residents of Tel-Aviv-Jaffa is well documented. The generally low investment in Arab neighbourhoods is reflected in the fact that over a third of Jaffa’s Palestinian citizens live in the poverty-stricken neighbourhoods, ‘Ajami and Jebaliah, which scored 4 points in the municipality’s socio-economic scale (out of 100 possible points); low investment in Arab education was evident as 20.9 per cent of Palestinian youth in Jaffa dropped out of education and did not find a job in 1991 (in comparison to 11 per cent of Jewish youth in Jaffa and 7.1 per cent in the overall Jewish population in Israel); discriminatory housing policies have led to a situation in which only 16 per cent of Palestinians in Jaffa own 4-5 room houses, in comparison to 39 per cent in the national Jewish population and 20 per cent in the national Palestinian population in Israel. In addition to crowded houses, only 22 per cent of Palestinians in Jaffa own their homes, while 78 per cent rent their houses and flats – usually from publicly-owned housing companies.458 Discriminatory policies constituted the main incentive for the establishment of NGOs in Jaffa in the 1970s and 1980s: the Islamic Philanthropic Association was established in 1974, the Orthodox Philanthropic Association was founded in 1979, and the Islamic Council in 1987 – all attempting to provide their communities with some of the municipal services they were missing.459 Al-Rabita, founded in 1979, aimed to be an address for Palestinians of all Jaffa’s denominations without discrimination. In addition to discriminatory municipal policies, the incentives for the establishment of al-Rabita included the rise of Palestinian consciousness outside Israel, thanks to high-profile activities of the PLO, and inside its borders following Land Day, as well as the coming of age of an educated and politically committed young generation. Nakhleh Shaqer, an activist who was in the group of founders, remembers al-Rabita’s first days: ‘I came back to Jaffa from my studies of engineering in Italy in 1977. In Italy, I learnt about student activism and Communism. Back home, it was a year after Land Day and the problems of Arabs in Jaffa were mounting. The urgent issue was housing, as the municipality activated a programme to demolish Arab run-down houses, and thus in effect push their inhabitants to abandon Jaffa. These policies, the fact that we were better educated and more selfconfident than our parents, and several successes of the PLO, encouraged us to work for our community’.460
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Nakhleh’s brother, Nasim, a lawyer, was also amongst the group of alRabita’s initiators. Like his brother, he has remained a main activist, chairing the League between 1984 and 1994. Nasim emphasises the fact that al-Rabita was founded as a non-denominational organisation as the main concept that brought about its success. ‘Unfortunately, people in Jaffa continued – and to a large extent still continue today – to preserve the denominational separation imposed on us by the British and then by Israeli rule. When we came with the idea of a united league, something of our own local council, there was a huge enthusiasm, and in our first elections, nearly 1000 people came to vote’.461 Al-Rabita deals with a host of community issues, including: • Housing. The League instigated a public campaign against the policy of encouraging the migration of Arabs from Jaffa, which included media reports, festivals and the establishment of a Jewish-Arab committee – which began an annual ‘work camp’ to clean up Jaffa. Eventually the sealing and destruction of Arab buildings was stopped. • Rehabilitation. In 1986, the League began a rehabilitation project aimed at stopping the policies of induced evacuation and physical neglect. Funds largely mobilised through Ta’awun were granted, usually to large families in the threatened areas, to allow them the opportunity to improve their living standards, making them less vulnerable to evacuation pressures. Al-Rabita succeeded in this manner in rehabilitating 102 housing units along the shore. • Delinquency and Drugs. Al-Rabita runs educational anti-drug projects for youth, and support groups for rehabilitated addicts. • Culture. Al-Rabita maintains an Arab cultural centre, which offers lectures, exhibitions and study evenings in addition to folklore, dance and theatre circles, and vocational courses. A summer camp held annually since 1987 enrols 72 Arab pupils who study in boarding schools or live with foster families outside Jaffa. • Legal and Information Centre. Lawyers, members of the Governing Board of al-Rabita and others, give legal advice to residents voluntarily. • Education. Al-Rabita arranges supplementary courses to school pupils at all grades. In addition, at the start of each school year al-Rabita supplies needy pupils with school materials’. 462 In recent years, al-Rabita also operates a kindergarten for 3-5 year olds.463 Authorities’ attitudes to al-Rabita’s work have seen many transformations throughout the years. According to the Shaqer brothers, the resistance of Shin Bet to their activities in the early days of the League
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was in the open, with activists called to investigations and managers of schools co-operating with the League threatened with job losses. ‘They created an atmosphere of fear around us, calling us PLO supporters. At that time, this was enough to associate us with terrorism and hint to the community that it was safer to stay away from us’, says Nasim. This stigma was echoed in the municipality’s attitude to the League. Until well into the 1990s, the municipality did not recognise al-Rabita as a representative forum. In 1992, a spokesman of the municipality told Ha’ir local newspaper: ‘They [al-Rabita’s activists] are not considered [by us] official representatives of the Arabs in Jaffa. The representatives are committees of the different neighbourhoods and the Islamic Waqf (pious endowment)’.464 The label of ‘PLO supporters’ was a dominant cause of confrontations between the municipality and al-Rabita. For example, in 1985, the Ministry of Transportation appointed Nakhleh Shaqer as its representative in the Municipal Committee of Transportation in TelAviv; according to Haaretz, officials within the municipality requested the appointment to be cancelled due to Shaqer’s public activity in al-Rabita, an organisation which the municipality defined as radical and ‘close in its opinions to the PLO’.465 Following the publication, the municipality withdrew its objection to the appointment.466 The tension between the municipality and the Palestinian community in Jaffa, including al-Rabita, saw a peak in July 1990, when the municipality revealed a plan for the construction of 5000 apartments for Jewish immigrants from Russia in rehabilitated areas of Jaffa. A direct conflict between the mayor, Shlomo Lahat, and Palestinians in Jaffa, broke out after Lahat described the plan as a programme ‘to Judaise’ Jaffa. Jaffa’s residents saw the plan as a continuation of the programme to push Palestinians out of Jaffa, and Lahat’s expression as a public declaration of this plan.467 Nevertheless, three years later, in 1993, alRabita-Lahat relations had improved so much as to lead to Lahat’s support of a list, made up from al-Rabita and other Palestinian representatives, who were to run for the municipality in the local elections. Lahat never explained this shift (nor did he agree to be interviewed for this study either). His changing attitudes might have been influenced by changes in the Israeli political scene following Oslo. AlRabita activists also believe they have succeeded in convincing segments of the Jewish public opinion in the justice of their cause. Lahat’s and other Jews’ support was crucial for the success of the list, since Palestinians alone have not constituted enough of the franchise to have a representative in the Tel-Aviv-Jaffa municipality. Al-Rabita’s close relations with the Communist Party in Israel meant that the League
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enjoyed Jewish co-operation since its establishment. Towards the participation in the municipal elections, an Arab-Jewish Committee has supported al-Rabita’s list and the success was evident – the first-ever Arab representative in the Tel-Aviv-Jaffa Municipality was elected. Out of the 4400 votes the list received, 800 were Jewish votes in Tel-Aviv.468 Al-Rabita was not the only party in the Arab list, called ‘All of Us for Jaffa’. Rather, it was a coalition of all the NGOs active in Jaffa, including the Islamic Council and the Orthodox Council. The list represented a unity of two parties: the Communist Party and the Democratic Front for Peace and Equality. In order to represent all parties within the coalition, the Christian and Muslim representatives rotated the seat in the Municipality: Khaled Kabub, the Muslim representative, represented the list in the first years, whereas Nasim Shaqer acted as the Christian representative in the second half. Both Nasim Shaqer and Khaled Kabub saw the representation in the Municipality as a positive development. ‘A representative in the Municipality is a very important development of what we started in al-Rabita in 1976’, Shaqer says: ‘We started out our activity as a protesting body, aiming to raise awareness of the authorities, which we thought did not know of the poor situation of Jaffa… Then we found out, unsurprisingly, that the authorities knew exactly whatever there was to know, but they were not going to solve the problems for us. Therefore, the second stage in al-Rabita was to move from protest to services… Sending a representative of our own to the Municipality was the logical next step’.469 Khaled Kabub, summarising his two and a half years in the Municipality, also believed it was the right thing to do. Kabub had finished his law studies in the Hebrew University in 1987, and was active thereafter in Jaffa’s public affairs, especially over the issue of Muslim Waqf assets. In a journalistic interview at the end of his post, he argued that the situation of the Palestinian community in Jaffa had much improved because it was represented in the Municipality. In the interview, he boasted the recruitment of hundreds of thousands of shekels to Muslim and Christian institutions from municipal budgets that were previously given to Jewish institutions. Kabub was also proud of having solved the day nursery problem for 300 Arab children in Jaffa, in a 4 million shekel special budget of the Municipality. ‘The fruits of my achievements will be felt in Jaffa in the coming years’, he said.470 But residents of Jaffa were not as impressed by the work as their
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representative in the Municipality. In the same article summarising Kabub’s years as a member of the Municipality, residents complained Kabub had used his position to help his relatives only, and that he had wasted the chance to promote Jaffa affairs due to his close relations with the mayor. A 50 year old resident told the journalist he voted for the Arab list after years of voting Labour, but when he needed help, Kabub did not find the time to help him. A member of the Parents’ Committee in the primary school, Achva, concluded the complaints: ‘The list has become part of the establishment. This fact explains why it did not offer a treatment when we needed it’.471 Nasim Shaqer admits that the popularity of al-Rabita has decreased with time, partly due to its joining the Municipality. ‘I think the watershed was the day we started to provide services. When you act as a service provider, people identify you with the establishment, and you can never give enough or solve all problems. Our membership in the Municipality was indeed part of this trend. But I do not think that we could do anything differently, considering the difficult situation of the community’.472 Al-Rabita defines itself a non-partisan league, open to residents of Jaffa of all political views. Its proximity to the Communist Party, however, is well known in the community. The main activists, including all nine board members, are active members in the party and indeed it was the Communist Party that partially funded the united list running for the Municipality. However, the daily activities of al-Rabita are funded by Ta’awun and the New Israel Fund. Al-Rabita’s activists justifiably take pride in the contribution of the organisation to the community. Since its establishment, al-Rabita has constituted an arena for cultural and political discussion among the Palestinian community in Jaffa. Elections for its leadership constantly draw popular participation. And it has empowered a disintegrated community, as well as individuals, vis-à-vis the authorities. However, al-Rabita’s flexibility of tactics and the occasional success of its campaigns paradoxically highlight the limited power of Palestinian NGOs in Israel to change discriminatory policies imposed by state and local authorities. Al-Rabita’s initial protest tactics succeeded in halting some home demolition plans of the municipality, a major and tangible achievement for the community. However, in order to fully implement a housing solution, and in light of the variety of other problems faced by the Palestinian community in Jaffa, al-Rabita was pushed to offer services – first, in addition to protest campaigns, later, as a main strategy for action. This new strategy, in turn, has forced the association to cope with the pressures of mounting expectations. More significantly, as a result of this new strategy, al-Rabita came to be viewed as an establishment in the
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eyes of the local population. The next stage, an attempt to impose a change from within the municipality, once again brought about ambivalent results, using the community’s political power and strengthening political connections with like-minded Jews in Tel-Aviv, yet enhancing the establishment image of the association and losing more of its independent stand in relation to the municipality. In addition to the complex relationship with Israeli institutions, the case of al-Rabita also sheds light on the relations of PNGOs in Israel with the Communist Party. The Communist Party in Israel was involved in the establishment or activities of many first-generation Palestinian organisations in Israel, including student organisations and professional unions. The proliferation of registered NGOs in the second generation, however, occurred simultaneously with the decline of the Communist Party. According to leaders of the party, this simultaneous occurrence was not incidental. Both ‘Isam Makhul, an Arab representative of the party in the Knesset and Tamar Gujanski, a Jewish MK representing the party, believe that the new generation of PNGOs in Israel represent a shift away from ideological activism aiming to change society towards a pragmatic focus on technical issues, which dictates a resort to nonconfrontational means. Makhul also sees the NGOs as part of a tendency to prefer nationalist Palestinian agenda and patterns of activity to joint Jewish-Palestinian activism. He believes that the proliferation of PNGOs in Israel reflects similar tendencies to those leading to the establishment of national Arab parties in Israel since 1989.473 The case of al-Rabita demonstrates this process, to some extent. Although most of its main activists are members of the Communist party, the organisation refrained from direct association with the party from its early days, in order to attract members of a wide ideological spectrum. In this respect, al-Rabita demonstrates the preference to unity and pragmatism over political ideology. Moreover, as most of its leadership is active in the Communist Party as well as in al-Rabita, it demonstrates a common criticism in NGO literature, namely, that NGOs tend to encourage activism of people who were active anyway, rather than encourage participation of other strata. Instead of being active in ideological parties, these activists are attracted to work in NGOs.474 Al-Rabita demonstrates the merits of joint activism with Jewish Israelis, from its first camp to the municipality’s list. The organisation has continued to co-operate with Jewish partners throughout the difficult period of the current Intifada. The city of Jaffa did not see any serious clashes between demonstrators and the police in October 2000. In the last three years, there were also no clashes between Jews and Arabs in
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the city except once, in early June 2001, when Jews stormed the main mosque in the city, the Hassan Beck mosque, following a terror attack in which a suicide bomber from the West Bank town of Qalqiliya killed 15 teenagers at a nightclub in Tel Aviv. Throughout this period, al-Rabita has continued to conduct its struggle for the Arab residents of Jaffa, especially in the field of housing which remains the main problem of the community, from within the municipality. The organisation was engaged with some fund raising for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza and invited speakers to give lectures on the situation faced by Palestinians there. However, its principal activities remained in the local realm. The institutionalisation process of the association also continues. In addition to the volunteering chair, the organisation has appointed a full-time managing director. In order to help to fund the on-going projects of alRabita, including the kindergarten and the house refurbishment project, the association established in 2002 a printing house with the purpose that profits may serve as a source of funding.475 Women Activism in Local NGOs: the Acre Arab Women’s Association Like their high profile in national Palestinian NGOs in Israel, women take an active part in the local NGO arena, which enables them to challenge traditional conventions along with challenging discriminatory policies imposed by the authorities. The data in the guide of Palestinian NGOs in Israel published by the Jaffa Research Centre reveals the scope of women’s activity in the local arena. Thirty-two of the 164 local organisations reviewed in the guide had women on their managing boards. This accounted for nearly 20 per cent of the overall organisations. Women’s proportion on boards is higher if the 38 religious organisations are not considered. None of these organisations, whether Islamic or Christian, has women on their boards. (This, of course, does not imply that women do not take part in their activities.) In this case, looking at only the 126 secular organisations reviewed in the Guide, women accounted for a fourth of all board members. Nine of the organisations (5.5%) worked solely to promote women’s issues at the community level. Even more than in the national arena, it is clear that women’s activism in local NGOs is facilitated by the ‘borderline’ position these NGOs occupy between the private and the public spheres.476 The Acre Arab Women’s Association, established in 1975, provides an illuminating example for the meaning of this borderline. Formed to solve a specific, private problem of a specific group of mothers among the Palestinian
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elite in Acre, the organisation has expanded; both its activists and the organisation itself have acquired political importance that has exceeded the original place and time. Sociologist Mariam Mar’i was one of the initiators and founders of the organisation, whose role in the community she later came to analyse as a consequence of the increasing involvement of Palestinian women in public affairs in Acre at the time, especially in the field of education. In an article she wrote together with her husband, the late sociologist Sami Mar’i, they have emphasised the centrality of the aftermath of the 1948 war on the mobility of Palestinian women in Israel. They argued that following the war, social pressures for conformity within the Palestinian community in Acre were reduced. This resulted from the abrupt discontinuity with the traditional way of life and the fact that most Palestinian families in Acre were strangers to one another, arriving as refugees from various villages. Pressures against female education were also reduced in light of the separate educational systems for Palestinians and Jews and the availability of Christian schools for girls. At the same time, the difficult economic conditions faced by the community forced many school-age boys to abandon school and turn to work, making formal education primarily the privilege of females. In addition, women – though not fully qualified – started filling some of the urgent demand for Arab teachers, following the flight and expulsion of most teachers in 1948. These developments led to a situation in which women dominated the educated elite of Acre’s Palestinian community. In fact, seven out of ten university students from Acre in 1973 were women. Hence, it is not surprising that when the Acre’s Arab University Student Association was established in 1974, its membership was predominantly composed of female students and graduates. This organisation did not last long. Yet immediately after its disintegration in 1975, its leading women activists formed the Acre’s Arab Women’s Association.477 The organisation was established by four friends, working mothers with toddlers, in order to run a kindergarten to fit their children’s age. Husniya ‘Omari, one of the founders and the chair of the association since 1998, recalls the beginning: ‘The idea emerged in a friendly meeting over afternoon coffee. We met to chat, and realised that we all suffered since there was no toddler kindergarten in the Arab community of Acre, and that we all did not like the traditional solution of leaving our children with our mothers’.478 The founders’ children first attended a Jewish-run kindergarten, where they faced, according to Mar’i, racist comments from Jewish children and where the teacher referred to them as ‘socially retarded’, just because of their Palestinian origin and disregarding the real
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background of their parents – all highly educated. This led the mothers to register their organisation as an Ottoman Association, and act to open the first Palestinian early childhood nursery in Acre. It took them four years to receive a room for their activities from the Acre municipality. By this stage, their own children were already too old for a nursery. However, winning this limited support of the municipality marked a watershed in the community’s support for the association. Up to this time, Mar’i says, relatives of the activists were worried that they would be viewed as rebels by the community and as illegitimate political activists by the authorities. The little support of the community, as well as the increasing registration of children to the nursery, reassured families of the project’s importance.479 A landmark in the development of the Acre Arab Women’s Association was its adoption in 1983 by Ta’awun. Its funds – standing at the sum of U.S. $991,000 between 1983 and 1998 – enabled the opening of Dar al-Tuful al-‘Arabi (the Centre of Arab Kids) by the association, as a training centre for Arab kindergarten teachers. 480 The need for the centre arose for two reasons. First, there were no qualified Palestinian teachers for early education at the time, as the nursery of the Acre Arab Women’s Association was the first of its kind in the area. In its early years, the association qualified its teachers individually. This strategy proved problematic because when a teacher left, no immediate replacement could be found. Secondly, the centre drew interest from women groups in neighbouring villages, who asked and received assistance from the Acre team in establishing similar nurseries in their own localities. Qualified teachers therefore had increasing employment opportunities. Ta’awun’s involvement led to the introduction of national contents to the centre’s projects. Children’s books published by the centre, for example, put an emphasis on Palestinian heritage, and teachers have communicated with the children in classical Arabic (fusha) to promote its usage. In addition to these projects, the association has operated a library and a money-loan programme for widowed and divorced women. Seventeen women are registered as members of the association. The general manager and the kindergarten manager are waged-workers, as is the professional staff. All the paid staff and volunteers are women.481 This is related to a broader development. Since the 1980s, governmental ministries have increasingly privatised their activities, nominating NGOs to run programmes on their behalf. This policy has led to the establishment of local Palestinian NGOs in Israel. Thus, for example, the mid-1980s witnessed the proliferation of Palestinian associations providing services to the elderly. This
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proliferation resulted from the new regulation of the governmental organisation for the elderly (Eshel), which conditioned any financial support of projects upon their running through local associations.482 The Acre Arab Women Association applied, therefore, to the Ministry of Education for recognition of its training programme. Similar programmes were recognised in the Jewish sector, but none in the Palestinian community. In 1994, this recognition was granted thanks to the interest and support of the then-Minister of Education, Shulamit Aloni, from the liberal party, Meretz. This development further expanded the graduates’ employment opportunities.483 Israeli authorities never directly interfered with the work of the association. However, according to Mar’i, following the expansion of activities after 1983, she received an indirect threat through a Jewish colleague in a different, co-existence organisation in which she was active. The colleague said he was asked to deliver a message, that the authorities were following the association’s work and knew it was aiming to establish an Arab university in Israel. Mar’i argued that such a plan was never included in the association’s aims nor did it have the capacity to execute such a plan. In any case, no real threat followed this message. About a decade later, at the beginning of the 1990s, Mar’i was called to the Acre police for an informal investigation of her activities. The Acre Arab Women’s Association was the excuse used by the police for the inquiry, which in effect dealt with her host of activities as a lecturer and activist. Once again, this event did not lead to any direct interference with the activity of the association. The registration of the association according to the new Israeli Law of Associations also did not meet any official objection. However, like many associations, The Acre Arab Women’s Association found the process of re-registering unaffordable for a long period. The consequent delay meant that the association missed the transition period allowed by the new law and had to register as a new organisation.484 Local Organisations, Nation-wide Agenda The Role of Local Islamic Organisations in the Development of Palestinian Civil Society in Israel As elsewhere in the Middle East, local organisation of Palestinians in Israel has been highly influenced by the growth of the Islamic movement. Not only has the movement directly established many of the locally active Palestinian NGOs in Israel, its focus on local activism has also motivated the establishment of secular organisations, which imitated
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some of the patterns of organisation used by the Islamic movement in order to compete with its influence at grassroots level. The growth of the Islamic movement is traced back to the aftermath of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza in 1967, which gave Muslims in Israel access to the holy sites in Jerusalem and introduced them to thriving religious institutions, seminars, bookstores and libraries. Other factors that contributed to the movement’s rise include the rise of Islamic movements in the Middle East since the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran; the weakness of the formal Muslim establishment in Israel, which was subordinate to the Israeli authorities and as such, lacked popular respect. As the state controlled virtually all the Islamic education in Israel, the Muslim establishment also faced a critical succession crisis in the 1960s, when the first generation of clerks, educated prior to 1948, reached the age of retirement; and the popular support of the Communist Party among the Palestinian community in Israel declined.485 In the local elections of 1989, lists affiliated to the Islamic movement won five Mayor and Local Chairman positions, in addition to 45 seats on 11 municipal councils. In 1996, the movement split over a decision to participate in the elections to the Knesset. Participation was initiated by the southern branch of the movement, headed by spiritual leader of the movement – Sheikh ‘Abdalah Nimr Darwish of Kafr Qassem, which is considered to be moderate in its attitude towards Israel. The northern branch of the movement, headed by then Umm al-Fahem’s mayor, Ra’id Salah, objected. The Islamic movement-backed list to the Knesset joined the Arab Democratic Party and the Arab-Islamic Bloc to form the United Arab List (UAL). The list obtained 24.5% of the Arab vote in 1996, gaining four Knesset seats. In the 1999 elections, the UAL increased its representation in the Knesset to five seats. The effective mobility of the grassroots through local associations, scholars agree, has constituted one of the most important factors in sustaining the movement’s success. This emphasis emerged at the second stage of the movement’s development, in the early 1980s. In its early years (1970-1979), the Islamic movement in Israel focused on preaching and education by individuals, beginning with the return of Sheikh ‘Abdallah Nimr Darwish in 1972 from a religious seminar in Nablus to his village, Kafr Qassem. Following its short and unsuccessful experience in organising a radical militant movement, the movement has adopted legal and political methods since 1981. These methods have been locally based activities. The Islamic movement established thousands of local associations in Palestinian villages throughout Israel. Though religious, these associations have dealt with a variety of social issues: helping the
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needy, operating cheap kindergartens, tutorials for weak students, computer and language classes, clinics, elderly clubs and much more.486 The local focus of the Islamic movement in Israel was accentuated by annual ‘work camps’, organised in different Palestinian localities in Israel, in which the community raised funds and volunteered to carry out public projects, such as painting schools, the construction of pavements and even a fountain. According to Darwish, the movement organised the first ‘work camp’ as early as 1975 in Kafr Qassem. This activity became institutionalised in 1984, when a major camp took place in Umm alFahem. Darwish explains the immediate success of the Islamic movement in the community’s enthusiasm for the idea of self-help: ‘When I established the movement, I hoped that our children’s generation would enjoy its fruits. I was astonished by the thirst of people for a movement that would really act in the field, not simply complain about the authorities’ discrimination’.487 External observers have also testified to this enthusiasm. The Israeli author David Grossman recorded his impressions of the Islamic movement’s work camp in Kafr Bara in the Little Triangle thus: ‘I recalled the ziker ceremony of the Darwish sect I once attended in the Old City of Jerusalem – for several hours the men of the zawia fired themselves into an ecstasy. A hint of the same internal fire and addiction is here tonight. Everywhere you look hammers clang and picks strike. The odour of asphalt sticks to the skin’.488 Although the national leadership of the Islamic movement in Israel encouraged the establishment of grassroots associations by different local branches, there was no co-ordination between the organisations until 1992, when the Union of Islamic Associations was formed. In its early days, the committee co-ordinated the work of six registered organisations. By 1999, however, it had come to co-ordinate the activities of 90 organisations, all formally registered with the Israeli Registrar of Associations and active at the local level. The head of the union between 1992 and 1998, Hatib Taj al-Din, explains that it focused on guiding the Islamic movement’s organisations through the stages of registration and legal management. It regularly organised conferences for this purpose, in one of which the head of the Arab NGOs Department in the Registrar of Associations office, Rahamim Shemer, informed the Islamic associations of their legal obligations and rights.489 The proliferation of local Islamic organisations motivated other political institutions to set up their own, competing associations. In Umm al-Fahem, for example, the secular-socialist extra parliamentary movement, Sons of the Country (Abna al-Balad) opened a free-of-charge
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medical clinic with the stated intention of competing with the service of the Islamic movement in the city.490 Needless to say, in this case the competition favoured the citizens, but in other cases the competition between the factions was violent and destructive.491 Indeed, anthropologist Khalil Nakhleh saw plurality of organisations within the different Palestinian localities as a disturbing sign of growing fragmentation. Nakhleh mentions the case of the Palestinian community in Haifa, numbering 22,000 people in the early 1990s. In ten years, six grassroots organisations were established with the aim of effecting social development for the Palestinian residents. These were either comprehensive, or focused on a certain neighbourhood, or worked for preserving and defending Islamic Waqfs, or in the fields of women and children. For Nakhleh, the large number of organisations and the fact that attempts to co-ordinate them have failed were negative signs of fragmentation.492 In contrast to Nakhleh’s approach, Mordechai Bar-On has argued (in a different context) that in spite of the weakness fragmentation brings to any movement, such pluralism enables the representation of a variety of views and positions, and facilitates the establishment of coalitions on shared ideas without the need for the various groups to give up their identities.493 The examples in the following sections of the chapter seem to support Bar-On’s observation. Scholars have been concerned with the question of whether the grassroots activism facilitated by the Islamic movement’s wide host of associations promotes civil society. Like many Islamic movements in the Middle East, there seems to be a tension between the long-term vision of the Islamic movement in Israel, which rejects the democratic-civil social order in favour of a religious one, and the methods used to promote the Movement. These are based on democratic apparatuses such as elections and legal associations. In light of this strategy, Makarov seems justified in arguing that the Islamic movement in Israel has promoted the ‘maturation of certain elements of civil society:’ ‘Besides enriching the associational life in the Arab sector, the Islamic movement has enhanced political participation, both in terms of increasing the people’s contribution to public resources and promoting autonomy of the individual, liberating… his/her political expression from the constraints of kinship structure’.494 At the same time, the Islamic movement is a reactionary force. First, it does not share the civil vision of most secular NGOs, which campaign for Israel to become a ‘state of its citizens’ through universal application
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of democratic laws. Rather, it supports the administrative division between religious denominations, as adopted by Israel from the Ottoman system of millet.495 Second, it acts for the Muslim community alone. And third, although women run their own local Islamic organisations within the movement and although most Islamic-run municipalities have Islamic women committees dealing with women’s issues, women have no formal role in the movement’s male leadership. This stems from an ideological position, as the movement disapproves of the idea of equal rights for women.496 The contribution of religious movements to the proliferation of local organisations is highlighted by the similarities between the patterns of organisations of Palestinians and Ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israel. The little data available for the geographic scope of Israeli NGOs in general reveals that most act at the national level. The opposite pattern reveals itself for organisations of the Ultra-Orthodox Jewish community. Throughout the 1990s, most Israeli NGOs were registered in the three major cities: Tel-Aviv, Jerusalem and Haifa, as well as in the UltraOrthodox city of Bnei-Brak. A more detailed data existing for Jerusalembased NGOs sheds light on this information: the largest number of NGOs per citizen was found on the one hand at the centre of the city, including mainly head offices of national organisations, lobby NGOs, political organisations, and service NGOs that were seeking access to wide populations; but, on the other hand, there was also a high concentration of local NGOs at the Ultra-Orthodox neighbourhoods.497 A comparison between the Palestinian and Ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities in Israel goes beyond the scope of this book, yet it is noteworthy that local organisations were more prominent than the national average among the two largest communities at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder in Israel,498 which are both non-Zionists and feature a higher presence of religious institutions and organisations than the rest of Israeli society.499 Despite the many differences between these two communities, these common features may hint at the fact that local organisations arise where public services are scarce, either because people pay little tax or due to a policy of discrimination; the community is ideologically alienated from the state and thus prone to run a semiautonomous social life; and an already existing institutional net – in both cases, a religious one – facilitates at least part of the NGO activity at the local level. State response to the proliferation of Islamic organisations, which shifted from encouragement to coercion at different times, illuminates the guidelines of state attitude towards Palestinian NGOs in Israel in
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general. Despite the short violent experience of the Islamic movement, authorities did not restrict the movement’s freedom to established dozens of organisations. There have been, in fact, even some instances of co-operation between state agencies and the Islamic movement in managing local projects. For example, Al-Rahma Anti-Drug Association, which was established by the Islamic movement in Umm al-Fahem in 1987, has become a ‘joint venture’ of the movement and the National Anti-Drug Association in Israel. The organisation serves several towns in the Wadi ‘Ara area and is considered to be the best anti-drug association in the Palestinian society in Israel. Similarly, kindergartens established by the Islamic movement in Umm al-Fahem were transferred to the Municipality in 1993, after the movement came to head it in 1989, and were thus incorporated in the funding system of the Ministry of Education. These two cases were by no means isolated or exceptional.500 State support of the Islamic movement was vividly manifested in the inclusion of the Umm al-Fahem municipality in a debt-lift programme (known as the ‘takeoff programme’) in 1992. Umm al-Fahem was the first Arab municipality to be included in the programme. Its inclusion benefited the local Islamic Movement’s municipality, which came into power in 1988 after two decades of Communist government that suffered from huge deficits and debts (reaching 5-9 million Shekels – about £2-3 million – in 1989). This gesture was no doubt a part of the Labour government’s policy of eliminating the discrimination of Palestinians in Israel. But the choice of Umm al-Fahem, the biggest Islamic-movement-run municipality in Israel, reflects the positive approach of the state towards the Movement at the time.501 The state’s positive approach towards the Islamic Movement and its associations may be explained by the ongoing state policy of supporting reactionary forces among the Palestinian minority, as well as the policy of divideand-rule. In spite of the nationalist rhetoric it has sometimes explicitly used, the Islamic Movement may have benefited from the perception of religion as a reactionary and dividing force in the Palestine society in Israel which, as noted in Chapter Two, informed Israeli policies from very early on. This approach towards the movement was not exclusive, however. As the case of the closure of the Relief Committee presented in the previous chapter has illustrated, the authorities did not hesitate to resort to violent means when the movement’s activity were deemed too threatening. Coercive steps included house arrests and press shutdowns.502
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The Campaign Against the Amendment to the Prevention of Terrorism Ordinance In May 23, 1989, the Knesset passed first reading a third amendment for the 1948 Prevention of Terrorism Ordinance. The amendment was designed to grant the General Security Services (Shin Bet) the discretion to stop the activity of organisations suspected of involvement in terror activities, and expropriate all properties of suspicious organisations without a trial. The purpose of the amendment was ‘to fight the attempt of terror organisations to gain control over their target population through economic means’.503 The legislation posed a potential risk for the freedom of Palestinian NGOs in Israel. In response, a Coalition for the Freedom of Organisation was established to prevent its completion. The establishment of this coalition marked an important landmark in the development of local PNGOs in Israel. It was one of the first instances of large-scale co-operation of Palestinian grassroots organisations. It was also the first successful experience of a campaign within the Knesset, which was well run, orchestrated with Jewish co-operation and international support. The National Council of Heads of Arab Localities (NCALC) also took an active part in the coalition. The head of the council, Ibrahim Nimr Hussein, explained the reason behind the struggle, writing that when Palestinians in Israel ask the government for money for development, ‘…they are told that money for this purpose comes from Jewish donors abroad and they must themselves go out and seek such funding. But now, as they begin to do just this, the government starts trying to put a stop to it.’504 The first official meeting of the coalition took place in the Nazareth Culture Club in January 1990. The Culture Club, a nation-wide PNGO, initiated this meeting in which thirty PNGOs participated.505 Soon the coalition grew to include over 70 grassroots organisations, in addition to the Follow-Up Committee of the Arabs in Israel, the National Committee of Heads of Arab Localities, and Israeli co-existence and human rights organisations. The Jewish fund, New Israel Fund, and its professional supporting body, Shatil, joined the coalition a few months after its establishment. They contributed to the professional management of the campaign and attracted the support of Jewish organisations in the United States, such as the American Jewish Congress. According to a concluding report of the coalition’s co-ordinators in Shatil, the strategies of the campaign derived from their initial belief that Israeli public opinion could not be recruited against the amendment. This view was first based on the fact that the amendment was presented as a means to fight terrorism – an aim that the vast majority of Israelis supported, especially with the background of the Intifada in the occupied
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West Bank and Gaza Strip. Second, activists did not believe in their ability to mobilise Israelis to object to an amendment that would have had limiting consequences predominantly for the Palestinian minority, because of the minority’s peripheral and often hostile image in Israeli public opinion. A time limitation was a third obstacle to the campaign, as the law was due to come up for its second reading in the Knesset. The coalition conducted its campaign through five channels. First, it recruited supportive lobby inside the Knesset. Second, it led a public campaign, with conferences in Nazareth and Tel-Aviv, and demonstrations at road junctions and beside the Minister of Justice’s home. Third, it ran a media campaign, through press conferences and personal connections with journalists in the Arabic, Hebrew, and foreign press. Fourth, it recruited Jewish supporters in the United States. In December, 43 Jewish activists in the United States sent a letter to the Knesset, supporting the campaign. Their support evoked further support to the coalition from Jewish Israelis. Fifth, it appealed to support in European countries. The report concludes: ‘The Coalition’s aim was to ‘bury the amendment’s suggestion’ before it is raised to a second reading in the Knesset, and that indeed was achieved’.506 This campaign against the amendment for the Prevention of Terrorism Ordinance illustrates the contribution of the mass of local PNGOs in Israel to the promotion of the national aims of the minority. The initiative for the campaign emerged at the national-level Palestinian and Jewish NGOs. Local organisations, however, shared the interest of the campaign’s initiators, because like national NGOs they too were to suffer from tightening control, had the amendment been accepted. This campaign may therefore be defined as a top-down NGO campaign: a campaign that is led by nation-wide organisations, but gains its impact from the participation of a large number of local organisations. The next section, discussing the role of a single local NGO, Sawt al-‘Amel (The Voice of the Worker), in raising the concerns of local workers and unemployed national awareness; as well as the campaign of ‘unrecognised’ Bedouin villages for state’s recognition and services, provides examples of a bottom-up campaign. This type of campaign brings local interests to the centre of public awareness. It begins with the initiative of local NGOs, to which nation-wide institutions later contribute their expertise.
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From Local Concern to Nation-Wide Agenda Sawt al-‘Amel (‘The Voice of the Worker’) Sawt al-‘Amel, in its first name The Workers Advice Centre (WAC, Ma’an in Hebrew), was established in 1989 by a Jew – Assaf Adiv, and a Palestinian – Wehbe Badarneh, both long-time political activists at the national level. The organistaion itself, however, focused since its establishment on the concerns of workers and unemployed Palestinians from Nazareth and the villages around it, some of them, like the village of ‘Ein Mahel, regularly occupy the first places in the national table of unemployment. Sawt al-‘Amel represents workers and unemployed vis-àvis their employers and in the courts, serving thousands of men and women every year. However, the accumulation of cases the organisation has dealt with since its early days in the mid 1990s led activists to draw some general conclusions regarding the institutional discrimination of Palestinian workers and unemployed in Israel. The association continues to serve mainly the local community around Nazareth, due to its limited resources. Yet, gradually, its activists offer their services to larger segments of the Palestinian society in Israel. The history of the association goes back to Derekh Hanitzotz, a leftist organisation that funded an initiative of a daughter organisation, al-Sabar, to deal with workers’ welfare. Four Jewish members of Derekh Hanitzotz, including Adiv, were brought to trial for being members of in the Palestinian organisation of Naif Hawatmeh. Their newspaper was shut down by administrative order, and all four received prison sentences ranging from one to two and a half years. Adiv and Badarneh started learning the issue of workers’ welfare after Adiv was released from jail. Since no other organisation dealt with the issue, they received many calls for help and the organisation quickly expanded and took on board a lawyer specialising in the subject.507 Although the WAC was established as a trade union to represent mainly Palestinian workers and unemployed people, and not as a political organisation, it has been caught in a conflict with state authorities, now represented by the Registrar of Associations. WAC appealed for registration in June 1998; almost a year and half later, in February 2000, the Registrar rejected the request on the basis of public deception, claiming that WAC presented itself as a formal association while it was still unregistered. The Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) represented the WAC in its appeal to the Registrar against the decision. However, the Registrar refused to accept this representation, arguing that ACRI had no direct interest in the case. The association appealed to the District Court in Jerusalem, where the state presented
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Badarna’s past imprisonment (in 1989 he was imprisoned for nine month for supporting the PLO) as the cause for refusing to register the association. As his own ‘past’ was not invoked, Assaf Adiv has argued that the decision was racist. The District Court in Jerusalem on May 2000 overruled the Registrar’s decision and approved the registration of the WAC as a nonprofit association.508 Following the establishment of a party – the Democratic Action Movement – by Adiv and his colleagues, Badarneh and Adiv went different ways, and today Badarneh is the manager of Sawt al-‘Amel. The public campaigns of the association so far concentrated in the local area of Nazareth. In 1999, the association was involved in the protest of unemployed people from ‘Ein Mahel against the Employment Bureau in Upper Nazareth, arguing that the Bureau intended to deprive unemployed people of their benefits under the false premise that they refused work offered to them. In 2001, Sawt al-‘Amel staged a successful struggle for the return of benefits to unemployed people from the region who lost their benefits during a period of six months in which the Bureau of Employment was closed. The Ministry for Work and Welfare closed the Bureau as a punishment, following clashes between the unemployed and staff in the Bureau. Badarneh argues that the association had long warned the Bureau of the possibility of clashes, due to unbearable conditions in an understaffed and over-crowded office that serves 10,000 people. ‘The conditions in the Bureau, the crowding, the waiting time, are inhumane. And clashes wer just waiting to happen’, says Badarneh.509 When the Bureau reopened, six months later, the association managed to convince the Ministry to return benefits to all those whose benefits had been stopped as a result of the closure, as well as to those who had been fired during those six months and hadn’t received any benefit at all. Despite this local focus, the association identifies some patterns of institutional discrimination against Palestinian workers and the unemployed. Thus, for example, it stages a protest against the deprivation of benefits to unemployed Muslims who visit Mecca in order to fulfil the religious commandment of pilgrimage (Haj). It also stages a campaign against the legal deprivation of benefits from 18-20 year olds, legislated because Jews of this age (though not Arabs) are required tho serve the Israeli Army. In recent years, Sawt al-‘Amel has been advertising its services in the Arabic media throughout the Galilee and Wadi ‘Ara regions. Moreover, the organisation is currently preparing a lawsuit, together with ACRI, to be submitted to the Supreme Court of Justice, regarding the right for unemployment benefits for property owners
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whose property is seen to have an earning potential. This case may have implications for a large number of unemployed Palestinian citizens, because Arabs in Israel, more than Jews, let their children and children’s families stay in their home for free. This choice is made due to severe shortage of land in the Arab villages and towns, the poverty experienced by many Palestinian families in Israel, and the tradition of the hamula (clan) way of living. This pattern, however, deprives many Palestinian citiznes of the right to receive an unemploymenet benefit, or at the very least reduces the sum of benefit they are entitled to, as the Ministry of Welfare evaluates the potential value of the property had it been rented in the free market. In mobilising these general struggles, Sawt al-‘Amel is aided by Jewish NGOs such as ACRI and jurists from Tel Aviv University. Notably, although Sawt al-‘Amel was established in order to serve the Palestinian community, it receives applications from Jews as well, and helps them in the same way. ‘Deprivation and exploitation are universal. When someone asks for our help against his or her exploiters, we are always willing to help’.510 The Campaign of the Unrecognised Villages for Recognition and Services Background The campaign of the ‘unrecognised’ Palestinian villages in Israel began locally throughout the 1970s, as a separate campaign of different villages. 511 With time, many of the different local organisations started coordinating their activities. In the second phase of the campaign, national organisations found a general interest in the agenda of the unrecognised villages and joined the protest. At this point, the campaign exceeded its local boundaries and acquired a political significance, often shaping the national agenda of the Palestinian leadership in Israel. Like the battle against the amendment of the Prevention of Terrorism Ordinance, the Palestinian campaign for recognition of the unrecognised villages was supported and aided by external actors to the Palestinian society, outside and inside Israel.In 1965, Israel has enacted its Planning and Building Law. The law set a national outline plan for the country’s future development, zoning land for residential, agricultural and industrial uses. Following its enactment, any form of unlicensed construction, or construction on agricultural lands, was outlawed. While the law incorporated 123 Arab villages, it is estimated that over 100 other Arab villages (in which 60,000-70,000 residents were living512) were excluded from the planning schemes. These villages are located in the Galilee
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region in the north as well as in the Negev region in the south, and house Bedouin-Arab residents in all of the Negev region and mostly Bedouins in the Galilee as well. These villages have come to be known as the Unrecognised Villages following this exclusion and the reclassification of their lands as agricultural. The practical implications of the exclusion have been numerous. Due to the agricultural status of the lands, all buildings in these villages – including private family home and public sites – were considered illegal. Existing buildings have not been able to obtain permits, whereas those that were already equipped with such permits had them rescinded. Since the villages were unrecognised, they had no local authority to apply for a change in the status of their land, nor were they represented in any regional or national planning committee. Moreover, the law authorised the planning institutions to prosecute homeowners for building without a permit and demolish houses when such action is deemed to be in the public interest. According to the Arab Association for Human Rights, the law provided the legal basis for a policy of planned demolitions. Between 1993 and 1996, for example, 1440 Palestinian houses were demolished, 624 of them outside any court process. During this period, Palestinian homes accounted for 94% of all demolitions in Israel, despite forming only 57% of all recorded unlicensed buildings.513 The unrecognised villages, which are neither run by their own local councils nor belong to other local governing bodies, have also been deprived of all public services. Article 157A of the Planning and Building Law prohibits national utility companies from connecting a building to national electricity, water or telephone networks if no building permit exists. Consequently, the unrecognised localities were not connected to the water network. The residents were forced to transport water from neighbouring villages, suffering from low standards of water quality and quantity. None of the villages is connected to the sewage network, and many homes are not equipped with a bathroom and are prohibited from building one. Outbreaks of jaundice and diarrhoea have occurred among children in the unrecognised localities, due to polluted water. Only four Galilee villages and one village in the Negev are provided with national health care services. Only one village is connected to the electricity network, while all the others run private generators that provide sufficient electricity for lighting only. None of the villages is connected to the main road network. Only one village has its own school. In all other villages, students travel 6-9.5 miles to schools in recognised villages. Because of the distance and lack of a suitable study environment at home, achievement levels are low and there is a high student dropout
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rate. For example, in unrecognised ‘Arab al-Na’im, a small locality of 400 people next to the city of Karmiel in the Galilee, only one student has ever graduated from high school.514 Arguably, the deprivation of utilities served a policy, characterising the government’s strategy since the 1950s, to concentrate the residents of the unrecognised villages in fewer settlements of an urban nature.515 This policy advanced several goals, including (1) transfer of land to Jewish agricultural settlements; (2) the reduction of services’ costs, owing to concentration of residents in a smaller space; (3) forcing the Bedouin to work for the Jewish economy, whether industrial or agricultural, by depriving them of their traditional sources of living; (4) increase the number of Jews in under-populated areas (a process known as ‘Judaisation’); and (5) increase control over the population, and contain its organisation. In the Negev, the government established seven Bedouin townships, encouraging and pushing residents of unrecognised villages to relocate there.516 Various NGOs, both in the Galilee and in the Negev, took upon themselves the task of running national campaigns for recognition of the unrecognised villages and the provision of governmental services to these villages. Their activism relied on local organisations; some grew to represent more than one village – as was the case with the Association of Forty, which I will discuss shortly. Others, such as the local committee in Kammane, acted for their village alone but co-operated with regional and national organisations to further their impact. By and large, in spite of the large number of Palestinian citizens affected, political parties failed to promote the case of the unrecognised villages. This seems to have stemmed from the marginality of these villages; their lack of any official representation in institutionalised forums, which may have pressured parties to campaign for their rights; the urgent tangible needs required in the villages; and the confrontational nature of the campaign – a confrontation that may have seemed to go against the odds in its early days, given the governmental determination to deprive these villagers of recognition and services. Given these difficult conditions and the lack of any formal representation, the highprofile involvement of NGOs in the campaign for the unrecognised villages has been both necessary and likely. The Pioneering Organisation: The Association of Forty The Association of Forty was founded in 1978 as a local committee for the village of ‘Ein Hod in Mount Carmel. The residents of this small unrecognised village, numbering only 130 men and women at the time, were considered ‘Present Absentees’ by the Israeli Absentees’ Property
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Law (1950), after they left their village – the original ‘Ein Hod, only a few miles away, during the 1948 war. 517 The beginning was rather modest. The village’s eldest man called for a meeting and selected a committee to demand services and utilities for the village. Muhammad Abu al-Heija, the youngest of the men gathered together, was elected to chair the committee, and has remained the dedicated chair of the association ever since. The choice of villagers to act through a formal NGO demonstrates the importance of NGOs to grassroots struggles in the context of the Palestinian society in Israel. It illustrates the connections between other social forces, in this case the elderly of a village, and NGOs. Al-Heija describes the disillusionment from expectations that the state would sort the village’s problem, a disillusionment that brought to the establishment of the association: ‘We sincerely believed that our village was not provided with services because of some kind of a mistake, or maybe because older generations did not ask for services. We were taught that we were equal Israeli citizens, and we believed it’.518 Soon, however, he realised that the problem exceeded the borders of ‘Ein Hod alone, and that the deprivation of services was part of an intentional state policy. Moreover, according to Abu al-Heija, the ignorance of the residents of most unrecognised villages at the time did not fall far short of his own initial ignorance and naiveté, leading the committee to concentrate first on explaining to the villagers the context of the maltreatment they encountered – and their rights. When, in 1986, the government published a report (the Markovitch Committee Report519) that confirmed the strategy of service deprivation and house demolitions in the Palestinian unrecognised villages, and hastened the implementation of this policy, the association was formally organised on a national basis. Its name, the Association of Forty, resulted from an under estimation of the number of Palestinian unrecognised villages in Israel. The first official meeting, following its formal registration as an association with the Ministry of Interior, took place in December 1988 in ‘Ein Hod. Representatives of several unrecognised villages and other localities, both Palestinians and Jews, were present. The Association of Forty has focused on advocacy for the recognition of the Palestinian unrecognised villages in Israel and the provision of state services and utilities to these villages. As early as 1985, in Israel and abroad. The documentary ‘Not On Any Map’ won an international prize and was presented on the second channel of Israeli television. The association also publishes the monthly newspaper Sawt Al-Qura (The Voice of the Villages), issued in Arabic, Hebrew and English. The
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Association of Forty established a parliamentary lobby, comprised of members from Arab and Jewish parties, which has brought the issue of the unrecognised villages to discussion in the Knesset and its different committees. The Association of Forty bases its campaign on criticism of the discriminatory aspects of Israel’s National Outline Plan No. 31. One of the strengths of the association’s campaign has been its proposal of a professional and realistic alternative Master Plan that suggested solutions for the unrecognised villages relying on the principles of their nondemolition and the non-transference of their residents, and bestowing upon them the right to live on and develop the lands they have inherited from their ancestors. The campaign of the Association of Forty achieved its main goal: since 1992, eight unrecognised villages in the north were officially recognised, and many neighbourhoods and small localities were annexed to the juridical areas of adjacent Palestinian towns. The villages that were recognised are: ‘Ein Hod, Domeida, Kammane, Husseiniya, Humeira, Khawaled, al-Arian and Ras al-‘Ain (for their location, see map at the end of the chapter). While campaigning for recognition, the Association of Forty also provided some services to the residents of the villages. These included, first and foremost, legal advice against orders of house demolition and lands confiscation. In addition, the association has established and operated six kindergartens and trained supervisors from the unrecognised villages to oversee them. It has also established and operated three mother and child-care clinics, providing them with the necessary medicines, a doctor and a nurse. One of the association’s stated aims is creating an atmosphere of coexistence between the residents of these villages and their neighbours in particular, and between the two peoples of the state in general. Indeed, Israeli Jews have taken an active part in the association’s activities and management.520 The Campaign for the Recognition of Kammane The campaign of one village that won recognition as part of the Association of Forty’s campaign may demonstrate the connections between the local cause and the national organisation, characterising the campaign for recognition of the unrecognised villages as a whole. The Bedouin village of Kammane (numbering in the early 1990s around 650 people), located in the central Galilee, was established during the Ottoman period. The state of Israel recognised the village de-facto in 1948, by establishing a state school in its eastern wing, although the
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entire village was previously located on a mandatory military territory that has become a training field for the IDF (known as ‘Zone Nine’). Since 1954, however, when several villagers were hurt during military activity in the area, the state attempted to evacuate Kammane’s residents from their village. In 16 June 1963, the Israel Lands Administration demolished three houses in Kammane, later apologising and offering compensation for the brutality of the demolition procedure. In 1964, the state closed the school, arguing that its existence in a military zone endangered students and teachers alike. In 1972, the Ministry of Health stopped its provision of health services to the residents, following the exclusion of both eastern and western Kammane from the 1965 National Master Plan. This exclusion from the plan has turned Kammane into one of many Palestinian ‘unrecognised villages’.521 The residents of Kammane started campaigning against state attempts to evacuate them from their land as early as 1966. A group of residents from western Kammane appealed to the High Court of Justice against the registration of some of the village’s lands as state owned (following their definition as mawat – lands with no owners). After all, they claimed, the village’s lands were registered under the private ownership of the villagers only a decade earlier (in 1957 the Court rejected the appeal. Nevertheless, out of 91 homes existing in western Kammane in 1990, 75 were built on privately owned lands. In 1980, while still attempting to evacuate the Arab residents of Kammane, the state built two Jewish community settlements next to it, Camon and Michmanim. While Kammane was still unconnected to the water, electricity or sewage networks, and its residents had to spend long hours carrying water in containers and walking their children to schools at a distance of nearly four miles away from Kammane, the new Jewish settlements were equipped with all infrastructure from the start. The establishment of the neighbouring Jewish settlements ‘increased on the one hand the frustration of Kammane residents, witnessing the infrastructure installed so close by yet denied from their usage. On the other hand, the establishment of small Jewish settlements in the area justified the residents’ campaign for recognition and installation of infrastructure in Kammane as well’.522 In 1985, the struggle of Kammane residents against state policies became even more urgent, as five of the residents of the western wing of the village were arrested by a court warranty, issued by the local court in Acre, to make them demolish their homes. The five refused to do so, and in support of their decision, their co-villagers elected a local committee to campaign for the release of the five residents from jail
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without the demolition of their houses and generally expand the village’s struggle for recognition and the provision of services. The committee’s campaign was assisted by the Arab lawyer, Amal Khouri, and by the Jewish activist Uri Pinkerfeld, who was in charge of connections with the Arab minority in Israel in the left-wing, Zionist party Mapam and its associated National Kibbutz Movement (kibbutz artzi); since 1987 Pinkerfeld was also a board member in the National Lands Fund and in the Jewish Agency. The Association of Forty also supported the committee’s work. In 1988, the Association of Forty submitted a professional construction plan for Kammane to the Regional Council of Misgav, which assumes the municipal authority for the territory of Kammane. The campaign to release the five house owners who were sentenced to demolish their homes was a long one, taking nine months from their arrest to their final release. Because the five missed the legal period of time provided to appeal to a higher court against the decision of the court in Acre, the struggle against the sentence took place outside the court. As part of this struggle, the whole village, including children and elders, demonstrated in front of the Knesset in Jerusalem, following many other demonstrations in the Galilee region. The local committee managed to publicise the case in the Hebrew and Arabic press, and at the same time consulted the Attorney General, Yoram Bar-Sela, on how to bring the affair to its legal conclusion. According to Pinkerfeld, who was involved in this campaign throughout, the release of the five without the demolishing of their homes was seen as a committee’s victory, and as evidence for the effectiveness of the combination of demonstrations, the awakening of public support through the media, and invoking the personal involvement of high-rank bureaucrats. Pinkerfeld is proud of his role in talking the committee out of disruptive methods, such as the closure of main highways in the Galilee in demonstrations, as those ‘would have harmed the interest of the five in jail rather than assist them’.523 Kammane was one of the two first Palestinian villages to be recognised in the Misgav regional council (along with Husniya). The Committee for Construction and Planning in the regional council announced its intention to plan the village legally on its May 1st 1992 meeting. The then head of Misgav council, Arik Raz, gave Pinkerfeld a formal role in the planning of the village. However, he quit the job soon after, as he felt that villagers in eastern Kammane were not as confident in his good will as activists from western Kammane. The case of Kammane demonstrates, then, the merits of the combination between local organisation and the recruitment of outside forces – Palestinian and others. Both the short-term aim of releasing the
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five residents from jail without demolition of their homes and the longterm aim of recognising the village were achieved. Nevertheless, in spite of the many achievements of the Association of Forty and its local partners, the newly recognised villages in the north of Israel are still underdeveloped. Despite the recognition, most services and infrastructure were not provided by the state up to the time that this book was written. The Campaign of the Unrecognised Villages in the Negev The campaign for recognition and services for the unrecognised villages has gradually involved the Bedouin-Arab villages of the Negev as well. The southern struggle lagged behind its northern counterpart, both in time and organisation, becoming a strategic campaign only in the late 1990s. Nevertheless, it is notable that the emergence of a civil campaign among the Bedouin of the Negev developed along similar lines to the development of Palestinian Arab NGOs elsewhere in Israel: while the late 1970s-early 1980s saw the awakening of the community’s awareness of its rights, during the 1980s advocacy and service-provision organisations have emerged in the Negev, and the 1990s saw the institutionalisation of these organisations, with growing involvement of organisations from outside the Negev region and increasing professionalism of local NGOs. Awakening and Institutionalisation: The Association for Support and Defence of Bedouin Rights in Israel The first major grassroots organisation focusing on advocacy for the Bedouin unrecognised villages in the Negev was the Association for Support and Defence of Bedouin Rights in Israel. This association did not use the terminology of ‘unrecognised villages’ in the heyday of its activities, during the 1970s and 1980s, yet these activities aimed to achieve a change in the living conditions of residents in these very villages. This focus owed much to the fact that the biography of the founder and chairman, Nuri al-‘Ukbi, is strongly tied to one of the unrecognised villages. Al-‘Ukbi was a nine-year old boy on November 13, 1951, when Israeli authorities deported his family from their lands to the Sayig region.524 His father, Sheikh Suleiman al-‘Ukbi, received a written certificate from the area’s military governor, allowing the tribe to return to its land in six months time, in return for his co-operation with the deportation. That promise was never kept. For many years, the family was living in a tent, refraining from building a new home and hoping to return to their land.
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The government, on its part, did not install any infrastructure at the new site, forcing the residents to carry the limited available water from wells and other settlements in the area to their own settlement, which had no electricity, roads, or sewage system.525 Al-‘Ukbi had been involved in public activism from 1959, when he worked as a journalist for Mapam’s Arabic newspaper, al-Mersar. He then joined political parties, first the government’s opponents from the right, Herut, later its opponents from the left, the Movement for Human Rights, Ratz. Disappointed about the lack of willingness of both to act on behalf of the Bedouin, al-‘Ukbi established the Association for Support and Defence of Bedouin Rights in Israel. The association’s first assembly took place on 27 March 1976, three days prior to the first Land Day. The assembly was publicised by a handbill in Hebrew and Arabic, signed by 22 men, including eight Bedouin Sheikhs and several heads of hamulas (family clans). While some left-wing Jewish Israelis delivered supporting speeches in the assembly, the event was resented by the then deputy of the Negev region in the Ministry of Interior Affairs, Yitzhak Vardimon, and highly criticised in the Hebrew press. Prior to the assembly, Vardimon summoned the eight Sheikhs who signed the handbill and asked them to postpone the event for 2-3 weeks, so that it ‘would not be associated with the expected Arab strike, due on the 30th of this month’.526 Arguing that the 1500 people participating were indicative of the grassroots support offor his association, al-‘Ukbi considers the assembly a success even a quarter of a century after its gathering. And yet, the description which appeared in Haaretz at the time depicted an agitating event, which was essentially a failure. Haaretz’ reporter, Mordechai Artzieli, wrote, ‘The founders expected thousands… and thus organised the assembly in a football field. In fact, the conference could have taken place in a basketball field, and it would still not be so crowded. [Jewish activists] who came to the assembly and gave speeches, are not aware of the lack of influence of Nuri al-‘Ukbi on the Bedouin’.527 The article’s sub-heading stated that the assembly was a failure, and that it constituted an arena for poignant agitation. ‘Some things that were told in the assembly were never heard before in Bedouin gatherings. Nuri read out two letters he received from Druzes in the Galilee, whose names he did not mention. These letters were full of hatred and
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incitement, their style resembled that of articles in the Arab newspapers published in East Jerusalem’.528 Al-‘Ukbi and the association he has headed faced several conflicts with the authorities since that first assembly. The most severe of these conflicts took place three years later, on 20 October 1979, following an assembly that meant to celebrate the formal foundation of the organisation as a registered association. Policemen arrived at the meeting in its early stages, arguing that it was illegal and calling it off. Following a confrontation between the crowd, who refused to leave, and the policemen, al-‘Ukbi was arrested. He remained in custody for 12 days, which he spent hunger striking. When he became dehydrated, he was led to a hospital and then released by the court, on condition that he did not travel south of Beersheba. Since the second half of the 1990s, the Association’s work has been almost suspended in the light of personal problems faced by al-‘Ukbi. In spite of these recent difficulties, al-‘Ukbi is proud of the Association’s achievements: ‘When we established the association, there was only one Bedouin academic in the Negev. Today there are hundreds of academics; many of them received scholarships from us. When we started, no Bedouin students in the Negev graduated from high school with the Bagrut Matriculation Diploma, we helped change this miserable situation. Above all, we brought our rights to the awareness first and foremost of our own community, and then also of the general public – Arab and Jewish’.529 The Association for Support and Defence of Bedouin Rights in Israel has been supported by various Israeli Jews, both individuals who volunteered in the organisation on a regular basis or participated in single activities and funding institutions. The New Israel Fund and the Peter Bronfman family funded one of the major projects of the association, the development of a Master Plan for the Bedouin population in the southern region. The plan, set up in August 1990, suggested the recognition and planning of the unrecognised Bedouin villages in the Negev in a way that preserved the life style of the residents themselves.530 These principles were later developed and put forward as the main demands of the Bedouin population in the Negev, by other NGOs.
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The Age of Professionalism: The Regional Council of the Unrecognised ArabBedouin Villages in the Negev On May 17, 1997, the residents of 22 unrecognised villages in the Negev for the first time elected their envoys for a representative association, the Regional Council of the Unrecognised Arab-Bedouin Villages in the Negev. The association follows the municipal model of Israeli regional councils. Hence, its members elect local councils in their respective villages, and the regional council co-ordinates these councils’ work and promotes the region’s common interests. The Council campaigns for two goals: recognition of the villages in their current locations, and the immediate provision of services, irrespective of the recognition process. One of its central achievements to date was the production of a professional Master Plan for the unrecognised villages in the Negev, as an alternative to the existing municipal Master Plans of the Negev and the Beersheba metropolis.531 The plan to establish a joint council for the residents of the unrecognised villages in the region first emerged as an idea in the strategic plan entitled The Arabs of the Negev 2020, set up by Dr. ‘Amer al-Huzeil, the deputy for Strategic Planning and Information Department in the city of Rahat, in 1996. In an attempt to counter governmental strategic plans for the Negev, which ‘posed a threat to the Bedouin residents’,532 the Plan drew an alternative map to the official ones – a map that marked the locations of all Bedouin settlements and named them with the original names used by their residents, where different official names have been given to the villages; and, in order to give the map a practical political meaning, the Plan suggested the model of community organisation through local committees and a regional council. The plan was confirmed on 29 November 1996, at a meeting held by Bedouin leaders which included representatives of the large Bedouin localities in the Negev, a Bedouin MK, Taleb al-Sana, and representatives of the unrecognised villages. According to al-Huzeil, the Israeli authorities and the traditional Sheikhs in the region resisted the Council’s idea in its early stages. While the authorities were worried about an independent leadership that would stand for its rights and weaken the old guard Sheikhs – some well known for their collaboration with the authorities, he argues – the Sheikhs feared that the Council would de-legitimate their power base. The map has become a bone of contention: it disregarded the current names of the unrecognised villages, which reflect the main tribal order in each settlement. This, in turn, challenged the power base of the main Sheikhs in their villages. ‘I knew from the very beginning that we aimed to shake
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the traditional order’, says al-Huzeil, ‘and I expected strong opposition from the Sheikhs and the authorities. We managed to win some of the traditional leaders’ support through hard fieldwork, and we managed with time to reduce both the impact of some Sheikhs, who have become marginalized, and of some officials, who found themselves coping with professional data and lawful actions. Still, the struggle continues until this very days. The Council has its supporters, but it has many opponents as well’.533 Jaber Abu-Kaf, the representative of the unrecognised village named after his tribe (the Abu-Kaf village, numbering 4,000 people) in the Regional Council of the Unrecognised Villages in the Negev, embodies the change that the Council has introduced to the leadership style in the villages. Son of the tribe’s Sheikh, Abu-Kaf enjoyed the same status after the death of his father. Yet, being one of the Council’s first activists, he announced the village would participate in the May 1997 elections. He was elected to head the village’s local council, which consisted of elected representatives from each of the hamulas in the village, in Abu-Kaf as in all other 21 participating villages. Abu-Kaf, who became the Council’s second chairman, in its 1999 elections, believes that these changes in the leadership patterns fitted the generational shift in the Negev: ‘Previous generations believed that if they only waited long enough, things would improve. Nowadays, we fight our own wars, then. We do not wait for governments to be generous to us; we stay away from courts that take our land away. We campaign for our rights, and whatever is not given to us, we try to provide for ourselves’.534 The Regional Council of the Unrecognised Arab-Bedouin Villages in the Negev is a registered association. Israeli authorities did not stop the election process to the Council, did not object to its registration with the Ministry of Interior, and did not interfere with the Council’s work. Yet it did not achieve any official recognition that would allow it to function and receive state budgets, like a formal regional council. ‘Acknowledging us means recognition for the unrecognised Bedouin villages in the Negev. This counters governmental policies’, says ‘Atiya al-‘Asem, the Council’s chairman between 1997 and 1999.535 The Council’s members work voluntarily in their villages and within the Regional Council, aiming both to run advocacy campaigns for the villages and provide local services. The Council’s first activity was placing signposts with the villages’ original names and paving gravel ways at the entrances to the villages. The Council has also organised demonstrations in front of
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governmental ministries with demands for services to the villages, and co-operated with the various national organisations in their appeals to the Supreme Court and the international forums over issues of infrastructure in the unrecognised villages. Producing the Construction Plan and Map, in co-operation with the Jewish-Arab Economic Centre, discussed below, has been one of the major projects of the Council. In addition, the Council has established at the end of 1997 a suborganisation, called al-Faz’ah wa al-’Awunah (Help and Solidarity), which is active in each of the local councils and aims to stop demolition of Bedouin homes. The organisation announces any attempt for home demolition in the 22 unrecognised villages, orchestrating confrontations between villagers and the authorities. The first confrontation occurred just after the organisation was established in 1997, in the village of Umm-Butin. ‘Thanks to the help of the mobile phone, 200 people arrived to confront the demolishers’, says al-Huzeil. He argues that the community participated in the campaign, as it succeeded in ‘waking the feeling of solidarity that is so important to this community yet has been forgotten for nearly fifty years’. In three years, the number of home demolitions decreased by 85 per cent. This, of course, is down to the Labour government’s policies no less than to the organisation’s activity. Nevertheless, al-Huzeil is assured that the field activism has contributed to the confidence of the people and to their ability to stand up to the authorities.536 The Bedouin MK, Taleb al-Sana, believes the activity of the Council would lead to the eventual recognition of the villages. ‘This organisation, which acts in a non-partisan way, encourages people to stay put on their land’, he says. ‘Villagers feel represented, their services improve – all these activities amount to a sense of confidence that makes them stay. They feel that if the government does not recognise them, at least their leadership does, and it gives hope’.537 This observation is supported by the representation of the Regional Council in the High Follow-Up Committee for the Arabs in Israel. According to al-Huzeil, this representation is significant both in its own right, and as a means of enhancing the connections between Bedouin in the Negev and the rest of the Palestinian community in Israel. It also opens a further channel for negotiations with Israeli authorities. Al-Huzeil, al-‘Asem and Abu-Kaf all feel the Council has made some progress since its establishment, in terms of the alternative information basis they have created, the support they gained from some Israeli journalists and politicians, and services to the local community. Nevertheless, in any comparison with the Arab population in the north
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of Israel, the Bedouin in the Negev are still very deprived. ‘We know that recognition of the Council is still a far-fetched aim, and that a long struggle with the authorities still awaits us’, says Abu-Kaf.538 The intifada and the election of a right-wing government, headed by Ariel Sharon, intensified the conflict between the state and the Bedouin residents of the Negev. First, the number of house demolitions has gone up: while in 2002 the state demolished 112 houses, more than the annual average, in 2003 140 houses were already demolished by October. Second, since October 2000, police shot dead six young Bedouin men in various incidents. Only in one case has an investigation been opened.539 Third, on 14 April 2003, the government approved a six-year plan for the Bedouin sector in the Negev, popularly known as the ‘Sharon Plan’, which states a much more vigorous effort to force the resettlement of Bedouins in the Negev. The plan includes the establishment of seven new Bedouin townships, investment in the existing township, a forceful implementation of the house demolition policy by the establishment of a new dedicated police force, and increased funding of the Green Patrol and the Court system.540 The Regional Council of the Unrecognised Arab-Bedouin Villages in the Negev has been active in co-ordinating activities against the resettlement plan, to which most of the residents in the Unrecognised Villages are opposed, and against the policy of house demolition. As noted in the following section, the Council enhanced its advocacy strategies, working at the national level and tightening its co-operation with other NGOs. The state of Israel, however, has not yet recognised the Council. The Contribution of National Palestinian and Jewish NGOs in Israel to the Campaign of the Unrecognised Villages Throughout the campaign of the unrecognised villages, various Israeli organisations – Palestinian, Jewish, and joint – have contributed funds and skills towards its success. One of the central contributors has been the Jewish-Arab Centre for Economic Development, which has supported the activities of the Regional Council of the Unrecognised Villages in the Negev since the days of its establishment, in 1997. The Centre usually funds individual Arab businessmen in Israel. However, following participation of its activists in the discussions that led to the set up of the Regional Council of the Unrecognised Villages in the Negev, and their conviction of its importance, the Centre decided to support the Council’s work. The funding it raised for this purpose has been crucial to
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the Council’s activity in general, and in particular to the conduct of the main research towards the alternative Master Plan for the villages.541 The legal department of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) has also been consistently involved in the struggle of the unrecognised Bedouin villages for civil rights, through a list of court appeals on behalf of the Negev residents. ACRI was established in 1972 to bolster Israel's commitment to civil liberties and human rights through legal action, education and public outreach. In 1995, ACRI established a special project to promote the rights of Arab citizens of Israel to enhance its activity on behalf of the Palestinian minority. The project combines legal work, public outreach and publications, and work in cooperation with other bodies. Seven of ACRI’s 40 employees in 2001 are Arabs.542 ACRI, on its own and in co-operation with Adalah, filed several petitions to courts on behalf of the Bedouin residents of the unrecognised villages. These included a demand to open health clinics in the villages, a school in the village of Bir Hadaj, in which there is no school to serve the 5,000 residents, and an appeal to include the unrecognised villages in the Regional Plan map. 543 The Galilee Society and Adalah provide two examples for national PNGOs in Israel committed to aid the campaign and meet some of the needs of villagers in the unrecognised villages. The GS runs a Negev department, the central activity of which is the operation of a mobile clinic in the unrecognised villages in the Negev. The clinic provides immunisation services and basic child check-ups consisting of height, weight, vital signs, head circumference measurements, and reflex tests to Arab Bedouin infants and children in the unrecognised villages, who do not have access to on-site preventive health care. The clinic is partially funded by the Ministry of Health. Other projects of the Negev department, such as qualifying local women to guide the community on health issues, are operated in co-operation with the Ben-Gurion University in the Negev.544 In February 1992 the GS enjoyed much publicity following a favourable decision in an appeal it submitted a year earlier, in October 1991 (along with the Follow-Up Council for Health in the Arab Sector), to the International Water Tribunal Foundation in Amsterdam against the State of Israel. The two organisations accused the state of providing water of insufficient quality and quantity to several unrecognised Arab villages, and won the tribunal’s support of the plaintiff.545 The GS attributes great importance to the participation of the Israeli government in the discussion, unlike many other states that did not respond to plaintiffs against them. According to the chair of the society, Basel Ghattas, the participation of government representatives
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led to a media interest and opened a window for negotiation between the villages and the government over the subject of water.546 Indeed, within a few months following the procedure, most villages were connected to the water network, although only partially, usually by one central pipe alone.547 Adalah petitioned the court over several concerns of the unrecognised villages. One example is a petition filed against the Ministry of Interior in June 1997, with a demand to allow residents of the unrecognised village of Husseniya to list the village as their official address on identity cards. The court judged in favour of the petition and ordered that 5,000 NIS in legal expenses be paid to Adalah.548 In another case, Adalah petitioned the court on behalf of seven organisations against the Minister of Labour and Social Welfare and the government-appointed head of the Segev Shalom Local Council. It demanded that welfare services, completely stopped due to budgetary constraints, be provided to 60,000 Bedouin residents of unrecognised villages. The case is pending.549 Organisations involved in the interaction with the unrecognised villages were often influenced by the agendas and activities of the local community. Adalah, for example, aims as a rule to avoid interfering with internal community debates. This position was contested when it filed an appeal to the Supreme Court on behalf of the Bedouin community in the Negev. Adalah demanded in court that the Ministry of Health establish mother and child clinics to supply preventive health services in the twelve largest unrecognised villages in the Negev. The absence of such clinics forced women and children to travel to clinics far from their homes. As there is no public transportation, they often had to walk for hours in the desert. On the face of it, this case fell strictly within Adalah’s strategy to focus on minority-state relations. The issue of mother and child health serves both Israeli and Palestinian rhetoric of demography as a national issue. It also, of course, reflects the Israeli political decision to deny services to these Bedouin villages in order to encourage their residents to leave for the seven ‘legitimate’ townships recently built for them. However, the problems caused by the distance of clinics did not only reflect the discrimination against the Palestinian minority. It also reflected the discrimination against Bedouin women within their own community and the connection between the two forms of discrimination and marginality. For the distance of mother and child clinics, caused in the first place by Israeli policies, often forced women to be accompanied by men when they needed to be treated, due to the social traditions within the community itself. This is the result of a common view of unaccompanied journeys of women away from their community as an
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action that may jeopardise the family’s ‘honour’. Advocate Samera Eismeir of Adalah therefore noted that it was the combination of both state policies and the community’s traditions that increased women’s dependency in the patriarchal order of their community. Eismir, who ran this case for Adalah, chose not to overlook this connection. In her summary of the case, she noted that Adalah employed in this case a method of storytelling to frame the petitioners’ claim for a remedy. This method was preferred to the mainstream modern legal discourse, which generally aspires to organised arguments, scientific description, monitored emotion, and empirical truth’. The stories revealed, according to Eismir, that Bedouin women had both the courage and the power to resist, in spite of the constrained conditions in which they live. Bedouin women used to take trips to the clinics despite the gossiping and they were willing to give affidavits to lawyers as a means of fighting both the community and Israeli policy makers.550 Adalah thus got involved in one of the most sensitive internal debates within the Bedouin community, demonstrating the shortcomings embodied in the attempt to ignore internal conflicts while campaigning for minority’s rights within the state. The co-operation of Bedouin NGOs in the Negev with organisations from outside the region has increased since October 2000, as conflict with state authorities has intensified. The need to enhance NGO work in the Negev was recognised by the New Israel Fund’s professional organisation, Shatil, which increased its own presence in the Negev, growing from 8 employees in the Negev office to 19. Shatil is active in forming NGO coalitions of Jewish and Bedouin as well as cross-tribal coalitions in the Negev itself. It is also taking a central part in an NGO forum called ‘Living Together’ – an initiative of The Regional Council of the Unrecognised Arab-Bedouin Villages in the Negev, of which 30 Jewish and Palestinian organisations are members.551 Achievements and Failures of the Campaign The campaign for recognition of Arab unrecognised villages achieved its formal aim: many of the unrecognised villages received official recognition. Moreover, in the process of campaigning, local organisations inspired a political debate over issues that were previously excluded from the political discourse, both in the Israeli political centre and within the Palestinian society. Not only have Bedouin concerns been elevated from the periphery to the centre, but also feminist issues were upgraded to a more central position within the national campaign. Furthermore, the campaign of mainly Bedouin villages for recognition and inclusion in formal Development Plans challenged common and
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essentialist perceptions of the Bedouin as nomadic and unattached to their land, a portrayal which has served throughout the Middle East as an excuse to marginalise Bedouin communities. Despite these important achievements, the living conditions of the residents in the unrecognised villages did not improve. As Haaretz journalist, Ori Nir, noted in 2001, recognition proved to be a tunnel of bureaucratic services, at the end of which there was a light of municipal services. It took many years to reach the light, at which time Regional Plans were prepared and residents waited for building permits. By the time that the process was concluded, the authorities did not allow any building in the villages.552 Activists add to this description the fact that infrastructure is not being installed.553 The campaign, therefore, has not fulfilled the real need of the residents: to receive equal services to those received by their Jewish neighbours. Official recognition proved to be a technical solution (official recognition for unrecognised villages) that failed to challenge the real cause for discrimination: state policy of Judaisation of the Negev and the Galilee. The recently approved ‘Sharon Plan’ for the Bedouin sector in the Negev further demonstrates this point. Conclusion Local organisations are invaluable participants in the Palestinian campaign for civil equality in Israel. First, local PNGOs in Israel provide a means for national movements to reach the grassroots level of their community. The channel they provide for effective and legal activity, facilitated by the Law of Associations, has proved important especially for the development of those movements deemed threatening by the authorities, like the Islamic movement and Abna al-Balad. The cooperation of a large number of local NGOs has also proved significant in facilitating effective national campaigns, as with the case of the campaign against the amendment to the Prevention of Terrorism Ordinance. In this respect, then, local PNGOs in Israel create a wide basis for top-to-bottom activity. The second contribution of local Palestinian NGOs in Israel to the struggle for equality works the other way: representing peripheral and grassroots concerns at the political centre, local PNGOs in Israel provide an important bottom-up aspect to the struggle. The campaigns of local women as well as Bedouin NGOs have demonstrated this role. These campaigns have challenged the marginality of both communities in the Palestinian society and in Israel. Moreover, they have sparked a political debate over concepts that were previously excluded from political
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discussion – most prominently, politicising the private sphere in the context of gender activism, and questioning essentialist assumptions on the nomadic life style of the Bedouin in the case of the campaign for recognition of unrecognised villages. Through both these contributions, local PNGOs in Israel play a role in challenging the ‘fundamental social, political and economic relations that have created inadequate living conditions’ – the key test for an organisation in an underprivileged community, according to Michael Kaufman.554 The previous chapter presented a continuum of changes promoted by nation-wide Palestinian NGOs in Israel, beginning with the option of engagement with ‘politics of interest’ within the existing system; through campaigning for reform of the system; and finally – to demands of regime change. The activities of most local Palestinian NGOs in Israel, when acting on their own, are located closer to the ‘politics of interest’ end of the continuum. As they joined in coalitions, their demands amount to a clearer campaign of system reform. Moreover, local Palestinian NGOs in Israel make a unique contribution to the Palestinian campaign in Israel in their engagement with the politics of identity. Local Palestinian NGOs in Israel assert the community’s identity, for example by organising cultural and educational activities. These activities enhance a claim for rights that are not solely based on citizenship but are rather based on national and historic rights of the Palestinian community. This, in turn, may be seen as the grassroots basis for claims put forward by NGOs at the national level, such as those expressed in the 2001 United Nations World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance.555 The evidence in this chapter shows that the engagement in politics of identity does not undermine the struggle for civic equality, but rather complement it. In other words, the ‘politics of identity’ that characterises many local PNGOs in Israel does not necessarily represent aspirations for separatism by the community. Rather, it is often linked to the larger civic campaign of Palestinian NGOs in Israel, and hence represents an attempt to influence Israeli politics and society. Thus, for example, the teaching of Palestinian culture by the Acre Arab Women’s Association does not contradict the association’s struggle for civil society expressed among other things through co-operation with Jewish educators. This is not always the case, however. The activities of Islamic organisations, for example, are to a large extent exclusive and emphasise religious distinction and not civic values. The challenge posed by local PNGOs in Israel to the discriminatory political systems in Israel is hindered by similar reasons to those
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characterising their national counterparts. First, the limitation of local PNGOs in Israel echoes the tendency of NGOs in general to resort to technical rather than political campaigns. As local Palestinian associations in Israel have more immediate relations with better-defined communities, in comparison with their national counterparts, they are given to greater pressure to provide tangible and immediate achievements for their communities. These expectations fuel their need to come up with technical solutions, which in turn fail to solve root problems. The most explicit example of this weakness is provided by the campaign for recognition of the Bedouin unrecognised villages. The campaign demanded a technical solution to what seemed to be a technical problem: official recognition for officially unrecognised settlements. When this aim was achieved, it became obvious that the problem was not in fact technical but ideological and political. The discrimination against unrecognised Arab villages stemmed from the strategy of the ‘Judaisation’ of the Negev and the Galilee. Therefore, the campaign was ineffective in bringing about equality between residents of these villages and their Jewish neighbours. It should be noted, however, that the failure did not stop the development of NGOs participating in the campaign. The flexible nature of NGOs enabled them to change their goals and methods of activity in light of the understanding that formal recognition will not suffice to secure their rights. Hence, an activity that was clearly a demand for reform but touched the most fundamental inequality in Israel – namely, land allocation – is developing into a more challenging demand for change in the system as a whole. Second, although the plurality of local Palestinian NGOs in Israel broadened the spectrum of the Palestinian struggle, hence strengthening it, the rivalry between organisations has a weakening effect at times. This was demonstrated, for example, by the rivalry between nationalist and Islamist activists in Umm al-Fahem. The campaign against the amendment to the Prevention of Terrorism Ordinance (like the coordinated effort of national feminist PNGOs in Israel to present the case of Palestinian women in international forums, discussed in the previous chapter) illustrates the benefits of co-ordinated activity. And yet, instances of such co-ordination among local Palestinian NGOs in Israel are uncommon. Co-operation with Jewish organisations in such an effective way as demonstrated through the campaign against the amendment is even harder to achieve, for reasons discussed in the next chapter.
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Map Three: The Unrecognised Villages in the Galilee and Wadi-‘Ara Regions
List of Unrecognised Villages* 1 Al-Qubsi 7 Humeira 13 2 Kammaneh 8 Khawalid 14 3 Ras al-Nabe’a 9 Rumeihat 15 4 Husseiniya 10 Rohana Swetat 16 5 Sarki’s 11 Manssurah 17 6 Umm al-Sahali 12 Al-Byan * Based on data by the Association of Forty. www.assoc40.org
Mu’alakah Al-Sharai’ah Al-‘Arian Kur-Saquer Dar al-Hammon
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Map Four: The Unrecognised Villages and the Bedouin Townships In The Negev
List of Unrecognised Villages* 1 Dakhiya 7 Al-Fur’a 13 2 Khirbet Zubala 8 Khashmazna 3 Albatel- Karkur 9 Abu-Talul 4 Al-Mas’adiya 10 Al-Sar 5 Uqan 11 Wadi al-Na’am 6 Al-Zarura 12 Umm Matnan * Based on data by the Association of Forty. www.assoc40.org
Qasar al-Sar
Chapter Five
JEWISH-PALESTINIAN COOPERATION IN ISRAELI NGOs
I
n 1992, a comprehensive directory of co-existence organisations in Israel was published, listing some 300 NGOs and governmental organisations active in this field. The vast majority of the listed organisations originated and were sustained by Jews, though they involved Palestinian citizens among their target populations.556 This reality, in which one party is the main initiator and the other is mainly a recipient, calls attention to the unequal positions of Palestinians and Jews in joint Israeli organisations. This inequality mirrors the Jewish domination in Israeli society, in sharp contrast to the stated aims of many of these joint NGOs, established to eliminate inequalities in Israel. Notably, this Jewish domination has been increasingly challenged in recent years as Jewish and Palestinian activists alike discuss, in the open, the tension between goals and praxis in joint organisations. The discussion of power dynamics in joint NGOs developed mainly after the Israeli-Palestinian peace process culminated in the Oslo Declaration of Principles in '93. Social scientist Tamar Hermann has argued that the consequences of the Oslo peace process made the Israeli peace movement feel, paradoxically, a ‘sour taste of success’. While mainstream politicians implemented the political agenda of the peace camp, the position of peace organisations themselves remained marginal in Israeli society.557 For activists who advocated equality within Israel, this ‘sour taste’ had an additional meaning. For years these activists, following the example of the Communist Party, saw the equality of Palestinians in Israel as an inevitable second stage which would follow a peace agreement between Israel and the national Palestinian movement outside the Green Line. When this linkage proved false, activists reviewed their aims and methods of organisation; a ‘new consciousness’ evolved among PNGO activists in Israel, leading many to the conclusion that joint activism with Jews undermines their cause.558 The challenges for joint activism in Israel have intensified following the October 2000 events and the years of the al-Aqsa Intifada. The violent demonstrations of Palestinians in Israel and the brutal response of the police during the tragic early days of October 2000 marked the beginning of a period in which trust between Jews and Palestinian citizens in Israel drastically diminished. Joint NGOs, aiming to promote co-existence of
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Jews and Palestinians in Israel, have therefore operated in a more openly tense environment since those events. Within joint organisations themselves, the debate over goals and strategies, which began following the Oslo peace process, has deepened. Supporters of the co-existence doctrine and its critics alike saw the October 2000 events as an indication of the marginal impact or even outright failure of traditional co-existence strategies. A process of evaluation of old policies of co-existence therefore takes place in many joint organisations. This is a complex process especially given financial difficulties, which stem from the withdrawal of the government from some joint projects the state used to fund,559 and from more limited private resources following the recession in Israel. This chapter discusses the debate over joint activism. The importance of this debate, it argues, exceeds the particular organisations directly involved. The difficulties of Palestinian activists in joint organisations constitute a microcosm of the limited influence PNGOs enjoy in Israeli society in general. Indeed, relations within joint organisations echo the Gramscian analysis of civil society as an arena that reflects – rather than challenges – power structures from other political realms. Moreover, one of the main contributions of NGOs to a process of political change lies in their ability to invoke a political discussion over issues outside the consensus. However, many co-existence organisations – especially those that focus on Jewish-Palestinian dialogue – explicitly choose to refrain from political discussion or activity. This choice reinforces the limitations of their engagement in a process of change. The chapter opens with a brief review of the historical background of joint Jewish-Palestinian activism in Israel. It then analyses the debate over joint activism and its consequences for the development of JewishPalestinian NGOs in Israel, in three contexts: activities of the Israeli peace movement; Jewish funds supporting PNGOs in Israel; and activities of NGOs organising Jewish-Palestinian dialogue encounters in Israel. The History of Jewish-Palestinian Activism in Israel Jewish Domination of the Public Space and Sphere Palestinians in Israel have expressed alienation from the Israeli public space, which rejects their history and excludes their culture. As ‘Azmi Bishara has written, Palestinians in Israel feel that the place was taken away from them, as it was either expropriated, or its conception was expropriated.560 Jewish domination of the landscape is symbolic of the
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power dynamics in Israeli daily life. As elaborated in Chapter Two, Jews dominate the Israeli economy, with Palestinians occupying the lower paid jobs. Palestinians live mostly in separate municipalities or separate neighbourhoods in mixed cities and study in separate schools, but Arab towns and villages are located in the Israeli periphery and both schools and municipalities are dependent upon a discriminatory Jewishcontrolled budget allocation system for their management. The curriculum of Arab schools is developed in line with the same Zionist values and aims that characterise Israeli school curricula in general. Israel is a highly segregated society, as both the majority and the minority prefer to retain separate residency and marry within the community. Nevertheless, there are points of encounter between the two communities. As there are no Arab universities, for example, Palestinians and Israelis study together.561 The Palestinian minority, as sociologist Sammy Smooha has asserted, does not assimilate with the Jewish majority, yet it is bilingual as the vast majority of Palestinians in Israel regularly use Hebrew as well as Arabic, and bicultural as they take an active part in both Arab and Israeli cultures.562 The level of exposure of Palestinians to the Hebrew media is indicative of these bilingual, bicultural skills: In 1997, 61% of Palestinians in Israel watched Channel One of the Israeli television at least once a week, and 49% watched Channel Two at least once a week. In addition, 19% of young people among the Palestinians in Israel (ages 18-24) read the most widely circulated Hebrew newspaper Yediot Ahronot every day.563 This exposure is quite one-sided, although not entirely so. Palestinian citizens increasingly write to Hebrew newspapers and magazines in order to influence Jewish public opinion.564 Separate Organisation of Jews and Palestinians in Israel The limited and unequal nature of the encounter between Jews and Palestinians in Israel is reflected in the institutional organisation of the two communities. The Jewish and Palestinian communities developed separate and competing national institutions during the British mandate period. Palestinian organisations at the time already lagged behind their Jewish counterparts in their level of institutionalisation, as elaborated in Chapter Two. After the establishment of the state, Palestinians were officially included in the previously Jewish-only Zionist institutions, but this process was slow and incomplete. Thus, for example, the ruling party Mapai did not hasten to open its ranks for Palestinian members. Throughout the military government period, Mapai received the majority
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of the Arab vote through affiliated lists and a complex patronage system.565 The Histadrut – an institution that for many decades was paradoxically both Israel’s biggest employer and its biggest trade union – provides one of the most telling examples for the continuing exclusion of Palestinians from Israeli institutions. During the mandatory period, the Histadrut emerged as the strongest organised force in the national organisation of the Yishuv. After the establishment of the state, the Histadrut followed the formal participatory path that characterised the main political institutions and moved cautiously and slowly to incorporate the Palestinian proletariat. Admitted to affiliate trade unions since 1952, it was only in 1959 that Palestinian citizens became full members of the Histadrut, voting in its elections. 566 Incorporation of Palestinians into the main party in the Histadrut – the Labour Alignment – was delayed even longer. The party opened its ranks to Arabs in 1976, but held only three branches in Arab municipalities (Nazareth, Acre and Umm al-Fahem), and had at the time only 4000-5000 Palestinian members out of 300,000 members in total. Consequently, Palestinians suffered from under-representation at all levels of the Histadrut, and especially its leadership. This situation of under-representation has persisted throughout the years for additional reasons. One of the main causes, according to Stanley Greenberg, is the fact that workers vote for Histadrut councils next to where they live, not next to their workplace. Unlike Jews, who usually live and work at the same city, Palestinians tend to commute to their workplace in the Jewish cities. Hence most Histadrut councils remained under Jewish control. Little wonder, then, that as Michael Shalev has noted, the Histadrut has continued to serve Israeli segregation and has not aimed to encourage class solidarity between Jewish and Palestinian workers. Its rhetoric may have changed since the Yishuv period, when it functioned as a national institution of the Zionist-Jewish community. However, while its leaders attempted to reassure Palestinian citizens of their integration, in practice the Histadrut has treated both the Palestinians and their role in the segmented labour market as invisible phenomena.567 In 1994, the Histadrut underwent an extensive reform. According to the Histadrut’s own public relations, at the heart of the reform lay a shift in focus from semi-governmental activities to the workers’ union of the Histadrut.568 However, since the reform abolished the requirement of belonging to the Histadrut as a condition to benefiting from the services of the “Sick Fund”, membership in the Histadrut fell dramatically. While in the early 1980s, 80-85% of the overall employees in Israel were
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members of some professional union, the percentage fell to 45% in 2000.569 As part of this process, the number of Palestinians in the Histadrut workers’ union fell from 280,000 to 50,000 since the reform.570 Within the formal political system, only Mapam (the United Workers Party) presented itself as a Jewish-Arab party. It joined the government in 1955, but often opposed its policies on the Arab-Israeli conflict. Mapam, for example, voted against the Israeli invasion to Sinai in 1956. The party actively supported many demands of Palestinians in Israel, such as the abolition of the military government. But Mapam did not offer an alternative policy to that of the Labour Party, neither on the issue of territorial concessions nor on the question of the return of Palestinian refugees. Furthermore, it defined itself as a socialist-Zionist party. Based on these priorities, Mapam remained a Jewish party at its core.571 The Marginality of Palestinians in the Israeli Peace Movement The Israeli peace movement emerged on this backdrop of Jewish domination in Israeli institutions and the limited political co-operation of Palestinians and Jews in Israel. The movement has never focused on challenging this state of affairs, as relations between Palestinians and Jews inside Israel were only secondary to its main aim – peace between Israel and its Arab neighbours and more recently, the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO). Until 1967, the mainstream of the Israeli left viewed the Israeli-Arab conflict predominantly as a conflict between states, to which the solution was a peace agreement between Israel and its Arab neighbours. Following the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza in 1967, many activists in the left came to view the heart of the conflict as lying in the struggle between two national movements: the Palestinian and the Israeli. Palestinians in Israel were excluded from both and normally viewed, if considered at all, as a bridge for peace between the two movements.572 Exceptions to these perceptions existed since the early days of Zionism and became more pronounced with the immigration of German Jews to Palestine in the 1920s and 1930s. In 1925, a group of Jewish intellectuals established Brith Shalom (Covenant of Peace), an organisation that called for a bi-national state in Palestine. The organisation changed its name in the 1940s to Ichud (unity). The group called for reconciliation of Jews and Palestinians, recognising the validity of the Palestinian claim. They also called for a shift in focus from power politics to human relationships between the two peoples. When the state of Israel was established and the extent of the holocaust in Europe was
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revealed, however, Ichud members acknowledged the legitimacy of the state and shifted their criticism to power politics, reflected in policies such as the administration of the military government.573 Ichud remained marginal in the Israeli political scene, as did other individuals and small groups who called for peace based on recognition of the validity of Palestinian claims. Being non-Zionist, the Communist Party was the party best equipped to offer a Jewish-Palestinian alternative. Very few Jews, however, joined the party or voted for it. Both the Communist and the non-Zionist tenets of its ideology alienated it from Jewish supporters and made it a representative of the Palestinian minority and its national interests more than a universal-socialist party. Even within the party, however, there were irresolvable disagreements between most Jews, who held moderate views towards Zionism, and most Palestinians, who held more radical views. In 1965, the party disintegrated to an all-Jewish faction (that kept the name Maki, the Israeli Communist Party) and an Arab-Jewish faction, dominated by Palestinians (Rakah). It is probably not surprising, therefore, that the party’s influence on Jewish-Israeli society and Israeli politics has been marginal and declining.574 Zionist peace organisations make up the majority of the Peace Movement. Peace Now, as its own publication testifies, is the ‘first and only mass peace movement in Israel’.575 It was founded in 1978 by more than 300 reserve officers and soldiers of the Israel Defence Forces, who called for Prime Minister Menahem Begin to pursue the peace negotiations with the Egyptians, along the historical peace proposal of the Egyptian president, Anwar Sadat. Peace Now aims to press the Israeli government to seek peace – through negotiations and mutual compromise – with Israel’s Arab neighbours and the Palestinian people, believing that ‘only peace will bring security to Israel’.576 Like Mapam, Zionist peace organisations protest against the mainstream security/military ideology in Israel, which on broad lines perceives the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a zero-sum game and consequently advocates military force as the key to Israel’s survival. At the same time, these organisations have adopted the main assumptions underlying this ideology. As Stanley Cohen put it, activists in the Peace Movement have ‘always taken care to operate within the national consensus of state security’.577 The Zionist organisations in the movement thus normally support the Jewish definition of the state of Israel and maintain strong relations with the Jewish Diaspora. As far as the Arab-Israeli conflict is concerned, their protest is limited to opposition to the occupation, rather than challenging the power dynamics between Israelis and Palestinians
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outside and inside Israeli borders. 578 Significantly, as Joel Beinin has argued, the Israeli peace movement failed to mount a determined struggle against the omission of a clear commitment to full Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza and the establishment of a Palestinian state in the agenda of the 1991 Madrid conference and the 1993 Declaration of Principles and its subsequent enabling agreements.579 This failure explains, at least in part, the ‘sour taste’ experienced by peace activists after Oslo. The Declaration of Principles was set out as an initial step in a process of reconciliation, but the movement has since played a very minor and unsuccessful part in pushing towards full withdrawal from the Occupied Territories. Non-Zionist organisations, such as Matzpen and Derech Hanitzotz discussed below, act at the margins of the peace movement. The reason for their marginality is not only ideological, but also stems from the different profiles of members in the two types of organisations. Whereas many non-Zionist activists are Palestinians, the majority of members in Zionist peace organisations belong to the Israeli elite: Ashkenazi Jews, urban, middle-class activists, better educated than the average.580 While the long-term perception of the Israeli-Arab conflict differs between Zionist and non-Zionist organisations, they were able to cooperate tactically during campaigns that focused on short-term objectives. This co-operation was most prominent during the first Intifada (1987-1991), a period that saw the proliferation of groups within the peace movement, and growing co-operation of Palestinian and Jewish activists in Israel. Peace Now, the largest peace organisation in Israel founded in 1978, invited for the first time a Palestinian citizen to speak in a rally it organised only during the Intifada, in 1988.581 Differences between Palestinian and Jewish peace activists surfaced during the crisis in the Gulf in 1990/91. While for Palestinians, the point of reference was the Third World in general and the Arab world in particular, Israelis identified with the West and the United States. Political differences intensified when the United States and its Allies attacked Iraq in January 1991 and Israel was under a retaliatory Iraqi missile attack, while the PLO and Yassir ‘Arafat explicitly supported Saddam Hussein. Although the sympathy expressed to Saddam Hussein by Palestinians in Israel was more moderate in tone than the mainstream Palestinian response in the West Bank and Gaza, it still brought about a cleavage between Palestinian and Jewish-Israeli peace activists. Yossi Sarid, head of the liberal-Zionist party Meretz that is part of the Israeli peace camp, epitomised this feeling of betrayal when he memorably told the Palestinians ‘not to call him’ in the future. As a result of this cleavage,
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the number of joint activities against the occupation, which saw a peak during the Intifada, dramatically decreased.582 By the end of the War, however, the crisis had been temporarily overcome. The Gulf War and its aftermath set in motion the IsraeliPalestinian peace process. In 30 October 1991, a multilateral Israeli-Arab peace conference congregated in Madrid, in which the Palestinians had no independent representations (their representatives were part of the Jordanian delegation). By September 1993, Israel and the PLO had signed a separate agreement, the Oslo Declaration of Principles, which included mutual recognition. In contrast to earlier expectations, however, negotiations over a long-term solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict enhanced the internal conflict between Palestinians and Jews in Israel. For many years, Palestinians in Israel associated their campaign for civil equality with peace between Israel and the Palestinian national movement. The slogan ‘bridge for peace’ was adopted by the Palestinian leadership in Israel, depicting the two-fold aspiration for integration of the minority in Israel alongside the establishment of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza. It is therefore not surprising that many Palestinians in Israel were frustrated when the Oslo peace accords seemed to bring closer than ever the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel yet the status of the Palestinian minority within the 1967 borders was not discussed by negotiators. Moreover, Palestinians in Israel did not provide a ‘bridge’ during the peace negotiations, in which they took no part. The association between peace and equality thus proved unrealistic. While the Labour government that led the negotiations (in power from 1992 to 1996) was dependent on the support of Arab parties and ideologically more committed to decrease economic and social gaps between Palestinians and Jews in Israel, it was not prepared to challenge the political status quo – a fact vividly manifested in its refusal to include Arab or non-Zionist parties in its coalition.583 As a result of the marginality of Palestinians in Israeli peace organisations and the different agendas of Palestinian and Jewish activists, which became explicit following Oslo, a wave of PNGOs was established in Israel in the mid-1990s after their main activists split from joint organisations. This tendency has increased following the October events of 2000 as trust between Palestinian and Jewish NGO activists has weakened. Shalom (Shuli) Dichter, co-manager of the co-existence organisation Sikkuy, noted this tendency in writing following participation in the United Nations World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance at Durban, South Africa (August 31 to September 7, 2001). During this conference,
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Dichter wrote, the rift between Palestinian and Jewish organisations was explicit and open. Following the October events, PNGOs acted in the conference based on the assumption that they represented a national minority that should protect itself from its state. Dichter notes a total detachment of PNGOs from the joint counterparts during the conference. He suggested that the separate organisation of PNGOs represents their empowerment and maturity. However, this may have negative impact on the future struggle for civil society, as it emphasises national values over civil ones. ‘Whatever political solution materialises in the future, the need of Jews and Palestinians to live together will not be eliminated,’ he concluded.584 One of the PNGOs that split from a joint organisation is al-Siwar, a feminist PNGO supporting victims of sexual violence. Al-Siwar was established as an independent organisation in 1997, following a split of its founders from the Haifa-based NGO, Haifa Rape Crisis Centre. AlSiwar activists were part of the joint centre for nine years, after which they felt they had come to neglect their target population in favour of activity for Jewish-Arab co-existence in Israel, which mainly took place among members. They had also come to realise that the needs of Arab victims were different from those of Jewish victims, and required a different approach. Al-Siwar’s activists felt that while the unique needs of their sector were not properly met by the old organisation, their presence was used to achieve funds from international organisations. Consequently, in the initial period following the split, al-Siwar and the Haifa Rape Crisis Centre debated the new organisation’s eligibility for budgets that were given to the Centre on behalf of its Arab-sector projects. As Hanna Herzog has argued regarding feminist Palestinian peace activists in Israel in general,585 however, al-Siwar’s activists continued to see themselves as part of the feminist movement in Israel and have participated in women coalitions that included Jewish as well as Palestinian organisations.586 In addition to the ideological cleavage between Palestinian and Zionist activists in Israel, there are other explanations for the split of Palestinians from joint NGOs and the establishment of independent PNGOs. Scholars have noted the institutionalisation and professionalisation of the Israeli Peace Movement during the 1990s.587 A similar process characterised Palestinian civil society in Israel. As mentioned in Chapter Three, the Galilee Society for Health Research and Service (GS) played a key role in this process. Having the facilities to host new organisations, and the connections with donors willing to support professional organisation of the minority, the GS established in 1997 the legal
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organisation Adalah and the umbrella organisation for PNGOs in Israel, Ittijah.588 Ittijah is an example of an NGO that explicitly advocates separate activity of Palestinian NGOs in Israel. The chair of the organisation, Ameer Makhul, does not negate future co-operation with Jewish activists, but views exclusive activism as a necessary first stage towards the empowerment of PNGOs in Israel.589 Makhul has criticised the Jewish liberal-Left for assuming that it has the right to decide for the Palestinian minority: ‘what is good for it and what not, to decide for them what their real problems are without consulting them’. Makhul published this criticism following an appeal to the High Court of Justice submitted by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel in December 1996 on behalf of two young Palestinian women, who requested that the state be required to permit Palestinian citizens to take part in national service (a form of replacement for military service that is mostly permitted to religious Jewish women). The appeal, Makhul argued, was rooted in the ideology held by most of the Jewish majority that civic equality should be conditional on performing military or national service. This view, Makhul contends, opposes the will of the vast majority of Palestinians in Israel.590 Co-operation and Conflict in Women’s Organisations The elitist profile of the Israeli peace movement, as was noted in Chapter Three, is only challenged by the high presence of women, uncharacteristic of any other public sphere in Israel. However, the sociodemographic profile of women activists in peace organisations is similar to that of men, as most women activists are also Ashkenazi, urban, middle class, and highly educated. Women peace organisations became the spearhead of the movement towards the end of the 1980s, during the first Intifada. Involvement of international organisations in favour of women’s empowerment and women’s dialogue in Israel/Palestine at the time constituted an important incentive for the rising activism of women.591 In view of this leading role played by women organisations within the peace movement, their limited role in promoting equality in Israel and the problems characterising the co-operation between Jewish and Palestinian women activists in Israel are indicative of the difficulties accompanying Jewish-Palestinian co-operation in general. Silvia FogelBijawi has offered a comprehensive explanation for the failure of women organisations in Israel to challenge the non-universalistic nature of Israeli citizenship. As a result of the ethnic nature of Israeli politics, and the accompanying dominance of the Western ethos of society, Fogel-Bijawi
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contends that the hegemonic discourse in Israel conflicts with the universalistic demand for gender equality. The conflict first stems from the institutional separation between Jewish and Palestinian women, because of their national identity. Second, the universalistic ideology conflicts with prevalent practices and discourses that view women as ‘bearers’ of the collective identity of each of the religious-national groups in Israel. This view perpetuates the perception of women as different from and inferior to men.592 Fogel-Bijawi identifies four links between the marginality of women and the discrimination against minority groups in Israel. First, women and minorities are affected by the continuing impact of religion on Israeli politics. The patriarchal characteristics of Judaism affect the position of women in society. The position of non-Jewish women is worse than that of their Jewish co-Israelis, because with very few exceptions, Jewish women can in some circumstances choose whether they prefer to deal with civil courts on family issues. At the same time, Israeli law gives priority to Muslim, Christian and Druze religious courts on these issues when women of these denominations are involved. Second, the militarist nature of society legitimises both the discrimination against women and the Arabs in Israel. The militarist discourse affects women’s lives, as many civilian political and economic institutions prefer ex-army officers to fill senior roles, and as eligibility to state posts and benefits are conditional upon military service. Needless to say, Palestinian women (and men) who do not serve in the Israeli army, suffer most from these policies. Third, Fogel-Bijawi views as problematic the myths portraying Israel as a ‘liberal Western democracy’ and Israeli women as ‘Western women’, facing the same problems and enjoying the same type of equality as women in the West. This led to the assumption that only women who are not Western enough or compatible enough with society suffer from problems that are unique to their culture. This category includes Jewish women from Arab or Ethiopian origin and Palestinian women. Fourth, since the 1980s, neo-liberal tendencies of privatisation and market economy increasingly influence the Israeli social policy. These tendencies have had negative impact on women because many benefits were provided through the workplace or the army. In both institutions the participation of Jewish women is secondary to men, and the participation of Palestinian women is even more marginal; and since welfare rights are not provided universally but based on income testing, the government can – and has – awarded benefits and refused them at its will.593
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According to Fogel-Bijawi, the majority of women’s NGOs in Israel do not challenge these views, despite their negative consequences on the position of women. Hence it is probably not surprising that Palestinian women in Israel played only a marginal role in Israeli peace organisations. According to sociologist Hanna Herzog, these organisations failed to act according to their ideology in their own ranks. 594 Palestinian women from inside the Green Line were absent at the time that Herzog conducted her research (late 1994 and 1995) from both general peace organisations, like Peace Now, and women peace organisations. In addition, Palestinian women from Israel who were active in peace organisations reported feelings of marginality within these predominantly Jewish NGOs. Some felt that both Israeli and Palestinian women activists from the occupied territories were interested in dialogue with one another, leaving behind Palestinians from Israel.595 Jewish-Palestinian Organisations Alongside exclusive activism, joint Jewish-Palestinian organisations have continued to exist in Israel. Palestinians and Jews jointly run only few of these NGOs. From the 1960s through the 1980s, jointly run organisations were highly political and explicitly non-Zionist. One major example was Matzpen, the Israeli Socialist Organisation, established in 1962 by a group expelled from the CPI for criticising the Soviet Union. The group developed a critique of Zionism as colonialism and Israel as a settler society. Towards the beginning of the seventies, the group split over disagreements between Trotskyist, Maoist and independent Marxists. A group of the splinters established the NGO Derech Hanitzotz (Path of the Spark), a militant Marxist group, which became renowned during the Intifada, as its weekly newspaper in Hebrew and Arabic became an important source of information about the Israeli oppression. The group developed close links with the pro-Soviet radical Palestinian group, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP). The Jerusalem District Commissioner closed the organ Derech Hanitzotz in March 1988 by virtue of his authority under the Emergency (Defence) Regulations. Six weeks later the editors of the newspaper were arrested and held without access to counsel for over a month. Following their trial, they were convicted of affiliation to an enemy organisation (The Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine) and sentenced to prison.596 In sharp contrast to the radical and political nature of organisations like Derech Hanitzotz, the majority of the jointly run organisations of the 1990s put much greater emphasis on professional services and advocacy
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for practical changes than on developing a comprehensive political agenda. Thus Sikkuy (established in 1990), a high-profile NGO dedicated to promote an equal share for Palestinian citizens in the national resources and the public sector and – more recently – to raise the professional standards of heads of localities, both Jewish and Arab, does not identify ideologically with the non-Zionist left, and its members have varied political views.597 Sikkuy does not advance an alternative ideology that would challenge the underlying assumptions of the system, but rather aims to integrate the Palestinian citizens within it.598 A similar business-like approach also characterises the Jewish-Arab Centre for Economic Development, a joint NGO established in 1988 mentioned in the previous chapter. The Jewish co-director and founder, Sarah Kremmer, says the organisation acts through non-confrontational advocacy methods vis-à-vis the authorities to achieve its aims. These include the development of industries in Arab municipalities in Israel, which have long been discriminated against in their share of governmental investments. It also aims to empower individual Palestinian businessmen and women. The Centre, in other words, combines services with advocacy. Its advocacy campaigns were especially fruitful during the sympathetic 1992-1996 Labour reign. During this period, the number of Dedicated Industrial Zones in the Arab towns grew from 3 to over 20. The Jewish-Arab Centre for Economic Research lobbied for their establishment, and provided professional support. Another success was the establishment of governmental Centres for the Development of Enterprise (The Hebrew acronym of which is Tapi) in four Arab towns. In this case, the Centre lobbied for their establishment and also raised some of the budgets for their operation. According to Kremmer, the Jewish presence in the organisation helps convince the predominantly Jewish bureaucrats of the importance of projects. As the organisation also promotes the development of Jewish-Arab business relations, Jewish-Arab management seems essential to Kremmer.599 A rather unique example of a Jewish-Palestinian organisation that acts locally is provided by the Wolfson Community Centre in Acre. The physical neglect of the Wolfson neighbourhood is the first sight of Acre revealed to visitors approaching the city by train. Its old buildings stretch along the railway lines, reached only by unpaved dusty footpaths. It is run by a Jewish-Arab association made up of residents of the Wolfson neighbourhood, which is currently composed of 60% Arabs and 40% Jews. The centre was established as a project of the Van-Leer Foundation, a Jewish institution funded by a Dutch fund. Its volunteers arrived at the neighbourhood in 1986, aiming to bring Jewish and Arabs
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neighbours to solve their problems together. The residents’ response was so enthusiastic that in 1989 they decided to turn the neighbourhood’s committee into a registered association, run by the neighbours themselves and co-chaired by a Jew and an Arab. Since 1992, the association’s interest shifted from community work in the neighbourhood to managing the community centre. According to its director and fundraiser, Harry Rhodes, once the residents recognised the importance of the centre for community life, the big challenge was to keep it working. The centre opened its activities to people from all over town. It attracted mainly Arabs, who, despite constituting 30% of Acre’s 50,000 population, are offered only the services of one additional community centre, in the old part of town. Jewish immigrants, looking for subsidised activities, have also become main consumers of the centre’s services. The centre runs after-school programmes for children, including computer, karate, music, and ballet. It runs computer courses for adults, day cares for 2-3 year old kids, preparation courses for firstgrade classes, leadership courses, and an Arab youth council. The centre works in limited co-operation with the city’s municipality. It is involved in low-scale, quiet campaigns for the advancement of Arab issues in the city and for co-existence. One such campaign, demanding to publish all the municipality’s publications in Arabic as well as Hebrew, has been run for several years with little success. Yet the centre avoids direct confrontations and demonstrations.600 Like most of its counterparts in solely Palestinian villages and towns, the Wolfson Community Centre prefers to provide services rather than leading lobby campaigns to force the municipality to provide these services. Jewish-Arab co-operation carried out in the centre for over a decade has not altered this choice. Still, jointly-managed organisations constitute the minority of coexistence organisations. The vast majority of Israeli organisations in which Jewish-Palestinian co-operation takes place are in fact Jewish-run and Jewish-funded NGOs. This pattern has been especially prominent both in the context of Jewish-Palestinian encounter organisations, and in the context of Jewish donors who fund PNGOs in Israel. Jewish Funding of PNGOs in Israel As noted in Chapter Two, Jewish donors funded around 5% of PNGOs in Israel in 1991. This raises the question: how does the funding of PNGOs in Israel serve the interests of Jewish donor funds, particularly those established and run by American-Jews whose main concern – namely, Israel-Diaspora relations – stems from the fact that Israel is a Jewish state. The answer to this question is complex. First, there is
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certainly a tension between different aims of donors who, like the state itself, are committed both to the Jewish and the democratic characters of Israel. In spite of this tension, however, it seems that the security and dominance of the Jewish majority in Israel remains the first concern of at least some of the major funds. Supporting PNGOs aims to serve this ideology, as the following explanation for the importance of co-existence activities – provided by The Abraham Fund601 – reveals: ‘...enhancing Jewish-Arab co-existence and co-operation within Israel is significant and vital. Without such enhancement, feelings of alienation may increase significantly [amongst the Palestinian minority], and there will be more temptation to identify with terrorist activities of Palestinian organisations. These changes will have a negative impact on the feelings of security Jews have in their longsought homeland. [Emphasis mine]’602 For the Abraham Fund, then, Jewish hegemonic position and Jewish security in Israel should prevail as a result of Jewish-Palestinian cooperation. It offers a rather simplistic analysis: co-existence activities equal less alienation of Palestinians in Israel and hence less (Palestinian) involvement in terrorism and more (Jewish) security. This analysis is based on a one-sided historical narrative, featuring the following pillars: Israel is the state of the Jewish nation, not only of its citizens; Historically, Palestinians bear some of the blame for the Nazi holocaust, because of their influence on the British to restrict Jewish immigration to Palestine; Arabs in Israel enjoy freedoms that are not available to Arabs in many Arab countries; ‘realism’ for Arabs in Israel means their acceptance of their status as a minority with the Jewish state; and finally, the ‘fundamental needs’ of Jews and Arabs in Israel are different: for Jews, a politically and militarily secured home is the primary need. For Arabs, the Abraham Fund believes, the key issues are honour and dignity.603 This narrative goes a long way to explaining the perception of support for selected PNGOs and co-existence organisations in Israel as a way of fostering ‘Arab realism’, understood as consent of the Palestinian minority to the Jewish hegemony in the state of Israel. Significantly, however, the commitment of donors such as the Abraham Fund to democratic principles and the dynamics in the work of PNGOs often impose a different reality to the one implied by this narrative. An example may clarify this argument. The Abraham Fund is the main donor of the Kafr Qassem Association for Informal Education, established in 1982 by Dr. Ibrahim ‘Amer, a professor of Chemistry at
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Ben Gurion University and a resident of Kafr Qassem, a village of about 15,000 citizens in the ‘Little Triangle’. Originally, the association focused on educational services only, starting by volunteering to paint some schools’ walls and proceeding by opening a library and offering tutorials in mathematics and computers. With time, however, aims extended to include a Palestinian culture club, and a yearly knowledge quiz that deals, among other subjects, with Palestinian heritage. To the requirement of the Abraham Fund, the association also runs a project of co-existence between the children of the village and neighbouring Jewish schools. However, according to the association’s chair, Ibrahim ‘Amer, the Abraham Fund does not interfere with the content of other activities of the association, which include, for example, a scientific project – promoting excellent students of science – in the nearby villages of Bara and Jaljulia and in Bedouin villages in the Negev.604 Despite the Abraham Fund’s stated aims, then, it supports an organisation that promotes a historical narrative which is counter to its own. While dictating the need to include Jewish-Palestinian encounters among beneficiaries’ activities, the Abraham Fund leaves its funded PNGOs the freedom to develop their own contents. The imminent tensions in the ideology of Jewish organisations funding PNGOs in Israel reveal themselves clearly in the work of another major organisation, the New Israel Fund (NIF). The NIF offers both financial aid and professional-organisational support to hundred of PNGOs in Israel, focusing on organisations acting for social change, in their early stages of activity. As in the case of the Abraham Fund, the aid provided by the NIF to the development of Palestinian organisations may seem paradoxical: after all, the NIF was established by Jews in the USA. who saw their involvement in Israeli internal affairs as legitimate and welcome on the grounds that Israel is the Jewish state. Although the NIF shares many concerns with the PNGOs it supports in Israel, especially in regard to issues of tolerance and democracy in Israel, its aim to bring these concerns to the ‘Jewish world’s agenda’605 clearly clashes with the political agenda of the Palestinian minority in Israel. The NIF was established in 1979 in San Francisco by a Jewish couple, Jonathan Cohen and Eleanor Friedman, who gained fund-raising experience in their work for a national network of small foundations in the U.S. Their decision to establish the fund resulted, according to Cohen, from their concern about developments in Israel on the one hand and of the alienation of many young donors from supporting Israel, on the other. Incorporating themselves as the NIF, Cohen said, ‘was our idea of engaging people in Jewish philanthropy’.606 The NIF exclusively supports
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non-governmental organisations, in the view that they constitute the most efficient carriers of social change.607 It deals with organisations in the fields of civil and human rights, Jewish-Arab co-existence, socioeconomic gaps, the status of women, environmental justice, and religious pluralism.608 In 1982, the NIF established Shatil (Seedling) as its arm providing guidance and technical assistance to Israeli NGOs in their early steps.609 Taken together with the direct budget allocation the NIF awards NGOs in Israel, it seems that the organisation justifiably prides itself on boosting the growth of the Israeli nonprofit sector.610 Operationally, the NIF is an American-based fund. It is registered in New York, and seven of its 11 offices are located in the U.S. (the organisation has only one office in Israel, located in Jerusalem. The additional three offices are based in Canada, the U.K., and Switzerland). A board comprising Israelis and North American Jews runs the NIF.611 American Jewry contributes most of NIF’s donations.612 Likewise, the organisation is first and foremost accountable to donors in the American Jewish community, who receive regular reports on the usage of their contributions.613 It is therefore not surprising that some decisions regarding NIF’s donations within Israel are owed to considerations of public relations directed at the American Jewry. Thus the NIF’s executive director, Norman S. Rosenberg, explained the organisation’s concentration on the rights of Conservative and Reform Jews in Israel in 1999: ‘We have wanted to use this issue [which is close to the heart of many Jews in the USA.] as a way of getting American Jews to look at the range of issues facing Israeli democracy.’614 By contrast to the NIF’s clear stand in the religious issue, presidents of the organisation in Israel consistently attempted to dissociate the Fund from the left wing of the Israeli political map. The NIF’s president in Israel, Gila Svirski, said in reply to a journalist’s question in 1987 as to whether the NIF was the left-wing answer to the Israel Fund: ‘Absolutely not.’615 Seven years later, in January 1994, the new president of the Israeli branch, Avi ‘Armoni, was surprised to find out that an unknown hostile organisation planted bombs in the NIF offices in New York as well as in the New York offices of Peace Now. ‘Armoni brought with him to the position a mainstream image, following service as an officer in Israeli police, and attempted to convince the public that mainstream represented the NIF’s position as well. Like Svirski, ‘Armoni rejected the association between human rights campaigning and left-wing ideology in the Jewish-Arab conflict. According to ‘Armoni, this association was made by far-right politicians, who ‘turn the whole issue of human rights into part of the
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public debate over the future of the [occupied] territories and the definitions of Zionist identity’.616 This careful position may be interpreted as an attempt to remain within the political mainstream of Israeli society and the Jewish community in North America. Yet, although the rights of the Palestinian minority exceed this mainstream, the NIF plays a major role in funding Palestinian NGOs in Israel. Since 1988, a Palestinian citizen has been appointed to the NIF’s board of directors.617 Furthermore, loyal to its preference to fund advocacy organisations,618 the list of Palestinian NGOs in Israel which are funded by the NIF include many organisations that are in conflict with Israeli authorities. Two prominent examples from the 1996 list of grantees were the Arab Association for Human Rights, established to ‘support efforts to promote the civil rights of Arab citizens of Israel through advocacy, policy analysis, and public education’; and the Union of Arab Parents’ Associations, working to ‘support efforts to mobilise Arab parents to ensure their children’s rights to quality education through ombudsman services, training, and advocacy for equitable education policies’.619 Shatil even established a Palestinian lobby organisation (in co-operation with the umbrella organisation of Palestinian NGOS in Israel, Ittijah), Mossawa (equality), in 1997.620 In 1992, the NIF established the Equal Access Initiative, a project run by Shatil and dedicated to ‘help Arab citizens and their municipalities gain equal access to government services and resources, especially education, health care, and economic opportunity’. As with all other NIF donations, these aims too are achieved through the funding of NGOs. In 1996, for example, this Initiative awarded over $194,000 to its organisations (out of Shatil’s total budget of $1,599,774). 621 Palestinian organisations in Israel and organisations which were active in the promotion of Jewish-Palestinian co-existence in Israel were also funded in 1996 through other projects of the NIF. In total, 49 of the 148 NGOs supported in Israel by the NIF in 1996 were Palestinian or co-existence organisations.622 Fathi Marshud, the co-ordinator of Shatil in Haifa, argues that the tension between the NIF’s different subjects of concern does not affect its attitude towards Palestinian civil society in Israel. ‘The NIF’s headquarters get involved in our work only at the initial stage of selection of staff and organisations to support. The selection of course is influenced by the political and ideological views of the staff, in relation to the values which concern the Fund, such as democracy and human rights. Organisations are chosen if they match the model of community empowerment that the NIF promotes,’ said Marshud. ‘With our daily
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work, however, the NIF does not interfere. Together with my staff, I am the one who determines the work programme and the means to achieve it. To give just one example: not long ago we conducted a conference on community work and social change. Our spokesmen include Palestinian leaders who call for Israel’s transformation into a “state of all its citizens”, leaders who are often seen as radical. Moreover, the conference was purely Palestinian in its participants and attitudes; no one objected or interfered. I believe that the NIF is one of the very few Israeli organisations that allows such freedom of activity and thought to its Palestinian wing.’623 Dorit Karlin, manager of the Allocations Department of the NIF, explains the Fund’s policy of supporting Palestinian NGOs in Israel: ‘The NIF is considered one of the institutions most open to support Arab NGOs. This policy is by and large executed by Shatil, a very unique arm of the NIF. Our criteria for awarding support include first the demand that it would be an organisation. We do not support individuals or research, as we wish to strengthen civil society; secondly, we support non-governmental organisations. We usually do not support organisations that provide services instead of the government. Rather, we support groups who attempt to change policies of the establishment and defend citizens who do not have channels of influence in the establishment; thirdly, we support the empowerment of underprivileged communities, in difficult cases such as the case of the Bedouin in the Negev, even through services; fourth, we support only organisations that enhance Israeli democracy; finally, we mainly support organisations in their early stages. Not only due to limited resources, but also because we believe that the more organisations that would exist, the better.’624 Karlin rejects the claim that the NIF acts within Israeli and Jewish consensus. She argues that the NIF took upon itself the task to expand this consensus, to include new themes that were previously excluded. She suggests that the status of women is one such theme that was an illegitimate subject of public activism in militarist Israel, but gained a mainstream position following its inclusion as the NIF’s flagship for several years. Nevertheless, the NIF is a Zionist Fund, and Karlin admits that this is part of the considerations of the Fund regarding the organisations it supports. ‘I guess that we would not support an ultraOrthodox Jewish organisation if faced with the dilemma of such a request.’625 A recent example of Shatil’s activity supports Karlin’s
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argument regarding the role of the organisation in politicising issues that are excluded from the mainstream political debate. In 1994, the Knesset legislated a law regulating the pavement of Road no. 6, known as the Cross-Israel Road (Hotze Yisrael). The law authorises the company constructing the road to expropriate land from owners whose territories obstruct the road. Most of the land designated for expropriation along the central part of the road belongs to Palestinian owners. In the Triangle Palestinian cities of Taybeh and Tirah, the extent of land for expropriation is 900,000 square metres and 1,100,000 square metres respectively.626 The campaign against the road therefore involved both Jewish and Palestinian organisations, and focused on two complementary issues: the protection of the environment and the struggle against Arab land expropriation. The New Israel Fund and Shatil played a key role in mobilising this coalition of organisations, which emphasised a linkage that was previously unspoken – between the allegedly neutral issues of the environment and the political discrimination of Palestinians in Israel. Sociologist Mariam Mar’i was the first Palestinian board member in the NIF. She was nominated in 1989, and served in this role for six years. Mar’i hesitated to take on the job, she said, because she was worried that she might not have the freedom to decide in which organisations to invest based on previous, unsuccessful experiences with Jewish-Arab organisations. Mar’i joins the critics of co-existence initiatives, arguing that her long-held experience with such activities showed their futility as far as the creation of an equal dialogue or improving the situation of the Palestinian community were concerned. Positive personal experience with the NIF convinced her to give their proposal a chance: during the height of the Intifada the NIF funded a lecture-tour with Mari’s participation among Jews in the USA. She was impressed by the organisers’ lack of interference in the content of her lectures. The introductory meeting to which she was invited convinced her to join the organisation, she said: ‘I didn’t ask to take part in the discussion, just witness it. But I started getting this feeling that simply the fact that I was sitting there – Arab, Israeli, woman – changed something. The speakers looked at me, they took note that I was there… I said that they should not look at the Arab community only from the point of view of co-existence projects. The percentage of the NIF that was going to the Arab sector at that time was 6% of the budget. I said: we are 18%, and this percentage has to change. Projects exist [in the
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Palestinian community], you may not find them because they deal with the specific needs of the Arab community itself’.627 Mar’i is proud of her service in the NIF. During her years in the organisation, the percentage of investment in the Arab community more than doubled and projects varied to include Arab-only projects. She is particularly proud of including Arab lawyers in the programme for human-rights studies. As mentioned in Chapter Three, the NIF send two candidates annually to take a master’s degree in law and civil/human rights in the US. Since the early 1990s, thanks to Mar’i’s initiative, the programme was extended to include one Arab lawyer every year. 628 Organisations for Jewish-Palestinian Dialogue in Israel Since the late 1970s, and intensively during the 1980s, dozens of organisations were established with the aim of organising structured encounters between Jews and Palestinians in Israel, especially Jewish and Palestinian youth. This development represented a break with the past. Until the 1970s, there were nearly no organised encounters, while in the 1970s, most of the encounter activities focused on a single meeting, usually between university students, aiming to experiment socialpsychological concepts. The period beginning in the 1970s saw several new developments. First, encounters became institutionalised, with some institutions rising to prominence in organising encounters: The JewishArab Centre in Giv’at Haviva, The Arab-Jewish Centre Bet-Hagefen, VanLeer Jerusalem Foundation, 629 Tel-Aviv University, Haifa University, and the School for Peace in Neve-Shalom/Wahat al-Salam. Only NeveShalom/Wahat al-Salam is a jointly run Jewish-Palestinian organisation; the others are all Jewish organisations that employ Palestinians. Second, encounter activities increasingly focused on the participation of school children. Finally, state agencies began actively organising Jewish-Arab encounters. This tendency began in the late 1960s in the Histadrut, which established an Arab department in the Haifa Labour Council and the Israeli Society for Understanding and Friendship. The Ministry of Education has become a major organiser of Jewish-Palestinian encounters in Israel since the establishment of a Unit for Democracy, Co-existence and Tolerance in 1986, by the then Minister of Education, Yitzhak Navon.630 Bet Hagefen, an association for Jewish-Palestinian encounters operated by the Haifa Municipality that is also partially funded by the Ministry of Education, illustrates characteristic conflicts between the stated aim of ‘co-existence’ and Jewish domination in the establishment organising
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these activities. Power relations within Bet Hagefen were made very clear in 1991, when two of its Palestinian senior employees were fired, for allegedly being associated with the PLO. One of these employees, the poet Hana abu-Hana, was responsible for organising the main annual event of Bet Hagefen, the ‘Arab Culture Week’, and gave public lectures. He was fired after the Palestinian Council for Culture noted his poetry for its excellence. A member of the Haifa municipality, Avi Golhammer, called for his dismissal, because the Council is associated with the PLO. Golhammer advocated the laying off of another employee, Mishel Hadad, after the Ministry of Interior shut down a literary magazine he was editing based on evidence that it was funded by the PLO. The Chair of Bet Hagefen’s Board of Directors, Yitzhak Getz, did not hesitate. Following the receipt of the letter, he fired both Abu Hana and Hadad. ‘Our institution acts by the law of the state. We will not be associated with people who identify with hostile forces.’631 Arab employees accused Tzvi Israeli, the manager of Bet Hagefen from 1965 until the 1990s, of patronising attitudes. ‘All the co-existence slogans were only pretty for cosmetic reasons,’ an ex-employee told a local newspaper in Haifa, ‘When it came down to the field, we felt an intentioned discrimination against us. Arab dancers in the Bet Hagefen band, for example, always complained that Jewish dancers received more costumes. The Arab theatre was located in a squalid building. It always suffered from shortage of instruments and facilities.’632 Although scholars have emphasised the interest of minority groups in meeting members of the majority,633 Jewish institutions mostly took the initiative in the field of encounters in Israel, while Palestinians in Israel mostly responded. The high profile of the Ministry of Education in organising encounters is also intriguing considering the strict segregation that otherwise characterises the Israeli educational system. Researchers and activists have criticised these emerging patterns. David Hall-Cathala notes that most encounter organisations shy away from politics during the encounters and avoid supporting any protest activities organised by other organisations in the Israeli peace movement. Hall-Cathala argues that co-existence organisations are part of the ‘reform’ side of the peace movement, aiming to restore universal values within the Jewish state, not radically restructure Israeli society.634 Others have argued that rather than promoting real dialogue, the encounters have much too often served as another field for fostering Jewish hegemony over Palestinians in Israel, and a tool of control and cooptation of Palestinians. Thus, the Arab Department in Haifa Labour Council stated in 1969 that its aim was ‘to find an Arab population which
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is ready to link its fate with the state of Israel’, and the Israeli Society for Understanding and Friendship included as one of its goals the education of Arabs of Israel to ‘full identification with the state’.635 According to Mohammed Abu Nimer, these programmes helped to implement the policy of co-optation dominant until the 1970s, especially when participants received economic and material benefits. Abu Nimer argues that encounters continue to support governmental policies. One of the prominent examples is the division of some encounter programmes between Arabs, Druze, Christians and Bedouin: the differentiation of programmes along these division lines enhances rather than questions them. Abu Nimer contends that Jewish-Palestinian encounters are often based on underlying assumptions which serve the status quo: the assumption that Israel is a Jewish state, and, secondly, that the encounter group is educational and not political in nature. These groups operate mainly within schools, institutions that – as Majid al-Haj has argued636 – clearly aim to maintain control over the Palestinian population. Thus, the operational context of encounter programmes is part of the Ministry of Education’s policy and general structure. The apolitical nature of the programmes corresponds to the educational policy in the Palestinian sector in Israel, educating students to avoid political activity and thus challenge the basic definitions of the state.637 Finally, Abu Nimer argues that encounter groups do not explore the ‘root causes’ of the micro-level problems on which they focus, such as fears, stereotypes and hatred. Encounter groups, in other words, do not contribute to conflict resolution, as they do not question the status quo nor discuss the roots of the conflict, and are limited by the access they require from the Ministry of Education.638 Another critic of these Jewish-Palestinian encounters is Dichter, the Jewish co-director of Sikkuy. Dichter also acted from 1994 until November 2000 as a co-director of ‘Children Teaching Children’, a civic programme for junior high schools in Giv’at Haviva. Dichter has argued that Israeli state institutions and Jewish organisations ideologically close to the state’s formal position developed a falsified discourse that aimed to justify the status quo in relations between Jews and Palestinians in Israel. Most significant in this discourse was the term ‘co-existence’, which has been used as a euphemism for Palestinian consent to Jewish hegemony in Israel. In the name of co-existence, Jewish emissaries have attempted since the 1930s to bring Palestinians closer to Jews and turn them into loyal citizens, in effect making them accept Jewish superiority. This, Dichter has argued, was Mapam’s explicit aim even before 1948. Following the establishment of Israel, the focus of relations between
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Jews and Palestinians switched to the new Palestinian citizens’ loyalty to the state, and it was this question of loyalty which has stood at the root of the co-existence that the Jews were seeking to establish. Experts on co-existence, both in government ministries and in various organisations, worked to convince Palestinians in Israel to forget the past, accept the present, and strive to make the most of it, materially and socially, for the future. In the basis of this perception lies the hope that historical pragmatism would persuade the Palestinians not to seek any collective rights, as this would jeopardise the supremacy of Jews as a group.639 According to Dichter, Jewish-Palestinian encounters in Israel usually follow this approach. They overlook the conflict and focus on individual relations, and their main aim is to celebrate the Israeli ‘co-existence’ between Jews and Palestinians. Dialogue is seen as a way of preventing open and violent conflict, in the spirit of ‘as long as we’re talking, we aren’t hitting’. Thus, instead of effecting a fundamental change in the situation, dialogue is seen as a way of preserving the status quo or, at best, of making minor improvements to it. The balance of power, however, is not challenged.640 Dichter bases his observations first and foremost on his experiences in running the programme of Children Teaching Children. The programme began in 1987 in Dichter’s classroom in a junior high school, when he was an Arabic teacher. Children Teaching Children, he argues, represented at the time the hegemonic approach of most encounters programmes. In 1994, Dichter was appointed by Giv’at Haviva to run the programme. ‘The Arab instructors demanded corunning of the programme, and Giv’at Haviva’s answer was to appoint me, arguing that I will be able to represent both sides thanks to my good knowledge of the Arabic language,’ he says. Soon, Dichter raised the demand for co-running, but Giv’at Haviva’s management refused. After seven months in which the programme was internally co-managed, Giv’at Haviva formally accepted the arrangement in 1995. The principle of co-directing deviates from the Jewish management of Giv’at Haviva and the varied educational programmes the institution runs. Similarly, the mainstream ideology in the institution is opposed to basing dialogue between Jews and Palestinians on the concept of power relations.641 Rather, Jewish-Palestinian encounters in Giv’at Haviva are generally based on an individual approach; namely, an approach that focuses on shared humanistic values rather than emphasising unequal political conditions. Sarah Ozacki-Lazar, the manager of the Arab-Jewish Centre for Peace in Giv’at Haviva since 1998, describes this approach thus:
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‘Education to co-existence bears wide and deep meaning. First and foremost this is an education to humanism, an education that puts in the centre the man and his freedom and not the collective – the nation, the religious, ethnic or denomination group. [sic.] In the programme Children Teaching Children… [when participants meet] individuals of the other nation, they are ready to accept them not as a group but as a collection of individuals… there is no “us” and “them” but “you” and “me”.’’642 Ozacki-Lazar says the humanistic approach Giv’at Haviva represents is opposed to the approach based on power dynamics, as promoted by Dichter. ‘Maybe because I am a member of the majority group, I do not sympathise with the approach that focuses on power relations. I prefer the dominant approach of the [Jewish-Arab] Centre [for Peace in Giv’at Haviva], which promotes equality in decision-making and execution,’ she says.643 Debate over the humanistic-individual approach continues to exist at the Jewish-Arab Centre for Peace at Giv’at Haviva. Farhat Agbaria, the Palestinian co-director of the Face-to-Face programme at the centre, wrote in a joint article with Cynthia Cohen that an awareness to power dynamics ‘makes it possible to work with greater respect, sensitivity and genuineness. It increases the possibility of real and lasting change’. On the other hand, ignoring the power dynamics might ‘perpetuate or prolong the conflict instead of helping to resolve it’.644 Although as Ozacki-Lazar has emphasised, this approach conflicts with the main line of the Jewish-Arab Centre for Peace, Agbaria argues that the Centre encourages pluralism of views. Activists in the Centre have an ongoing dialogue over this issue, he argues, which leaves much space for action in accordance with his belief.645 The debate over the value of Jewish-Palestinian encounters and the manner in which they should be run is led by the most prominent of the jointly run organisations in Israel, Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam. This is a unique organisation, established in 1972, whose members – Palestinians and Jews – live together in the only joint village in Israel. In addition to the experimental life together, since 1979 the community runs the School for Peace, an institute that organises encounters between Israeli Jewish and Palestinian school children, students, teachers, and the general public. In recent years the school also organises separate activities for Jewish and Palestinian citizens of Israel, and encounters of Israelis and Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza.646 Over time, however, disillusionment with the romantic vision of life together, as if in a bubble isolated from the Israeli reality, has become explicit in the community.
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Rabah Halabi, the Palestinian co-director of the School for Peace, has argued that the national divisions continue to exist even in the unique reality of the village. Moreover, although resource distribution and key community functions are equally distributed between Jews and Palestinians, Palestinian-Jewish relations in Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam are quite similar to life outside the village in that Arabs make most of the concessions and compromises in order that the joint life will prevail. This is shown clearly in the language patterns. Hebrew is the dominant language in the village, just as it is in the state as a whole. Even at school, which is formally bi-lingual, Hebrew remains the dominant language. While the Arab students speak perfect Hebrew, Jewish students speak very limited Arabic.647 Anwar Daud, the secretary-general of the village since 1999, says that most members are increasingly disillusioned not only with the relationship within the village, but also with the political role Neve-Shalom/Wahat al-Salam plays in the outside world. Daud argues that the community is used for public-relation purposes by the Israeli government, an easy way to present a positive and democratic image without making any effort for real change. ‘When I flew El-Al [the Israeli national airlines], I found out to my surprise that our village is presented in the company’s image film. But of course, this did not bestow me any preferred treatment in the prolonged security checks Arabs must endure at the airport. Similarly, the Knesset sends us delegations from around the world. When we spoke about the obstacles faced by the Arab citizens of Israel, some of them said that they were told that a visit to our village illustrates the fact that equality is available in Israel to anyone who chooses to benefit from it. I resent this distorted representation of reality and feel uncomfortable with the use of Shalom-Shalom for the fortification of this image.’648 Based on their own experiences as members in a Palestinian-Jewish community, the professional team in the School for Peace and their academic advisors have constantly questioned their methods in organising encounters for Palestinians and Jews from outside the community. In 2000, Halabi edited a book outlining the School’s approach. Similarly to Dichter and to Agbaria and Cohen, the team and advisors in the School for Peace came to the conclusion that effective encounters must recognise the conflict and be based on a dialogue between clear collective identities. Social psychologists have identified two continuums for encounters of groups in conflict. The first moves between human relation courses to courses for conflict resolution: human relation courses focus mainly on the experience of the encounter, aiming to emphasise the common grounds of all participants while
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ignoring the conflict; conflict resolution courses, on the other hand, view the participants as representatives of their group and give less attention to the psychological world of participants and their personal relations. The other continuum moves between the Contact Approach and the Inter-Group Encounter. The first approach assumes that the very contact between individuals of groups in conflict, detached from their collective identity, reduces hatred and stereotypes. The Inter-Group Encounter approach argues that an effective encounter is achieved only by emphasising the collective identity of the participants. In its early years, the methodology of the School for Peace resembled the first approach in both continuums, i.e., individual work that refrained from direct reference to the conflict and from collective identities. According to Halabi and Nava Zonenshein, the school imported this approach from the United States and it was the only one known in Israel at the time. However, both participants and instructors – mainly of the Palestinian party – were frustrated by this model, which they saw as nonrepresentative of the reality external to the encounters, and more consistent with the interests of the Jews than those of the Arabs. Consequently, the school changed its approach and since the 1990s, has led intra-group encounters that clarify the collective identity of each party and sharpens, not overlooks, the conflict.649 This methodology was fundamentally developed following a five-year research of the encounters in Wahat-Shalom/Wahat al-Salam, conducted by Haviva Bar and David Bar-Gal between 1985 and 1989. Some of the workshops focused on the methodology that Bar Bar-Gal labelled ‘living with the conflict’. These workshops brought the conflicting reality to discussion, and Bar and Bar-Gal found that they were most effective in creating a realistic and complex understanding of the conflict among participants. Moreover, each side seemed to better understand the position of the other and the importance of pluralistic society.650 Halabi and Zonenshein testify that this new approach is more difficult for the Jewish party: as is familiar from other contexts, the majority group prefers to avoid conflict in order to preserve its hegemony. Moreover, while encounters that focused on psychological factors and individual relations left participants with positive feelings, in spite of the obvious failure of a meeting to change the external reality, encounters that focus on the conflict leave all participants frustrated. This approach is therefore more difficult than opting for fun meetings, argue Halabi and Zonenshein, but it is more meaningful in their view because it leads participants to recognise the real problems they are facing outside.651 Disagreements over encounter methodologies cut across the variety of existing organisations. Midreshet
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Adam, a Jewish organisation that works in Arab schools in Israel in addition to Jewish schools, promotes the idea that Jewish-Palestinian encounters are only effective if they take place as part of a process of democratisation on each side. Saber Rabi, an educational co-ordinator in Midreshet Adam, explains that rather than living with the conflict, his organisation aims to present the conflict as a dilemma that cuts across national boundaries. In other words, Midreshet Adam aims to influence school children to acknowledge the non-democratic elements in their own society, change their own attitudes towards democracy and pluralism, and only then meet the other side and discuss the national conflict. ‘We believe that living with the conflict is a problematic educational message. It may be right for a political party, but not for an educational process that aims to encourage new thinking and change. If you teach to live with the conflict, you encourage your students to leave the process with exactly the same ideas and views as they entered it,’ he explains. Midreshet Adam aims, instead, to place Jewish-Palestinian equality in a wider context of democratic understanding, teaching participants to identify and cope with problems in society, not only in the context of the state.652 In spite of the differences in views and methodologies, Rabi believes that Jewish-Palestinian co-operation is an important way to challenge the dichotomies in the Israeli society. ‘Since we live together in this country, it is extremely important to know the other side. And I feel it most strongly as an educator, we all have far more to give to our students because we work together.’ Furthermore, he argues that joint projects are more prone to receiving funding. ‘It is true that in Midreshet Adam, the management is Jewish, and I hope that it will truly change some day. At the moment, I prefer to enjoy full autonomy as a guide than be appointed to manager and act within restrictions that I do not accept. The role of a manager may be misleading, and sometimes even the porter has more authority as I learned in a meeting I led, which was interrupted by a Jewish porter who rendered us – Arab instructors – a security risk. This porter had more negative influence on the encounter that day than any positive work I could achieve over a long period.’653 The impact of Jewish-Palestinian encounters, whether political or personal in nature, is naturally much determined by the interaction among the participants themselves and their own personal views. In an ironic and touching recollection, author Sayed Kashu has vividly revived the emotions involved in the encounter. Kashu, a Palestinian citizen in Israel who writes in Hebrew, was born in 1975 and is now the television critic of the local newspaper Ha’ir, published in Tel Aviv. The main
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character of Kashu’s first novel, a Palestinian Israeli, tells the stories of his adolescent years. At the Fourth Grade, he writes, a blonde and tall Jewish guy, looking distinctively foreign and ‘unlike us’, invited his class to be part of an encounter project with a Jewish school of a nearby town. For the storyteller, it was only his second meeting with Jews. His parents invited a Jewish student for a festive lunch, as did all his classmates. But when the Arabs visited the Jewish class, simple food was served at school, and the Palestinian teachers were disappointed to find that ‘they got all dressed up for nothing’. What’s more, the Jewish class was replaced by mistake, sent again to the Arab school to meet a different class from that of the storyteller. The storyteller is disappointed not to see his new friend, but hides his disappointment. ‘It’s not as if I understood his Hebrew anyway,’he thinks. The story ends, however, with the headmaster of the Arab school coming to pick up the storyteller to see his friend, who had burst out crying when he found out that the Arab child he knows was not there to meet him. ‘How happy I was,’ Kashu writes. ‘Nadav felt the same way as I did. This Jew really loves me.’654 Kashu’s anecdote alludes to the main strength of the individual model of Jewish-Palestinian encounters, namely the possibility of getting to know the other side on a personal level. It also illustrates, however, some of the problems associated with this model, including the lack of shared language and the inequality between participants, reflected most vividly in the one-sided invitation home. The debate over the consequences of the individual model, as a mechanism to preserve the status quo of Jewish-Palestinian relations and refrain from a political discussion or action, shows that this anecdote is not telling an exceptional story. Jewish-Palestinian dialogue modelled upon the individual approach often fails to create real opportunities for a dialogue that would challenge the inequalities in the Israeli society. The dominance of Jews in this model is reflected in the fact that Jews manage most of the organisations that run these encounters. Hence, as depicted in the anecdote, Jews are often the ones to take the initiative for the encounter. The alternative approach, based on acknowledgment of inequalities and co-management, as developed for example by Wahat alSalam/Neve Shalom, seems to lead to a more realistic and political discussion.655This model, however, faces much resentment from Jewish participants. Notably, these difficulties in establishing a model for joint activism that would be acceptable to most Jews and Palestinians may explain the increased tendency of Palestinians in Israel to establish their own separate organisations, in which they take the initiative and set the agenda, as described above.
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The Co-Existence Concept Post-October 2000 Events In early October 2000, just days after the clashes between demonstrators and the police had ended, one of the most prominent organisations active in the field of Jewish-Arab co-existence in Israel convened an urgent conference of co-existence NGOs. At the request of the organisers, the organisation that convened the conference and the participants shall remain nameless. The conference was a one-day series of discussions among NGO activists, mainly from the Northern regions of Israel in which most of the clashes took place. The vast majority of participants were Jewish women, activists in local initiatives for good relationship with Arab neighbours. More than 100 activists took part in the conference, which was organised in an emergency response to the events, and the dominant question in most discussion groups was ‘Where did we go wrong?’ While a few participants told the forum about positive experiences of organisational involvement that toned down the Jewish-Arab conflict in certain localities – thus, for example, a member of one of the city councils in the North of Israel said she was involved in successful negotiations with the police to close a road and thus stopped a group of Jews from going to a nearby Arab town to ‘avenge’ the violent demonstrations; another said she received a ‘reassuring phone call’ from a friend in the Arab group she works with – most said the events caught them by surprise and admitted they remained inactive throughout the clashes, either because they were afraid to go to areas in which heated and sometimes violent demonstrations took place, or because they felt excluded by their Palestinian partners for dialogue. One of the participants expressed a view with which many in her discussion group seemed to agree, saying that although she fully respected the right of her neighbours to demonstrate, she was disappointed to learn that some teenagers who had participated in the dialogue group she runs were part of a protest that included violent means such as stone throwing at police and Israeli Jewish passerby. Another participant said she felt the joint activity was a failure because at a time of crisis, Jewish activists did nothing to stop the shooting at civilian demonstrators. This emergency conference raised issues that are still discussed and debated among Jewish activists for co-existence and equality, as well as between Jewish and Palestinian NGO activists in Israel. First, based on the feelings of failure of existing methods of activity, the events raised questions such as what are the goals of the joint activity, and how can they be achieved. Are joint activities meant to generate political change that will prevent the persistence of inequalities, or are they a means to
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achieve Arab acquiescence? What are their roles among the Jewish population? Second, based on the feelings of shock in the face of the events, activists asked themselves how they failed to see the growing tensions and cleavages around them, and consequently – what can be done to promote a sincere Jewish-Arab dialogue in Israel? Third, the clashes revealed a conflict between Jews and Palestinian citizens acting together or separately in NGOs, as many felt that the interests of their own community must come first where a clash occurs. This raised the need to discuss indepth the Jewish interests in co-existence activity. Some of the concerns of activists in existing joint organisations found some answers in the forming of new organisations or projects. Two such initiatives were formed in Misgav, a regional council in central Galilee, a region in which Palestinians and Jews live side by side. The Jewish settlements in Misgav were established as Mitzpim, as part of the policy of ‘Judaisation’ of Galilee. Nevertheless, their attraction for middle-class Israeli Jews was mainly non-ideological but based on the high standards of living they offer. In October 2000, Misgav was at the centre of Arab demonstrations. For some residents in the area, the event served as a reminder for the injustices in their region, including the unjust allocation of lands between Jewish and Arab settlements, and the unequal level of municipal services and local infrastructures. Many residents of Misgav therefore responded to the events through civic initiatives aimed at reducing inequalities in the region. The two main initiatives are Kol Akher Bagalil (Another Voice in Galilee) and Sikkuy in Misgav. Kol Akher Bagalil began its activity immediately after October 2000 as a Jewish initiative. Later, however, activists associated with the Communist Party in Sakhnin, the biggest Arab city in the region, joined the initiative and the organisation registered as a JewishArab association. Together with al-Beit, an NGO that was formed in 1994 to promote an equal discourse in Israel based on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Kol Akher Bagalil works to establish a democratic settlement in Galilee. This settlement will be open to all residents of Israel with no distinction of ethnic origin, and is therefore set to give a partial but practical response to the severe shortage of land experienced by Arabs in Galilee. For al-Beit, the establishment of democratic settlements represents a continuation of long-term activity to challenge the discrimination of Arabs in terms of land allocation and acceptance of existing settlements. The two founders of Al-Beit, Uri Davis and solicitor Tawfiq Jabareen, played a major role in the Katzir case dealt with by the High Court of Justice. The two represented Fathi Mahamid, a resident of Umm al-Fahem whose was not allowed to join to
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the Jewish community centre Katzir. In order to prove that the rejection was based on racial discrimination, Jabareen suggested that Davis applies to live in Katzir as a representative of Mahamid without stating this representation as a motivation to join the settlement. Jabareen and Davis invoked a commercial law that entitles any two people to engage in a delivery contract, without notifying a third party. Indeed, Davis was accepted by Katzir and no questions were asked about his radical political record, but the settlement refused to allow the Arab Mahamid, who has no security or criminal record, to take his place. Al-Beit aims to establish three democratic settlements, one in the south and one in the centre of Israel in addition to the one in Galilee.656 Sikkuy in Misgav was also established following the harsh events in the region in October 2000. Identifying the roots of the Arab unrest in the discriminatory way in which their own regional council deploys budget and resources, a group of activist citizens appealed to Sikkuy to help them organise in an attempt to change local policies. The group has been active since 2000. It has a hard core of activists consisting of 25 people. These activists write regularly to the local newspaper and are engaged in lobbying efforts with the local council. They have managed to establish a routine of regular meetings with the council’s Head of Treasury and with the head of the local council. One of the group’s main demands is that the council share tax profits from the region’s industrial zone with the city of Sakhnin. This group of activists is also responsible for publishing an annual report on the level of discrimination in the Misgav area. This report is highly professional and was used as a source for the Or Commission. In addition to the 25 activists at its core, Sikkuy in Misgav has a circle of up to 250 activists who support public activities and attend a meeting every three months. Based on the success of the group, Sikkuy established three similar groups in the Hof Hakarmel and Triangle regions, and in Ramleh. The Hof Hakarmel group is thriving but the other two disintegrated. As a lesson from the failures, Sikkuy decided to try a ‘top-to-bottom’ approach to civic action groups, as a complementary strategy to the bottom-up strategy characterising the Misgav group. In other words, rather than letting grassroot activists set the agenda, the organisation established one group that is instructed by an agenda from the centre of the organisation. This group is not based on residency location but rather on professional merit: it was established to follow-up implementation of the conclusions of the Or Commission. Shuli Dichter, the co-director of Sikkuy and the co-ordinator of the Civic Group project explains that the motivation of the groups derives from the understanding that Israeli officials base their decisions on what
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they perceive as the will of the Jewish public. He argues that major decisions, such as Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon and the building of the Security Wall between Israel and Palestine, were made based on public mood despite the initial resistance by politicians. The aim of the group is to make an impact on the public discourse and mood, and bring this change to the awareness of decisionmakers in the administration – from local administration to the government. Due to the small size of the Israeli society, Dichter believes that 20 groups may have long-term social and political influence.657 The Intifada has had an unsettling effect on veteran and wellestablished NGOs of human and civil rights just as it affected the smaller and often more recently established co-existence organisations. Stormy internal debates in the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) made news in the Israeli press. ACRI is a liberal association, established in the early 1970s to protect human rights through legal means. In the 30 years of its existence, ACRI has managed to establish a professional reputation for itself and gain the respect of the Supreme Court for Justice.658 ACRI continued to stand at the forefront of human rights activities since October 2000, both as rights of Palestinian citizens and Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. In 2003 alone, ACRI petitioned the court over ownership and movement rights of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories, and appealed against the arrest of a Palestinian human rights activist. Within Israel, ACRI continued to lead the campaign for fair allocation of land to Arabs, which it started with the Ka’adan case, and is leading a campaign against an amendment to the Entry into Israel which completely prevents the naturalisation of Palestinian spouses of Israeli citizens. In addition, ACRI has also continued to deal with other human rights violations, directed towards Israeli Jews and foreign workers.659 Despite this vigorous activity, the association suffered from intense internal debate over the question of whether the association should define the occupation itself as a violation of human rights.660 One of the founders of ACRI, law professor Ruth Gavison, has argued that the association has managed to stand apart from other human rights associations because ‘ACRI alone has taken upon itself to view human rights as a whole, and not as means to any end, justified though it may be’.661 This attempt to act from within as wide a consensus as possible obviously faced difficulties at a time of intense conflict such as that imposed by the current Intifada. The main difficulty faced by human rights, peace and co-existence organisations remains, however, their representation as ‘traitors’ by sectors in the Jewish public. Well remembered is the saying of PM
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Yitzhak Rabin, following Oslo, that the Palestinian Authority would be free to impose security measures ‘without the Supreme Court of Justice or B’tselem’. This expression excluded the Supreme Court and the association for human rights in the Occupied Territories B’tselem from the Israeli collective, at least as far as seeking to maximise Jewish security was concerned. B’tselem continues to face such exclusion. Conclusion Israeli reality does not encourage joint political activity between Jews and Palestinians. The two communities, living important aspects of their lives in complete segregation, have different cultural, linguistic and religious identities. Most significantly, Palestinians and Jews belong to two competing national movements, which view the history of their mutual relationship in different terms and have different visions of the solution for their conflict. Joint organisations are the exception in an institutional environment that reflects this reality. As such, they help to break some of the barriers between Jews and Palestinians in Israel. However, idealistic expectations from joint NGOs to bring people together regardless of the political context are not only unrealistic but also politically motivated, representing an attempt to protect existing power structures from political challenges. The relations between Jews and Palestinians in joint organisations therefore demonstrate Gramsci’s observation, highlighting the potential embodied in civil society to enhance and reflect social and political conflicts, rather than challenge the reality that created them. Joint Jewish-Palestinian NGOs enhance the dominant power structures and reflect ideological conflicts in Israeli society in two main ways. First, many co-existence organisations effectively act as a mechanism for depoliticising controversial issues, and neutralising the political role of Palestinian youth and adult activists. By refraining from political discussion and activity, joint NGOs undermine their own greatest potential to engage in a process of change, and in fact contribute to the perpetuation of the dominant ideology in Israeli society. There are some NGOs in Israel committed to the advocacy of political change; most prominent among them is the NIF. However, as the majority of these organisations identify with the perceptions of the Zionist left, they narrowly represent the Jewish-Zionist agenda, including the Zionist vision of social change and peace. Despite short-term agreements over limited goals with Palestinian activists, this agenda did not represent the latter’s affiliations and ideology. Differences indeed surfaced following Oslo, as the peace process with the Palestinian national movement has
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not altered the main pillars of Zionist ideology at home. Second, most joint NGOs fail to challenge the Jewish domination in Israeli society and in fact duplicate this domination in their own ranks. Joint activities are often initiated by Jews, funded by Jews, and run mostly by Jews. In the case of organisations focusing on Jewish-Palestinian encounters, the role designed for Palestinians rarely exceeds that of the audience. This power imbalance makes these organisations ineffective in representing the interests of the Palestinian minority in Israel. At best, their attempts are based on Jewish perceptions of these interests. Jointly run organisations, such as Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam, Sikkuy, the Jewish-Arab Economic Centre, or the local centre in the Wolfson neighbourhood in Acre set a different example. The very model they represent, of joint management, conflicts with the reality of Jewish hegemony in Israel and thus challenges it. Co-directed organisations are still a minority among joint NGOs in Israel. The potential of joint NGOs to be engaged in a process of change may be boosted by the recent open discussion of the power balance within joint organisations and the restricting consequences these power dynamics have on their impact. This discussion, which initially took place in the minority of co-existence organisations which are jointly run, is gradually being echoed in more mainstream joint organisations as well. The nationalisation of the activity also bears, however, the risk of increasing segregation and limiting the dialogue in Israeli society. Moreover, despite the limitations of the joint platform, Palestinian activists in Israel often manage to take advantage of the joint frame in order to promote their own interests and identity, as was clearly the case in the relations between the Kafr-Qassem Association for Informal Education and the Abraham Fund or the position of Palestinian instructors in predominantly Jewish organisations for encounters. The previous chapters have demonstrated the restrictions imposed on the access of the Palestinian minority to the Israeli political system and their limited impact on Israeli society as a whole. Joint activism of Palestinian and Jewish citizens in Israeli NGOs is potentially a powerful way to challenge these limitations. This potential, however, has until now materialised only marginally and rarely. In addition to state limitations and the shortcomings of PNGOs themselves, the failure of Jewish and Palestinian activists to share a political agenda explains the weakness of the campaign for civil equality in Israel.
Conclusion
THE DIFFICULT ROAD TO SOCIO-POLITICAL CHANGE
O
ne-sixth of the Israeli population is Palestinian. Non-Jews in an avowedly Jewish state, Palestinian citizens are an integral part of the citizenry yet stand aloof from the national identity as defined by the ideology of Zionism and by the popular attitudes of Israel’s Jewish majority. As the largest Arab population in proportional terms of any non-Arab state in the Middle East, Palestinians in Israel enjoy a wary relationship with their fellow citizens. They are marked in both the official and parochial imagination by suspicions of disloyalty and by the fear that they represent a fifth column patiently awaiting the opportunity to destroy the Jewish state from within. For a country which in spite of its military strength still perceives itself as beleaguered by forces hostile to its existence, such sentiments are, on one level, simply another tragic outcome of the unresolved conflict between Jewish and Arab nationalism in Palestine. Yet the roots of the inferior collective status of Palestinians in Israel go much deeper. The historical, cultural, and political ideology of Zionism identifies the interests of the state of Israel with those of certain ethnies, in particular Jews of Ashkenazi or European descent, who have dominated the state since its creation. Sephardi Jews, or those of Middle Eastern origin, are also subject to discrimination at the hands of the Ashkenazi establishment, as too are many recent arrivals like workers from South East Asia. Like most societies, Israel can point to other internal divisions such as those of class, gender or religion. But whereas state ideology embraces Jews from all walks of life, Ashkenazi or Sephardi, rich or poor, man or woman, secular or religious, the inferior status of Palestinians is entrenched by virtue of their non-Jewishness. Although Israeli democracy formally secures the individual rights of all citizens, Israeli Palestinians are alone in being locked out of citizenship in the fullest sense of belonging as equal members in the political community. Against this backdrop, this book has set out to examine the role of Palestinian non-governmental organisations (PNGOs) in the campaign for civic equality in Israel. It has demonstrated that the social and political importance of PNGOs has increased over the past quarter of a century, both quantitatively in terms of the remarkable growth in
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registered Palestinian organisations and qualitatively in terms of the scope and sophistication of their activities. The proliferation of PNGOs challenges the assumption common to much of the scholarly literature that Palestinian society in Israel is incapable of mobilising along modern political lines due to some inherent social resistance, for example stemming from the persistence of traditional social structures like the hamula (clan). Indeed, the emergence of NGOs as a new and characteristically modern channel of political mobility has been a worldwide phenomenon, nowhere more so than in the developing world. At the same time, however, the case of PNGOs in Israel also raises questions about the perception of NGOs – the main actors in what has been dubbed ‘civil society’ – as natural agents of democratisation and political reform. Since the collapse of Communism in the Soviet bloc during the 1980s, a development attributed in part to the activity of civil organisations, scholars have portrayed civil society as a realm superior to the state and the market in its commitment to civic values. In reality, as Antonio Gramsci has argued, civil society tends to reproduce conflicts that exist within the society at large.662 Scholars of modern NGOs like William Fisher, Arturo Escobar and Gerard Clarke call attention to the important function of NGOs in perpetuating the unequal relationship of industrialised and developing countries.663 Scholars have also highlighted the significance of liberal and neo-liberal economic and political models in the evolution of NGOs in developing countries, arguing that these same models reinforce power relations both in the international and national arenas rather than challenge them. As Pierre Du-Toit, Donald Horowitz and Christopher Bryant argue, these deficiencies are exacerbated in ethnic states such as Israel, where formal democracy does not facilitate equality in civil society because citizenship rights are linked to descent and hence non-universal in their application.664 In light of this more complex understanding of civil society and NGOs, this book highlights the dilemmas faced by Palestinian activists seeking to challenge the Jewish-Arab inequalities in the Israeli society through NGOs. The limitations of NGOs’ contribution to change are a concern for activists in all types of organisations reviewed in this study. Activists in nation-wide PNGOs in Israel face three main dilemmas. Firstly, as explicitly apolitical organisations which are registered with the state and which run their campaigns mainly through state institutions, some activists are concerned that rather than challenging the status quo of Jewish-Arab relations in Israel, their organisations in fact perpetuate it. Secondly, while adding a professional dimension to the campaign for
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equality, nation-wide PNGOs may replace or weaken other institutions representing the Palestinian citizens in Israel, such as political parties. Thirdly, while some observers believe that nation-wide PNGOs constitute a hotbed for political leaders, others are concerned that they in effect divert potential leadership from the political realm. For activists in the local arena, the main worry is whether formal organisations reroute accountability upwards, towards donor funds or national coalitions and away from the community, thus failing to represent genuine grassroots interests. For women activists of NGOs, the main dilemma is related to the continuous exclusion of Palestinian women from politics. This exclusion is evident both at the national level of political parties and the local level of councils. Some women activists and critics feel that the relatively high presence of women in NGOs derives from their apolitical nature, and therefore continues rather than challenges this exclusion. Finally, joint – Jewish-Palestinian – activity, presents grave challenges to both Jewish and Palestinian activists. In light of the deeply rooted conflicts between Jews and Palestinian citizens of Israel, the ability to reach a partnership to the benefit of both sides is questionable. While Palestinian activists are worried that some of their Jewish partners may aim to perpetuate the Jewish domination over Israel, Jews are concerned that Palestinian activists are committed to a national Palestinian agenda rather than a joint civic one. Given these dilemmas underlying the activities of PNGOs and joint NGOs in Israel, it is hardly surprising that they have played a dichotomous and somewhat contradictory role in the struggle for equality in Israel. On the one hand, as shown throughout the book, PNGOs in Israel have played an important political role, successfully using democratic channels to advance the interests of their community by innovative means. PNGOs achieved considerable progress at the level of politics defined in this book as the ‘politics of interests’ or ‘politics of allocation’, namely the attempt to redress inequalities in state spending for social services and infrastructure in Palestinian communities. As a result of these efforts, the provision of services to Palestinians, though still much below the average enjoyed by Jewish citizens, has been improved. Moreover, PNGOs in Israel have consolidated state-initiated reforms, enhanced the political participation of under-represented Palestinian citizens, and struggled to redefine the boundaries of political discourse in Israel. They have also contributed to democratisation processes within their own society.
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However, on the other hand, PNGOs encountered limited success when it came to actually changing the fundamental power relations of Israeli society and articulating demands for ideological reform – the ‘politics of change’ that the western-liberal model of NGOs posits as a means for democratisation. Official and popular commitment to the main tenets of Zionism remains unshaken, as does the basic perception of Israeli Palestinians as interlopers in an overwhelmingly Jewish state. Critics have argued that the potential of NGOs to bring about fundamental change in power relations within a society hinges on their ability to abandon the model of the individual organisation and become part of a broader ‘social movement’. 665 The latter is conceived as a dynamic coalition of like-minded organisations, led by an intelligentsia, which strives to bring about ideological change on a scale that independent organisations working alone could not hope to achieve. This transition has proved difficult for PNGOs, first and foremost because of the legal and procedural obstacles imposed by the state in order to discourage the formation of any kind of ‘national’ Palestinian movement. Other difficulties can be traced to patterns of action which are characteristic of NGOs as a whole. NGOs tend to refrain from confrontational tactics, preferring pragmatic and co-operative solutions to problems. They are dependent on the state for formal recognition and for permission to receive funding, itself largely derived from external sources. They often prefer to engage in projects of a highly specific and technical nature rather than to challenge the political and ideological bases of inequality. In tacitly accepting the legitimacy of the system, or at least not openly questioning it, NGOs may actually reinforce the very institutions and power relations they seek to reform. Finally, successful examples of social movements in the twentieth century, such as the movement for civil rights in the United States and the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, highlight the support of powerful groups within the majority as a pivotal condition of their success. Such support has been extremely limited in the case of Israel, where even organisations devoted to fostering peaceful co-existence between Arabs and Jews tend to duplicate their unequal power relations. The nature of the PNGO challenge and the state’s response to it has gone through several distinct phases. This book identifies four main periods in the evolution of PNGOs in Israel: the initial period of formation and growth (1976-1982), a second period of consolidation and institutionalisation (1983-1993), a third period characterised by growing impatience at the failure of the Arab-Israeli peace process to yield an
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improvement in Palestinian civil rights on the one hand combined with an increasing number of political opportunities for PNGOs on the other (1993-2000), and a fourth period – beginning with the second Intifada in the West Bank and Gaza and the clashes between Palestinians in Israel and the police, known as the ‘October 2000 Events – characterised by articulation of demands that go beyond equal citizenship, to the protection of human rights and recognition of Palestinians in Israel as a national minority. The first period begins with the Land Day protests of 1976 in which six Palestinian demonstrators were killed, an event which touched off a wave of civic activism and led to the creation of several new organisations. During this formative period, Palestinian activity in Israel bore many of the characteristics of an evolving social movement. A new and challenging ideology emerged in this period as Palestinians started to demand peace and civil equality. The slogan ‘two states for two nations’ as a proposed solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict first appeared in Palestinian circles at this time, later becoming a mainstream demand of the Zionist left. New Palestinian civil institutions were created that enjoyed popular legitimacy as well as the encouragement of existing institutions such as the Communist Party. This period also witnessed the adoption of new, mainly non-violent means of protest, including mass demonstrations and national strikes. At the same time, progress was inhibited by the state’s reluctance to recognise many new organisations. In addition, the weakening of the Communist Party as an organising force towards the end of this period and the failure of the emerging leadership of the NCALC to maintain its position meant that such PNGOs were relatively weak and disconnected from one another. The outbreak of mass demonstrations in 1982 to protest the massacres of Palestinians at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps during Israel’s war in Lebanon marked the last major expression of this new, more vocal style of Palestinian activism. During the 1980s, the emphasis of Palestinian activity shifted from popular organisations to the creation of formal and institutionalised NGOs. The first step in this process was registration with the state in compliance with the new Law of Associations enacted in 1981. Rising levels of education and the growing availability of external funds facilitated the emergence of these NGOs. The decision of the Islamic movement to establish dozens of local registered NGOs throughout Arab localities in Israel also contributed to the proliferation of NGOs, Islamic as well as secular ones that were formed in response to the proliferation of the former. These NGOs epitomised the dominance of
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the ‘politics of interests’ strategy in their individual activity and focused on achieving tangible results in specific fields, usually related to the improvement of social or municipal services. The eruption in December 1987 of the first Intifada, or uprising, by Palestinians in the Occupied Territories signalled another shift in PNGO activity in Israel. Palestinians in Israel explicitly distinguished their position from the uprising of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. While sympathising with the struggle, Palestinians in Israel emphasised their external position in relation to it, as Israeli citizens. They supported the Intifada by providing humanitarian help to its victims, and through a political campaign within Israel. As NGOs were instrumental in executing these functions, the Intifada inspired the establishment of still more PNGOs. The Intifada also encouraged the participation of social groups which had not been as politically engaged before. The most obvious example is the increasing mobilisation of Palestinian women during this period and the growing visibility of the feminist agenda in the PNGO sector. The Oslo agreement of 1993 between Israel and the PLO marked the beginning of a third phase of Palestinian activism. Expectations that progress towards peace between Israel and the Palestinian national movement would result in greater civic equality were dashed by failure of the negotiators to involve Palestinians in Israel, and the little change in attitudes towards the minority within Israel. These failures fuelled a growing sense of frustration among Palestinians in Israel, which was most noticeable in the changing face of joint Arab-Jewish activism. During this period, separate Palestinian NGOs were established to deal with national issues that had previously been the domain of joint organisations, while Palestinians who remained within joint NGOs grew increasingly critical of the discrepancy between the political agenda of Palestinians and that of the Jewish left. Paradoxically, the 1990s were also characterised by rising political opportunities for the Palestinian minority. These included the need of the Labour-led coalitions (1992-1996) to rely on the support of Arab parties for their survival, and the legal reform of 1992 which included the constitution of two Basic Laws that helped to protect minority rights. These opportunities serve as an additional explanation of the proliferation of national PNGOs, complementing the political frustration that led Palestinians in Israel to campaign for their rights independently of Jewish activists. With the outbreak of the second Intifada in September 2000, hopes of an early resolution to the broader Arab-Israeli problem have faded, as
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has Israeli Palestinians’ trust in the political process. Although it is still too early to tell what this new era is likely to hold for Palestinians in Israel, it is clear that the Intifada and the October Events within Israel have had a significant effect on PNGOs in Israel. The outbreak of the Intifada dealt a severe blow not only to the Oslo process, but also to the belief that an imminent peace would bring a flowering of civil society in Israel.666 While the crisis enhanced the role of PNGOs as mediators between the state and the Palestinian minority, it also led many PNGOs to reconsider the exclusion embodied in Israeli citizenship, and to articulate demands that go beyond equal citizenship. These include a plea for protection of the human rights of Palestinian citizens and a demand for recognition of Palestinians in Israel as a national minority. The October 2000 events and their aftermath have also affected joint Jewish-Palestinian NGOs in Israel. As many of these organisations concentrate on Jewish-Palestinian dialogue as a means of preventing Palestinian violence, many Jewish activists saw the October 2000 events as a sign of failure and felt a sense of urgency to re-evaluate their dialogue strategies. Critics of the traditional co-existence discourse saw the events as further evidence of its futility. As a result of growing public responsiveness to this point of view, some joint NGOs are currently engaged with new kinds of Jewish-Palestinian projects that concentrate on action rather than mere dialogue. Such projects still operate at the margins of the Israeli society, and they suffer from diminishing funds – both from governmental and private sources. Throughout the four periods considered in this book, PNGOs in Israel were simultaneously engaged in processes that contributed to political change as well as activities that tended to inhibit such a change. These dynamics applied as much to NGOs active at the national level as to those working locally. The Contribution of PNGOs to Political Change NGOs’ greatest contribution to the Palestinian struggle for equality in Israel lies in their ability to use formal democratic channels in order to promote Palestinian interests. By using existing democratic institutions that predominantly benefited the Jewish majority in previous decades, PNGOs have successfully challenged the exclusion of the minority from the Israeli public sphere. NGOs have raised the profile of Palestinians in the courts, Israeli academia, the Hebrew press, the Knesset, and institutions of local government. Through their participation in these
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institutions, PNGOs act to restrict the state’s coercive policies against the Palestinian minority. However, the importance of their activities is not limited to empowering the minority alone. All society can be said to benefit because they enhance democratic practices in Israel as a whole. The successful campaign against the amendment for the 1948 Prevention of Terrorism Ordinance is a prominent example of their ability to effect peaceful change through the mechanism of politics. The campaign constituted an example of successful advocacy in the Knesset and showed the importance of co-operation with Jewish organisations in gaining access to Israeli public opinion. It illustrated the significance of PNGOs’ activities for strengthening democratic practices in Israel. In addition, PNGOs have also helped to consolidate reforms initiated by the state, such as the overhaul of the legal system that followed the 1992 legislation of the two Basic Laws concerning Human Dignity and Freedom and Freedom of Occupation. Despite criticism of these reforms, scholars agree that the legislation raised expectations of a more active role for the courts in protecting minority rights. One of the factors that made this a self-fulfilling prophecy was the increasing number of appeals on human rights cases brought before the courts by legal NGOs, such as the predominantly Jewish ACRI (Association for Civil Rights in Israel) and Adalah: The Centre for Legal Rights of the Arab Minority in Israel. Outside formal politics, PNGOs have contributed to civil society in Israel by creating avenues for the participation in public life of groups that have traditionally been under-represented. Two prominent examples of the latter are the Bedouin in the Unrecognised Villages and Palestinian women. By raising their level of political awareness and activity, PNGOs not only empowered sections of the Palestinian community relative to the state, but relative to their own community as well. Finally, PNGOs struggled with some success to redefine the boundaries of political discourse. The process by which issues are either exposed to public debate or excluded and deemed ‘apolitical’ is controlled by powerful groups in society. This process of setting the agenda has important political implications. Palestinian NGOs have shown that they are capable of exposing this process and challenging it. The discourse of ‘gender’ provides the biggest example of this new power. Palestinian feminists have increasingly questioned the exclusion from the national struggle of issues that were defined by Palestinian men and the state as strictly domestic and therefore apolitical. The discourse of ‘development’ provides another example. The state has often invoked
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the need for ‘development’ in order to depoliticise certain actions which would otherwise be considered prejudicial to Palestinian interests. During the construction of the Cross-Israel motorway, for instance, the expropriation of Arab land was presented as a necessary sacrifice to facilitate a technical development project. In fact, this land expropriation carries severe repercussions for the development of Arab towns along the road. Similarly, the Green Patrol in the Negev is an institution that was officially established to protect the environment of Israel’s southern desert, the Negev. In fact, it is committed as much to restricting the Bedouin residents of the area as to protection of the environment. The Green Patrol is largely engaged with the attempt to execute a policy of forced migration of the Bedouin to state-planned settlements. Palestinian NGOs have protested against these facades and tried to mitigate their consequences, in the process sparking a debate on issues which had previously been considered non-political. The Limits of PNGOs’ Contribution to Change Despite these important achievements, the ability of PNGOs fundamentally to alter Palestinians’ relationship with the state and with the Jewish majority remains limited for a variety of reasons. Individually, NGOs survive at the mercy of the state, which retains the exclusive power to regulate their activities. Unlike political parties, NGOs do not base their legitimacy on a wide constituency, nor do they necessarily enjoy the support of informal social movements. The need to maintain cordial relations with the authorities is increased by NGOs dependence on external donors, who insist on registration in order to ensure accountability and proper management of funds. While this relationship of unequals is familiar from other parts of the world, the Israeli case is unique in the wide authority which the Law of Associations grants the Registrar of Associations, an authority that has often been used to restrict PNGOs. Organisations are entitled to appeal against such restrictions to the Supreme Court, and indeed in the decades since the law was passed some appeals have been granted which effectively restricted the powers of the Registrar. Appeals to the Court are not undertaken lightly, however. The risk of rejection is a deterrent for many PNGOs in Israel, since it may constitute a precedent for further restrictions. Appeal to the Court also requires funding and legal expertise, both of which are simply out of the reach of many organisations. Given their lack of popular base and dependence upon state institutions, PNGOs often prefer to focus on technical rather than
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political remedies to problems faced by the Palestinian minority. They organise numerous projects to fill the gap between community needs and state service provision, aiming to offer Palestinians the same level of selfhelp that Jewish organisations abroad provide to Israeli-Jewish society. For the most part, however, they have been unable to compete with the kind of co-operation that exists between Jewish organisations and the Israeli government. The sewage project undertaken by the Galilee Society illustrates the dilemma. Having built sewage infrastructure for 25 Arab towns, the GS did not have the resources to tackle the remaining 103 towns without such service, nor did it feel in a position to challenge the government’s neglect of these areas, or its use of Jewish organisations for the selective provision of services. The project indirectly benefited the government which no longer faced pressure to act from unserved Palestinian communities, while the wrath of those who remained without sewage services was no longer directed towards the government alone but also towards the Galilee Society. Some scholars have argued that PNGOs fragment the struggle for greater equality by stepping up competition for limited funds. This book considered the argument at various points but found little evidence for its validity. The variety of organisations seems to have contributed more to pluralism and the representation of large spectrum of opinion than to the dissipation of the movement’s energies through fragmentation. Nevertheless, it remains true that the level of co-operation among PNGOs in Israel is still dismally low. One symptom of this is that PNGOs still lack an overall leadership, even of an informal variety, to co-ordinate their activities. There is some support for the view that PNGOs, for all they have done to mobilise new social groups, have in some cases weakened older organisations by diverting to their ranks people who were already activists. Some women activists, for example, argue that because Palestinian political parties in Israel refused them advancement, many simply gave up the fight for women within the parties and turned to NGOs instead. Similarly, the Communist Party lost several activists to NGOs which the party itself had helped to establish. A prominent example is provided by al-Rabita: The League for the Arabs of Jaffa, whose creation was supported by the Communist Party and most of whose members were Communists. Like many women activists, alRabita’s members found that their work on behalf of the NGO gradually replaced their work for the party.
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The Difficult Transformation to a Social Movement The emerging realm of PNGOs is more than the sum of its parts. Although secular Palestinian NGOs in Israel focus mainly on independent, single-issue activities, their cumulative impact on the relationship between Palestinians and Jews in Israel exceeds this limited function. Looked at from a historical perspective, PNGOs have played a major role in the transition of Palestinian political behaviour from acquiescence to activism beginning with Land Day in 1976. NGOs stand out in the political history of the Palestinian minority for carving a space for Palestinians to organise outside state institutions. There were prior attempts at such organisation, but these were either banned outright by the state – as in the case of the detention of Abna al-Balad’s activists or the ban of the 1980 ‘Congress of the Arab Masses’ – or weakened through a combination of official disapproval and internal disarray, as happened to the NCALC. NGOs used the legal opportunities created by the 1981 Law of Associations to institutionalise self-help channels and promote Palestinian interests. They have emerged as a check on the arbitrary exercise of state power, holding the state to its democratic ideals by appealing to its own institutions, such as the Knesset or the Supreme Court, or, occasionally, circumventing the state entirely by attaching themselves to the campaigns of international organisations or external donors. At the same time, NGOs are symptomatic of the handicaps suffered by the Palestinian struggle for civil equality in Israel. In the historical moment that followed the first Land Day, Palestinians in Israel made a determined effort to establish the leadership and organisational machinery necessary to provide them with some leverage in their relations with the state. This ambition was regarded as a direct challenge to the nature of Israel’s ethnic democracy, which extends civil and political rights to individuals but views any Palestinian organisation on a national basis as a threat to the integrity of the state. This effort to establish a national Palestinian leadership in Israel broke on the rock of state hostility to the project, and was replaced to some extent in subsequent years by sporadic efforts to create grassroots NGOs. In the end, even the NCALC decided to establish its own NGOs in the hope that they might succeed in achieving goals which the parent organisation with its national character could not. Put differently, this book argues that the attempt of Palestinians in Israel to form a social movement reached its height in the period between Land Day and the early 1980s, but has since lost much of its momentum. This does not mean that the attempt has failed completely,
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or that it is fated to remain ever a dream. As Eyerman and Jamison have argued, social movements are distinguished by their dynamic nature. They do not represent a coherent, well-defined organisation, but a process of discovering and articulating new ideas.667 This process is ongoing within Palestinian society. It includes an attempt to articulate in new ways the identity of the community as well as to promote civil equality, and NGOs continue to take an important part in its development. Nevertheless, the fusing of disparate PNGOs into a real social movement capable of leading the struggle for civil equality has proved difficult for a combination of reasons. In general, organisations legitimised by the state through the process of registration are those that refrain from trying to represent the minority on a national basis. This official preference for non-political forms of organisation, manifested in more rigorous handling of political organisations compared to non-political NGOs, goes hand in hand with the preference of NGOs themselves. Motivated by a desire to improve the well-being of their communities rather than engage in open-ended struggle with a determined state, and bound by the neo-liberal philosophy of their external donors, many NGOs prefer to concentrate on technical solutions to problems rather than political ones. The limited co-operation of PNGOs and lack of co-ordinating leadership also affects their organisation as a social movement. The main obstacle faced by PNGOs in their transition to a social movement, however, stems not from their organisational deficiencies, real as these are, but from the relatively small number of opportunities available to them to influence the Israeli political system and public discourse. In contrast to the pluralistic vision that depicts the state as a neutral arbitrator between competing groups in civil society, in Israel majority control over the state is deeply institutionalised. In the realm of NGOs, this situation is evident in the discriminatory pattern of state control exercised in relation to Palestinian organisations compared to their Jewish counterparts. Yael Yishai has argued that the mainstream attitude of the state towards Jewish NGOs has been characterised since the 1980s by ‘passive exclusion’, an attitude of ‘live and let live’.668 Such benign attitudes do not apply towards PNGOs, which operate under continual pressure from the state authorities wielding everything from threats of job losses to investigation by the police. The state of Israel stated its commitment to freedom of association in the Law of Associations, the piece of legislation which more than any other encouraged the establishment of both Arab and Jewish NGOs. At
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the same time, as the Minister of Justice at the time admitted, the law is also designed as an instrument allowing the state to control the activity of Israeli NGOs. The establishment of a special department for Arab organisations within the office of the Registrar of Associations reflects the selective enforcement of the law. Along with the stricter state control of PNGOs in comparison to their Jewish counterparts, the far more limited level of state support extended to Palestinian NGOs compared to Jewish organisations indicates that policy towards the former could be said to be governed by a principle of active exclusion. As noted in Chapter Two, only 15 per cent of PNGOs in Israel are supported directly or indirectly by the government, compared with a figure of 24 per cent for JNGOs. Only one per cent of the budget of the Ministry of Education for educational associations is awarded to PNGOs in Israel. Finally, the marking of PNGOs as a strategic target for the internal security service, the Shin Bet, restricts their freedom and poses a threat that most Jewish organisations do not face. The hegemony of Jewish constructions of the national interest and national identity is not confined to state institutions. Similar attitudes infuse civil society as well. Indeed, the Israeli case constitutes a vivid example of the way in which Gramsci’s view of civil society as an arena that reproduces power relations takes shape in a modern ethnic state. Probably the most pervasive example of this dynamic is provided by the ideological commitment to Zionism of the majority of the Israeli peace camp. To the extent that such a commitment implies continued denial of the Palestinian component of Israel’s national identity, it constitutes yet another obstacle to the evolution of a social movement for civil equality acceptable to both Jewish and Palestinian citizens. Whereas many PNGOs support the transformation of Israel into a ‘state of its citizens’, the agenda of Jews active in mainstream peace and co-existence organisations is far different. While acting to reduce alienation between Jews and Palestinians at a personal level, they support the Jewish character of the state and accept the mainstream security narrative – the two ideological pillars which have justified discriminatory measures against the Palestinian minority since Israel’s founding. The most immediate channel for Palestinian NGO activists to influence the Israeli public sphere is thus ruled by the same conventions underlying the political system as a whole. Palestinian and Israeli nationalists alike have viewed PNGOs as a means for a future autonomy – the former referring to such a possibility with hope, the latter with fear for the integrity of the Israeli state. However, this equity between the establishment of more NGOs and the
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creation of a foundation for autonomy has proven to be a simplistic one. PNGOs predominantly focus on influencing the state and negotiating with its agents for more power and rights for Palestinians in Israel. This is not the only role PNGOs have assumed. They are active in a wide range of issues that have little to do with the state, including activities to enhance Palestinian culture or spread religious teaching. The political meaning of these activities is dependent upon the wider context of Palestinian-Jewish relationship in Israel. However, as formal entities modelled after the Western-liberal example, the unique role of secular NGOs lies in leading a campaign for more equal citizenship. Their attempt to form a social movement for civil equality captures this role.669 As Ilan Pappe has argued, the Palestinian campaign for equality in the early years of Israeli statehood has validated the state, portraying the Israeli framework as a legitimate democratic entity.670 The practical and intellectual challenges PNGOs introduce to the state are no doubt more complex and serious than the challenges of the 1950s, which came from the hands of a beaten community that lived under a Military Government. Nevertheless, as important vehicles for the struggle for equality, NGO activity still validates the framework in which they operate. Thus, in contrast to national claims on both the Jewish and Palestinian sides, PNGOs do not lead a movement for irredentism or secession. Rather, it is their relative failure to form an effective social movement for equal citizenship that reflects the growing rift between the state and the Palestinian minority and contributes to the widening of this rift. The violent clashes that erupted between Palestinian demonstrators and Israeli police during the October 2000 events serve as a reminder of James Petras’s warning that NGOs are powerless to resolve political inequality single-handedly.671 The almost complete breakdown of trust between one sixth of Israel’s citizens and the rest of the nation since those fateful days in October 2000 provides an all too tragic demonstration of the limited power of non-governmental organisations to bind the wounds of deeply divided societies.
NOTES Gerard Clarke, The Politics of NGOs in South-East Asia: Participation and Protest in the Philippines (London: Routledge, 1998), p. 6. 2 Gideon Doron, ‘Two Civil Societies and One State: Jews and Arabs in the State of Israel,’ in Norton (ed.), Civil Society in the Middle East (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1996), vol. 2., p. 193-220; As’ad Ghanem, ‘Civil Society for Minority in Ethnic Democracy: the Case of the Palestinian Arabs in Israel,’ Unpublished paper, August 1987. 3 Among Israeli scholars, Arnon Soffer, a geographer and a lecturer in IDF’s College for National Security, is most prominent in perceiving PNGOs in Israel as a threat to Israel’s sovereignty. Soffer, ‘Israeli Arabs towards Autonomy’, Researches in the Geography of Eretz-Israel 3, 1983, pp. 198-210 (Hebrew). In the Palestinian side, anthropologist Khalil Nakhleh has identified grassroots organisations as a basis for national autonomy for Palestinians in Israel. Nakhleh, ‘Palestinian Struggle Under Occupation,’ al-Hayat, December 1980 (Arabic). 4 Amina Minns and Nadia Hijab, Citizens Apart: A Portrait of Palestinians in Israel (London: I.B. Tauris, 1990), p. 98. 5 Uri Ben Eliezer, ‘Test of a Democracy? Review of: Interest Groups in Israel: Test of a Democracy by Yael Yishai’, Megamot 32, 1990, pp. 555-564 (Hebrew). 6 Roy Eyerman and Andrew Jamison, Social Movements: A Cognitive Approach (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991), p. 60; Tessa Morris-Suzuki, ‘For and Against NGOs: The Politics of the Lived World’, New Left Review 2, March-April 2000, p. 68; Uri Ben Eliezer, ‘Is Civil Society Emerging in Israel? Politics and Identity in the New Associations,’ Israeli Sociology 2:1, 1999, pp. 51-97 (Hebrew). 7 During the 1948 war, 600,000-700,000 Palestinians became refugees, leaving only 160,000 Palestinians (out of a total population of 870,000) in the territory of the new state of Israel. Benny Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), p.1; Avraham Burg, ‘The Arabs of Israel: A Statistical Portrait’, in Hareven, Every Sixth Israeli: Relations Between Majority and Minority in Israel (Jerusalem: the Van Leer Foundation), 1983, p. 16; Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS), Israeli Government, 1999. The data describes the Israeli population in the year 1998. 1
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Maxime Rodinson, Israel: A Colonial-Settler State? (NY: Pathfinder, 1973). 9 Sammy Smooha, ‘Ethnic Democracy: Israel as an Archetype’, Israel Studies 2:2, Fall 1997, p. 198. 10 Oren Yiftachel, ‘Israeli Society and Jewish-Palestinian Reconciliation: Ethnocracy and Its Territorial Contradictions’, Middle East Journal 51:4, Autumn 1997, pp. 509-515; Nadim Rouhana and As’ad Ghanem, ‘The Crises of Minorities in Ethnic States: The Case of Palestinian Citizens in Israel’, International Journal of Middle East Studies 30, 1998, pp. 321-346. 11 Adalah, Legal violations of Arab Minority Rights in Israel (March 1998). 12 David Kretzmer, The Legal Status of the Arabs in Israel (Boulder: Westview Press, 1990), p. 136. 13 Ella Shohat, ‘Sephardim in Israel: Zionism from the Standpoint of Its Jewish Victims,’ Social Text 19-20, 1988, pp. 1-34. 14 Elia T. Zureik, The Palestinians in Israel: A Study in Internal Colonialism (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979), pp. 28-29. 15 Ian Lustick, Arabs in the Jewish State: Israel’s Control of a National Minority (Texas: University of Texas Press, 1980). 16 Ilana Kaufman, Arab National Communism in the Jewish State (Gainseville: University Press of Florida, 1997), p.11. 17 Clarke (1998), pp.13-14; David C. Korten, Getting to the 21st Century: Voluntary Action and the Global Agenda (Connecticut: Kumarian Press, 1990), pp. 115-127. 18 Lebanese Phalanges, allies of Israel, carried out the massacres during the Israeli occupation of Beirut. 19 Ittijah: The Local Preparatory Committee of Palestinian NGOs in Israel, Statement submitted to the World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance. www.ittijah.org/about/conf_durbstat.html, 26.9.2003. 20 Lester M. Salamon, Helmut K. Anheier, and Associates, The Emerging Sector Revised (The John Hopkins University: Institute for Policy Studies, Centre for Civil Society Studies, 1998), p. 1; Clarke, (1998), p. 2. 21 William F. Fisher, ‘Doing Good? The Politics and Antipolitics of NGO Practices’, Annual Review of Anthropology 26, 1997, pp. 439-464. 22 Tamar Hermann, Israeli Peace/Conflict Resolution NGOs 19671998 (Aspen Institute - Non-Profit Sector: International Study of Peace Organisations, Final Report, October 1998), pp. 4-5. 23 Fisher (1997), p. 449. 8
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For interviews, see Bibliography. For organisations, see Appendix
See the comprehensive methodological discussion of the matter in Nadgje al-Ali, Secularism, Gender and the State in the Middle East: The Egyptian Women’s Movement (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). 26 Minns and Hijab (1990). 27 Guide; Khalil Nakhleh, Indigenous Organizations in Palestine: Towards a Purposeful Societal Development (Jerusalem: Arab Thought Forum, 1991); Elias Zeidan and As’ad Ghanem, Donation and Voluntarism in the Arab-Palestinian Society in Israel (Beersheba: Israeli Centre for Third Sector Research, Ben Gurion University in the Negev, February 2000) (Hebrew). 28 Lila Abu-Loghud, Writing Women’s Worlds (Berkley: University of California Press, 1993), p. 40. 29 Khalil Nakhleh, ‘The Direction of Local-Level Conflict in Two Arab Villages in Israel’, American Ethnologist 2:3, 1977, pp. 497-517; Dan Rabinowitz, Anthropology and the Palestinians (The Institute for Israeli Arab Studies, 1998). 30 Anton Shammas, ‘Palestinians in Israel’, in Rekhess (ed.), Arab Politics in Israel at a Crossroads (Tel Aviv: The Moshe Dayan Centre for Middle Eastern and African Studies, Tel Aviv University, 1996), p. 24. 31 David Grossman, Sleeping On a Wire: Conversations with Palestinians in Israel, (London: Jonathan Cape, 1993. Translation Haim Watzman), pp. 311-312. 32 Shammas (1996), p. 23. 33 Dan Rabinowitz, ‘Oriental Nostalgia: How Did the Palestinians Become ‘Israeli Arabs’, Teoria U-Bikoret 4, Autumn 1993, pp. 141-152 (Hebrew). 34 Jean L. Cohen and Andrew Arato, Civil Society and Political Theory (Massachusetts: M.I.T. Press, 1992), p. ix. 35 Keane, John, Democracy and Civil Society (London: Verso, 1988), p. 14; Dov Henin, ‘Following Gramsci on Civil Society’ in Peled and Ofir (eds), Israel: From Mobilised to Civil Society?, (Tel Aviv: Van Leer Jerusalem Institute/Hakibbutz Hameuchad Publishing House, 2001), pp. 73-74. 36 Clarke (1998), p. 2; Salamon and Anheier (1998), p. 1. In Israel, the legal criterion for NGOs is their registration with the Ministry of Interior. 25
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Gerard Clarke, Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) and Politics in the Developing World (Papers in International Development no. 20, February 1996, University of Wales, Swansea), p. 5; W. Fisher (1997), p. 443. 38 Joseph V. Femia, Gramsci’s Political Thought: Hegemony, Consciousness, and the Revolutionary Process (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), pp. 3-38. 39 Clarke (1998), p. 6. 40 Keane (1988), pp. 15-23. 41 Clarke (1998), p. 6. 42 Ibid.; Morris-Suzuki (2000), p. 68; Ben Eliezer (1999), p. 60 (Hebrew). 43 Ellen Meiksins-Wood, Democracy against Capitalism: Renewing Historical Materialism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), p.259. 44 Adam Ferguson, in An Essay on the History of Civil Society is seen as having laid the intellectual foundation for the concept in its liberal understanding as a pluralist realm of independent associations. 45 Ernest Gellner, Conditions of Liberty: Civil Society and Its Rivals (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1994), p. 3. 46 Edward Shils, The Virtue of Civility: Selected Essays on Liberalism, Tradition, and Civil Society (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1997), pp. 1213. 47 Alexis De-Tocqueville, Democracy in America (NY: Vintage Books, 1954. Reprinted translation). 48 Gellner (1994), p. 5. 49 Ben Eliezer (1990), p. 555. 50 Meiksins-Wood (1995), p. 256. 51 Michael Waltzer, ‘The Idea of Civil Society’, Dissent 38:2, Spring 1991, pp. 298-302. 52 Augustus Richard Norton, ‘The Future of Civil Society in the Middle East’, Middle East Journal 47, 1993, p. 211. See also Waltzer (1991), pp. 298-302. 53 Keane, p. 14. 54 Augustus Richard Norton, (ed.), Civil Society in the Middle East (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1995, vol. 1), p. 13. 55 Antonio Gramsci, Letters from Prison (London: Cape, 1975), p. 204. See also: Antonio Gramsci, Selection from the Prison Notebooks (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1971), p. 261. 37
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Walter L. Adamson, Hegemony and Revolution: A Study of Antonio Gramsci’s Political and Cultural Theory (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), p. 165. 57 Femia (1981), pp. 3-38. 58 Thomas R. Bates, ‘Gramsci and the Theory of Hegemony’, Journal of the History of Ideas 36:2, April-June 1975, p. 357. 59 Roger Simon, Gramsci’s Political Thought: An Introduction (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1991), p. 70. 60 Femia (1981), p. 39. 61 Adamson, p. 220; Femia, p. 27. 62 Simon (1991), p. 73. 63 Adamson (1980), pp. 85-219. 64 Nazih N. Ayubi, Over Stating the Arab State: Politics and Society in the Middle East (London: I.B. Tauris, 1995), p. 440. 65 Christopher G.A. Bryant, ‘Civic Nation, Civil Society, Civil Religion’, in Hall (ed.), Civil Society (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995), pp. 142-145. 66 Joel S. Migdal, Strong Societies and Weak States: State-Society Relations and State Capabilities in the Third World (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1988), p. 39. Discussed by Pierre du-Toit in Civil Society, Democracy and State-Building in South Africa (Stellenbosch: Centre for International and Comparative Politics, Research Report no. 1, 1993), pp. 4-7. 67 Du-Toit (1993), p. 8. 68 Donald L. Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), pp. 86-89. 69 Du-Toit (1993), p. 8. His liberal concept of civil society is based on Shils’s (1991); Bryant (1995), p. 145. 70 Bryant (1995), p. 141. 71 Smooha (1997), pp. 198-241. 72 Michael Kaufman, ‘Community Power, Grassroots Democracy, and the Transformation of Social Life’, in Kaufman and Alfonso (eds), Community Power and Grassroots Democracy: The Transformation of Social Life (London: Zed Books, 1997), p. 5. 73 Adam B. Seligman, The Idea of Civil Society (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1995), p. 200. 74 Ibid., pp. 200-203. 75 Gellner (1994), pp. 15-29. 76 Salamon and Anheier (1998), p. 1. 77 Korten (1990), p. 2. 78 Ibid., pp. 115-126. 56
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Clarke (1998), p. 14. Clarke (1998), p. 8. 81 Norton (1995), p. 9. 82 Ibid, p. 7. 83 Norton (1993), p. 205. 84 Editorial, Middle East Report 214, Spring 2000, p.1. 85 Civil Society: Democratisation in the Middle East, w.ibnkhaldun.org/newsletter, 24.4.2001; About ICDS, http://www.ibnkhaldun.org, 24.4.2001. 86 BBC News. http://news.bbc.co.uk/english/world/middle_east, 6.12.2001. Ibrahim was released from prison in February 2002 pending a retrial. 87 John Waterbury, ‘Democracy Without Democrats?: the Potential for Political Liberalization in the Middle East’, in Salamé (ed.), Democracy Without Democrats? The Renewal of Politics in the Muslim World (London: I.B. Tauris, 1994), p. 33. 88 Merip’s Editorial (2000), p. 1. 89 Shils (1991), p.3. 90 Norton (1993), pp. 206, 209. 91 Naomi Chazan, ‘Africa’s Democratic Challenge’, World Policy Journal 9:2, 1992, p. 283. 92 Ibid. 93 Jill Crystal, ‘Civil Society in the Arabian Gulf’, in Norton (1996), p. 267. 94 Richard T. Antoun, ‘Civil Society, Tribal Process, and Change in Jordan’, International Journal of Middle East Studies 32, 2000, pp. 441-463. 95 Sami Zubeida, Islam - The People and the State: Political Ideas and Movements in the Middle East (London: I.B. Tauris, 1989), p. 137. 96 Cf: Norton (1993), p. 209. 97 Ayubi (1995), pp. 440-441; Norton (1993), pp. 208-209. 98 Harry Truman, Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Harry S. Truman (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office [1949], 1964), Quoted in Escobar, Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), p. 3. 99 Escobar (1995), p. 46. 100 Ibid., p. 47. 101 James Ferguson, The Anti-Politics Machine: ‘Development’, Depoliticisation, and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994), p. 256. 79 80
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Fisher (1997), p. 444. Paul Stubbs, ‘Nationalism, Globalization, and Civil Society in Croatia and Slovenia’, Research in Social Movements, Conflict and Change 19, 1996, pp. 14-15. 104 Sherill Stroschein, ‘NGO Strategies for Hungarian and Roma Minorities in Central Europe’, Voluntas 13:1, March 2002, pp. 1-26. 105 Ferguson (1994), p. 253. 106 Dawn Chatty, Mobile Pastoralists: Development, Planning and Social Change in Oman (NY: Columbia University Press, 1996). 107 Gerard Clarke, ‘From Ethnocide to Ethnodevelopment? Ethnic Minorities and Indigenous Peoples in Southeast Asia’, Third World Quarterly 22:3, June 2001, pp. 414-425. 108 Brian H. Smith, More than Altruism: The Politics of Private Foreign Aid (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), pp. 3-4. 109 David Hulme and Michael Edwards, ‘NGOs, States and Donors: an Overview’, in Hulme and Edwards (eds), NGOs, States and Donors: Too Close for Comfort? (London: Macmillan Press, 1997), p. 3; Steven Commins, ‘World Vision International and Donors: Too Close for Comfort?’, in Hulme and Edwards (1997), p. 141. 110 Michael Edwards and David Hulme, ‘NGO Performance and Accountability’ in Edwards and Hulme, Beyond the Magic Bullet: NonGovernmental Organisations: Performance and Accountability (London: Save the Children Fund/Earthscan Publications, 1995), p. 5. 111 Siddarth Deva, ‘Conference Report: The Role of NGOs in the Democratisation and Reconstruction Process’, Development in Practice 4:3, 1994, p. 222. 112 Hulme and Edwards (1997), pp. 3-9; Edwards and Hulme (1995), pp. 3-3-13; Smith (1990), pp. 16-25; P. Antrobus, ‘Funding for NGOs: Issues and Options’, in Anne Gordon Drabek (ed.), Development Alternatives: The Challenge for NGOs (A Supplement of World Development 15, Autumn 1987), p. 99; John Clark, ‘Democratising Development: NGOs and the State’, Development in Practice 2:3, October 1992, p. 155. 113 Stubbs (1996), p. 14. 114 Ibid., p. 15. 115 James Petras, ‘NGOs: In the Service of Imperialism’, Journal of Contemporary Asia 29: 4, 1999, p. 432. 116 Ibid., p. 436. 117 Eyerman and Jamison (1991). 118 Clarke (1998), p. 9. 119 Fisher (1997), p. 457. See also Clarke (1998), p. 9. 102 103
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Valentine M. Moghadam, ‘Women’s NGOs in the Middle East and North Africa: Constraints, Opportunities and Priorities’, in Chatty and Rabo (eds.), Organizing Women: Formal and Informal Women’s Groups in the Middle East (Oxford: Berg, 1997), p. 31. 121 Ibid., p. 30. 122 Deniz Kandiyoti, ‘Contemporary Feminist Scholarship and Middle Eastern Studies’, in Gender and Society: Working Papers (Birzeit University, Women’s Studies Program, June 1995). 123 Morris-Suzuki (2000), p. 68; Ben Eliezer (1999), p. 60. 124 Jürgen Habermas, Reconstruction of Historical Materialism (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1976; quoted and translated by Thomas McCarthy, The Critical Theory of Jürgen Habermas (London: Hutchinson & Co, 1978), p. 255. 125 Eyerman and Jamison (1991), p. 60. 126 Ibid. 127 Ibid., pp. 55-60. 128 McCarthy (1978), p. 254. 129 Robert C. Holub, Jürgen Habermas: Critic in the Public Sphere (London: Routledge, 1991), p. 88. 130 Eyerman and Jamison (1991), p. 56. 131 Holub (1991), p. 89. 132 Ted Gurr, Why Men Rebel (Princeton, N.J: the Centre of International Studies, Princeton University Press, 1971). 133 Russel J. Dalton, Manfred Kuechler, and Wilhelm Burklin, ‘The Challenge of New Movements’, in Dalton and Kuechler, Challenging the Political Order: New Social and Political Movements in Western Democracies (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990), p. 6. 134 Carson Clayborne, In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995), pp. 96121. 135 Aldon D. Morris, The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement: Black Communities Organizing for Change (NY: The Free Press, 1984), p. 282. 136 Clayborne (1995). 137 J. Craig Jenkins and Bert Klandermans, ‘The Politics of Social Protest’, in Jenkins and Klandermans (1995), p. 4; Eyerman and Jamison (1991), p. 56. 138 Hubert Schillinger, ‘Introductory Perspectives’, in Humphries and Reitzes (eds.), Civil Society After Apartheid (Doorfonten: the Centre for Policy Studies, 1995), p. 5. 120
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Seamus Cleary, The Role of NGOs Under Authoritarian Political System (Hampshire and London: Macmillan Press, 1997), pp. 63-65; Ran Greenstein, Volkhart Heinrich and Kumi Naidoo, Civil Society and the State in South Africa: Past Legacies, Present Realities, and Future Prospects (Community Agency for Social Enquiry - C.A.S.E), September 1998. 140 Robert Schrire, Adapt or Die: The End of White Politics in South Africa (London: Hurst & Company, South Africa Update Series, 1992), pp. 3-20. 141 USA Government. http://usinfo.state.gov/usa/infousa/facts/ democrac/56.htm, 30.11.2001. 142 Greenstein, Heinrich and Naidoo (1998). 143 Ibid; Steven Friedman, ‘Civil Society after Apartheid’, in Humphries and Reitzes (1995), p. 7. 144 Fisher (1997), pp. 456-458. 145 Baruch Kimmerling and Joel S. Migdal, Palestinians: The Making of a People (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1993). 146 Talal Asad (ed.), Anthropology and the Colonial Encounter (London: Ithaca Press, 1973); Zureik (1979). 147 Yehoshua Porath, ‘The Arab-Palestinian National Movement – 1918-1939’, in Maoz and Keidar, The Palestinian National Movement: From Confrontation to Reconciliation? (Tel Aviv: The Ministry of Defence, 1997), pp. 81-92 (Hebrew); As’ad Ghanem, The PalestinianArab Minority in Israel, 1948-2000: A Political Study (Albany: State University of NY Press, 2001), pp. 14-16. 148 Nakhleh (1991), pp. 5-9. 149 Porath (1997), pp. 81-85. 150 Ilana Silber and Zeev Rosenhak, The Historical Development of the Israeli Third Sector (Beersheba: ICTR, December 1999); The New Histadrut. www.histadrut.org.il, 11.3.2002. 151 Nakhleh (1991), pp. 5-9. 152 Rashid Khalidi, ‘The Palestinians and 1948: the Underlying Causes of Failure’, in Rogan and Shlaim (eds), The War for Palestine: Rewriting the History of 1948 (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2000), pp. 25-36. 153 Silber and Rosenhak (1999), p. 18. 154 Yosef Nevo, ‘The National Arab-Palestinian Movement During World War II’, in Maoz and Keidar (1997), p. 93. 155 Ibid., pp. 105-110. 156 Morris (1987), p. 286. 139
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Rebecca Kook, ‘Between Uniqueness and Exclusion: The Politics of Identity in Israel in Comparative Perspective’, in Barnett, Israel in Comparative Perspective: Challenging the Conventional Wisdom (Albany : State University of NY Press, 1996), pp. 199-225. See also: Sami Khalil Mar’i, ‘Sources of Conflict in Arab-Jewish Relations in Israel’, in E. Hofman et al., Arab-Jewish Relations in Israel: A Quest in Human Understanding (Bristol, Indiana: Wyndham Hall Press, 1988), p. 5. 158 Morris (1987), p.1; Burg (1983), p. 16. 159 Although the Military Government was in effect in defined geographical zones (10 kilometres wide at the northern border of Israel and 25 kilometres wide at the southern border), it gave the authorities the power to restrict the freedoms of Palestinian residents in all parts of Israel. 160 Lustick (1980), pp. 130-135. 161 Ilan Pappe, ‘An Uneasy Coexistence: Arabs and Jews in the First Decade of Statehood’, in Troen and Lucas (eds), Israel: The First Decade of Independence (Albany: State University of NY, 1995), pp. 617-658. 162 Kaufman, (1997), p. 50. 163 For details on Jewish-Palestinian co-operation, see Chapter Five. 164 On 29th October 1956, the Israeli army imposed a curfew on the Palestinian villages of the southern Triangle region following the start of the Suez Campaign. Many of the Palestinian farmers of Kafr Qassem (25 km east of Tel Aviv), working in the field at the time, were unaware of the curfew. When they walked home after work, they faced Border Police soldiers, who opened fire at them, killing 49 men, women, and children. In the subsequent trial, eight members of the Border Police platoon were sentenced to lengthy terms in prison, but had their term shortened. The last convict was released in 1960. Their officer, Yisaskhar Shadmi, was sentenced to pay only a symbolic cent. 165 Pappe (1995), pp. 617-658. 166 Nadim N. Rouhana, Palestinian Citizens in an Ethnic Jewish State: Identities in Conflict (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), p. 78; Elie Rekhess, The Arab Minority in Israel: Between Communism and Nationalism, 1965-1991 (Tel Aviv: Dayan Centre of Tel Aviv University, 1993), p. 138. 167 Kretzmer (1990), pp. 136-141. 168 Asher Arian, Politics in Israel: The Second Generation (Chatham, New Jersey: Chatham House Publishers, 1989, revised edition) p. 108. 157
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Kook (1996), pp. 199-225. Rodinson (1973). 171 Smooha (1997), p. 198. 172 Yiftachel (1997), pp. 509-515; Rouhana and Ghanem (1998), pp. 321-346. 173 Shohat (1988), pp. 1-34. 174 Laurence J. Silberstein, The Postzionist Debates: Knowledge and Power in Israeli Culture (Routledge: NY, 1999), pp. 21-24; Oz Almog, The Sabra: A Profile (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1997), pp. 292-293 (Hebrew). 175 Almog (1997). 176 Keith Kyle and Joel Peters (eds), Whither Israel?: The domestic challenges (London : Royal Institute of International Affairs in association with I.B. Tauris, 1994); Calvin Goldscheider, Israel's Changing Society: Population, Ethnicity, and Development (Boulder, Westview, 1996). 177 Zureik (1979), pp. 28-29. 178 Sabri Jiryis, The Arabs in Israel (Beirut: The Institute for Palestinian Studies, 1969), p. 81. 179 Ibid., pp. 58-65. 180 ‘Aziz Haidar, On the Margins: the Arab Population in the Israeli Economy (London: Hurst and Company, 1995), p. 11. 181 Rouhana (1997), pp. 80-81. 182 Mariam Mar’i and Sami Kh. Mar’i, ‘The Role of Women as Change Agents in Arab Society in Israel’, in Swirski and Safir (eds), Calling the Equality Bluff: Women in Israel (NY: Pergamon, 1991), pp. 218-220. 183 Ibid.; Sammy Smooha, ‘The Politicisation of the Arab Minority’, in Smooha, The Orientation and Politicisation of the Arab Minority in Israel (University of Haifa: The Jewish-Arab Centre, 1980), p.159. 184 Mar’i and Mar’i (1991). 185 Majid al-Haj, Education, Empowerment, and Control: The Case of the Arabs in Israel (Albany: State University of NY, 1995), p. 217. For comparative data on Jewish and Arab education in Israel, see Appendix 2. 186 Ibid., pp. 217-220. 187 Salem Jubran, ‘The Arab Press in Israel: A Product of Change, A Catalyst of Change’, Kesher 25, May 1999, p. 87 (Hebrew). 188 Raja Khalidi, The Arab Economy in Israel: The Dynamics of a Region’s Development (London: Croom Helm, 1988), p. 5. 169 170
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Noah Lewin-Epstein and Moshe Semyonov, The Arab Minority in Israel’s Economy (Boulder: Westview Press, 1993), p. 149; Haidar (1995), p. 7. 190 Lewin-Epstein and Semyonov (1995), pp. 88-150. 191 Michel Strawczynski and Joseph Zeira, ‘Reducing the Relative Size of Government in Israel After 1985’, in Ben-Bassat (ed.), The Israeli Economy (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2002), p. 79. 192 In 1985 this perception acquired legal force through the adoption of Amendment 9 to the Basic Law: the Knesset, which conditions participation in Knesset elections on the recognition of Israel as a state of the Jewish people. 193 As’ad Ghanem, ‘The Limits of Parliamentary Politics: The Arab Minority in Israel and the 1992 and 1996 Elections’, Israel Affairs 4:2, Winter 1997, p. 75. 194 ‘Arab Citizens of Palestine: Little to Celebrate’, Tikkun 13:4, p. 15; Jalal Bana, ‘Word of the Israeli Islam’, Haaretz Weekend supplement, 26.9.2001 (Hebrew). 195 Kaufman (1997), pp. 98-99. 196 Interview with ‘Abdallah Nimr Darwish, 9 July 1999, Kafr Qassem. 197 Zeidan and Ghanem (2000), p. 15. 198 Cf: Norton (1993); Ayubi (1995), p. 441. 199 Dmitri Makarov, Islam and Development at Micro-Level: Community Activities of the Islamic Movement in Israel (Moscow: Russian Centre for Strategic Research and International Studies, 1997), pp. 45-46. 200 Alisa Rubin Peled, ‘Towards Autonomy? The Islamist Movement’s Quest For Control of Islamic Institutions in Israel’, Middle East Journal 55:3, Summer 2001, pp. 381-386. 201 Interview with Ibrahim Sarsur, 28 May 1999, Kafr Qassem. 202 Benjamin Gidron, Hagai Katz, Michal Bar, The Third Sector in Israel 2000: The Sector’s Functions (Beersheba: ICTR, 2000), p. 13. 203 Seligman (1995), pp. 152-168. 204 Yael Yishai, Land of Paradoxes: Interest Politics in Israel (Albany: State University of NY Press, 1991), p. 2. 205 Yael Yishai, ‘Civil Society in Transition: Interest Politics in Israel’, Annals 555, January 1998, pp. 147-162. 206 Ben Eliezer (1990), pp. 69-78. 207 Rubin Peled (2001), p. 8. 189
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Benjamin Gidron, ‘Theoretical and Historical Review’, Not-forProfit Organisations in Israel 1991 (Jerusalem: Bureau of Statistics, publication 1016, January 1996), p. 23 (Hebrew). 209 On these issues, see Morris (1984); Avi Shlaim, Collusion across the Jordan (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988). 210 Gershon Shafir, Land, Labour and the Origins of the IsraeliPalestinian Conflict, 1882-1914 (Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press, 1989); Uri Ram, The changing agenda of Israeli sociology: theory, ideology, and identity (Albany: State University of NY Press, 1995); Shohat (1988), pp. 1-34. 211 Silberstein (1999), p. 89. 212 Silber and Rosenhak (1999), pp. 39-42. 213 Joel S. Migdal, ‘Civil Society in Israel’, in Goldberg, Kasaba and Migdal, Rules and Rights in the Middle East: Democracy, Law and Society (Washington: University of Washington Press, 1993), p. 118. 214 Ibid., pp. 118-147; Joel S. Migdal, Through the Lens of Israel: Explorations in State and Society (Albany: State University of NY Press, 2001), pp. 113-121. 215 Michael M. Laskier, ‘Israeli Activism American-Style: Civil Liberties, Environmental, and Peace Organisations as Pressure Groups for Social Change, 1970-1990s’, Israel Studies 5: 1, Spring 2000, p. 148. 216 Ibid. 217 Arian (1989), p. 194. 218 Moshe Negbi, Freedom of the Press in Israel: the Legal Aspect (The Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies Research Series No. 26, 1995), pp. 7-9 (Hebrew). 219 David Kretzmer, ‘The Path from Judicial Review in Human Rights Cases’, Mishpatim 28, April 1998, p. 380 (Hebrew). 220 Ilan Saban, ‘The Impact of the Supreme Court on the Status of the Arabs in Israel’, Mishpat u’Mimshal 3:2, July 1996, p. 555 (Hebrew). 221 This was article 4 of Basic Law: the Knesset. 222 Supreme Court of Appeals, United Mizrahi vs. Migdal Cooperative Village, Piskey Din [Supreme Court Decision], 49 (4), 1993, Quoted at Gross (1998), p. 98; See also: Aharon Barak, ‘A Constitutional Revolution: Israel’s Basic Laws’, Constitutional Forum 4, 1993, pp. 83-84. 223 Pnina Lahav, ‘Rights and Democracy: The Court’s Performance’, in Sprinzak and Diamond (eds), Israeli Democracy Under Stress (Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1993), pp. 125-152. 224 Gavison (1998), p. 114; Kretzmer (1998, Hebrew), p. 381. 208
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Gavison (1998), pp. 113-114, 135; Gross (1998), pp. 97-98; Gad Barzilai, ‘Political Institutions and Conflict Resolution: The Israeli Supreme Court and the Peace Process’, in Peleg (ed.), The Middle East Peace Process: Interdisciplinary Perspectives (Albany: State University of NY Press, 1998), pp. 87-106. 226 Ruth Gavison, ‘The Constitutional Revolution: A Reality or a Selffulfilling Prophecy?’, Mishpatim 28: 1-2, April 1998, p. 133. 227 Menachem Hofnung, Democracy, Law and National Security in Israel (Aldershot: Dartmouth, 1996), pp. 160-173. 228 Hofnung, (1996), pp. 160-173. As the amendment did not prevent meetings between Israelis and Palestinians abroad. In 1986, the government added an amendment, which considerably limited the possibility of holding such meetings. The Labour government in January 1993 cancelled this addition; List of Terror Organisations. YP 2665, 23.10.1980, p. 195. The government added seven more national Palestinian organisations to the list by 1986 (YP 3305, 27.2.1986, p. 1436). 229 Hadara Bar-Mor, Nonprofit Institutions: the Legal Situation (Beersheba: Israeli Centre for Third Sector Research, December 1999), p. 8 (Hebrew). 230 H.C. 241/60 Kardosh v. Registrar of Companies, 15 P.D. 1511; Registrar of Companies v. Kardosh 16 P.D. 1209. 231 Hofnung (1996), p. 166. See H.C. 253/64 Jiryis v. District Commissioner of Haifa, 18(4) P.D. 673. 232 Law of Association: First Draft. H.H. 631, 1965, section 5. 233 Hofnung (1996), p. 169. 234 The Law of Association 1979, first call: Divrei Haknesset, Meeting 277 of the 9th Knesset, 3.12.1979, p. 716. The limitations highlighted by Tamir are mainly embodied in article 59(a), authorising the Registrar to disband an association if: (1) it does not pay a licence fee within 90 days of demand; (2) does not submit a financial report within 90 days of a set date; (3) fails to comply with a court demand in this matter within the set dates or 90 days, whichever is later. 235 Divrei Haknesset, (3.12.1979), pp. 715-728. 236 Ibid. For the full version of the Law of Associations, see Appendix 3. 237 Amnon Rubinstein, The Constitutional Law of the State of Israel (Jerusalem and Tel Aviv: Shoken, 1991, volume b), p. 810 (Hebrew). 238 Yishai (1998), p. 154. 225
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The Court published this ruling following an appeal against the refusal of the Registrar to register an association affiliated with the extremist right-wing movement Kach, ‘The Yeshivah of the Jewish Idea – Kfar Tapua’h’. The Court confirmed the Registrar’s refusal to register the association but limited future registrars’ discretion based on this article. Amnon Rubinstein, The Constitutional Law of the State of Israel (Jerusalem and Tel Aviv: Shoken, 1996, fifth edition, extended), p. 1124 (Hebrew). 240 Rubinstein (1996), p. 1125; Ir’ur Ezrahi 4531/91, Darwish Naser v. The Registrar of Associations, P.D. MH(3) 294). 241 The rationale of the post as provided by Judge Benzion Greenberger, who acted as the Registrar of Association between December 1992 and September 1997, seems to justify the criticism. ‘There has always been in the Registrar’s office one lawyer who knew the Arab sector from within. Rahamim Shemer, who was born in Iraq, filled the post in my time, before me and after me. He used to work for the Ministry of Interior and for the army. He was able to talk with the guys [i.e., Arab activists] and help them too. When they came to establish an association, they faced problems of language and culture, [it was a] meeting of two cultures – one culture, the Israeli, is developed, [a culture of] control and order and law’. (Interview with Benzion Greenberger, 27 January 1999, Jerusalem.) 242 Yossi Bar-Moha, ‘The Disclosed Interests of Amiram Bogot’, Haaretz Weekend Supplement, 12.1.2001. 243 Interview with Ofir Katz, 26 July 1999, Jerusalem. 244 Rubinstein (1991), p. 812. 245 Hofnung (1996), p. 170. 246 Bar-Mor (1999), pp. 4, 15. 247 Ofir Katz, The Law of Associations De Jure and De Facto (Jerusalem: Shatil, 1999) (Hebrew), pp. 61-62; Nahum Freidex, ‘Associations Exempt from Paying VAT Must Still Pay Income Tax’, Haaretz, 17.8.1998 (Hebrew); Nahum Freidex, ‘Tax Exemption for Public Institutions’, Haaretz, 24.8.1998 (Hebrew); Bar-Mor (1999), pp. 34-46. 248 Basic Law: the Knesset (Amendment no. 9), S.H. 1985, p. 196. 249 Income Tax Ordinance [new version]; Freidex (1998b). 250 Hamutal Guri, ‘Human Right in Controversy’, Haaretz, 25.3.1999 (Hebrew). 251 Dror Vinogord (ed.), database of not-for-profit organisations in Israel, Missim, Israel: Ronen publications, May 1998 (software, Hebrew). 239
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These organisations were: Children of Peace, Neve-Shalom, ArabJewish Fund for the Promotion of Arab-Israeli Awareness, Scholarship Fund on Memory of Dr. Shaheen, The Community Centre of AbuSnan, Bani-Ma’aruf Fund for the Druze, Nur al-Salam – ‘Arab al‘Aramshe, Taha Hussein Association for the Blind – Umm al-Fahem, Al-Rahma Association for Drug Addicts – Umm al-Fahem, Al-Huda Association – Baqa al-Gharbiya, The Druze Denomination House – Shafa ‘Amr. 252 Law of Associations: Amendment. S.H. 1395, 1.4.1996, p. 276. 253 Interview with Hamutal Guri, 19 July 1999, Jerusalem. 254 Interview with Ya’akov Peri, 17 January 1999, Herzliya. 255 Shalom Yerushalmi, ‘Israeli Arabs May Become A Strategic Threat’, Ma’ariv, 16.8.1998 (Hebrew). 256 Zeev Schiff and Ehud Ya’ari, The Palestinian Uprising - Israel’s Third Front (NY: Simon and Schuster, 1990), p. 217. 257 Ibid. 258 Zeidan and Ghanem (2000), p. 11. 259 Benjamin Gidron, Yael Alon and Rinat Ben Noon, Database Report of the Third Sector in Israel (Beersheba: Israeli Centre for Third Sector Research), March 2003, p. 39; List of PNGOs in Israel. The Registrar of Associations, Special Report, 24.11.1998. 260 Gidron et al. (2003), pp. 34, 39. 261 Compare, for example, to the similar ratio of NGO per population in the Philippines. This country, considered as having one of the largest NGO sectors in the developing world, had at the second half of the 1990s 70,200 NGOs, out of a population of just over 78 million people. Clarke (1998), pp. 70, 93. 262 Korten (1990), pp. 115-127. 263 Clarke (1998), p. 19. 264 The categories of culture and education are merged, because a large number of organisations researched stated that they dealt with both issues simultaneously. In 1998, 10% of the 1,009 registered PNGOs in Israel in Israel were active in the fields of education and research. Zeidan and Ghanem (2000), p. 15. 265 Gidron et al. (2000), p. 24; Zeidan and Ghanem (2000), pp. 15-16. 266 Zeidan and Ghanem (2000), pp. 15-16. 267 The Israeli Centre for Third Sector Research (ICTR), Characteristics of Israeli Civil Society (Beersheba: The Fourth Annual Conference of the Israeli Centre for Third Sector Research, July 2001), p. 65. 268 Profile of ICCO in the Middle East (The Netherlands, undated).
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The Welfare Association: About. www.arabworld.com/welfare, 15.4.2001. 270 The Welfare Association: Funding. www.arabworld.com/welfare, 15.4.2001. 271 Interview with Khalil Nakhleh, programme co-ordinator of Welfare, 1983-1993, 26 July1999, Ramallah. 272 Welfare Publication, Seeds for the Future through the Donations of the Welfare Association, 1983-1998, p. 3 (Arabic). 273 Interview with Suheil Mi’ari, 18 August 1999, Ramallah. 274 Interview with Mi’ari (1999). 275 Interview with Nakhleh (1999). 276 Interview with Mi’ari (1999). 277 Interview with Mariam Mar’i, 5 December 2000, Acre. 278 New Israel Fund 1996 Annual Report, p. 45. 279 Ibid. 280 Interview with Lutfi Mash’ur, 20 August 1999, Nazareth. 281 Lutfi Mash’ur, ‘“Our Associations” and Functionalism’, Leading Editorial, Al-Sinara 8.1.1993 (Arabic). 282 ICTR (2001), p. 64. 283 As’ad Ghanem, ‘State and Minority in Israel: the Case of Ethnic State and the Predicament of Its Minority’, Ethnic and Racial Studies 21:3, May 1998, pp. 439-443; As’ad Ghanem, ‘Arab Participation in the Knesset: Review and Fresh Examination’, in Rekhess and Yagnes (1995), p. 70. 284 Ghanem (1987). 285 Doron (1996), p. 193. See also: Yoav Peled, ‘Strangers in Utopia: the Civil Status of the Palestinians in Israel’, Teoria U-Bikoret, Winter 1993, p. 22 (Hebrew); Bishara, ‘Azmi, ‘On Partnership and Tolerance’, Hamizrah Hahadash 37, 1995, (Hebrew), p. 36. 286 Baruch Kimmerling, ‘Boundaries and Frontiers of the Israeli System’, in Kimmerling (ed.), The Israeli State and Society: Boundaries and Frontiers (Albany: State University of NY Press, 1989), p. 270. 287 ICTR (2001), p. 71. 288 Cf. two major representatives of this approach: Sammy Smooha, ‘The Politicisation of the Arab Minority’, in Smooha (1992), p. 11; Smooha, The Orientation and Politicisation of the Arab Minority in Israel (University of Haifa: The Jewish-Arab Centre, Monograph Series on the Middle East no. 2, 1980), p.159; Joseph Ginat, ‘Voting Patterns and Political Behaviour in the Arab Sector’, in Jacob M. Landau (ed.), 269
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The Arab Vote in Israel’s Parliamentary Elections, 1988 (Jerusalem: The Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies), pp. 3-21 (Hebrew). 289 Ian Lustick, “Creeping Binationalism Within the Green Line”, New Outlook 31:7, July 1988, p. 14. 290 Landau (1993), p. 3; Rekhess (1983), pp. 84-219; Soffer (1983), pp. 198-210. 291 Soffer (1983), pp. 198-210. 292 Sammy Smooha, Autonomy for Arabs in Israel? (Beit Berl: The Institute for Israeli Arab Studies, 2000), p. 91 (Hebrew). 293 Oren Yiftachel, ‘The Politics of Ethnic Protest: Nationalism, Deprivation and Regionalism among Arabs in Israel’, Transactions 22, 1997, p. 106. 294 Minns and Hijab (1990), p. 98. 295 Ibid., p. 101. 296 Kaufman, (1997), p.11. 297 Mahmoud Muhareb, The High Follow-Up Council for the Arab Masses in Israel: Towards United National Leadership (Jerusalem: The Alternative Information Centre, 1988), pp. 23-32 (Arabic). 298 Jacob M. Landau, The Arab Minority in Israel 1967-1991: Political Aspects, (NY: Oxford University Press, 1993), pp. 101-105; Kaufman (1997), pp. 102-103. 299 ‘Ministerial Disagreements Preceded the Decision to Prohibit the Congregation of a Conference in Nazareth’, Haaretz, 2.2.1980 (Hebrew); ‘Atallah Mansur, ‘The Government for the Aid of Rakah’, Haaretz, 2.12.980 (Hebrew); Schiff and Ya’ari, (1990), p. 216. 300 Lustick (1988), p. 18. 301 Marzouk Halabi, ‘We Speak of a Parliament, and They Speak of an Association!’, Fasl al-Maqal 172, 16-17.1.2000, p. 3 (Arabic). 302 Ibid. 303 ‘A Refusal to Register the Regional Council as an Association and the Closure of 75 Arab Associations’, Fasl al-Maqal, Volume 171, 1420.1.2000. 304 These committees were The Committee for Education Issues (lajnat qadaya mutaba’a al-ta’lim and the Committee for Health Issues (lajnah mutaba’a lishuun al-sahiya), both established in 1980 and registered by 1984. 305 Nakhleh (1980). 306 Rouhana (1997), p. 75. 307 As’ad Ghanem and Sara Ozacki-Lazar, ‘Green Line, Red Lines: Israeli Arabs in Light of the Intifada’, Reviews of the Arabs in Israel (The
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Institution for Arab Studies, Giv'at Haviva, Paper no. 3, May 1990), pp. 1-2 (Hebrew). 308 Amos Gilbo’a, ‘Has the Intifada reached the Israeli Arabs?’, Ma’ariv, 8.6.1989 (Hebrew); Soffer (1983), pp. 198-210. 309 Elie Rekhess, ‘The Arabs in Israel and the Intifada’, in Freedman (1991), pp. 343-369. 310 Interview with Fathi Marshud, 26 November 1998, Haifa. 311 Dan Rabinowitz and Khawlah Abu Baker, The Stand Tall Generation:The Palestinian Citizens of Israel Today (Jerusalem: Keter, 2002), pp. 52-54 (Hebrew). 312 Interview with Muhammad Zeidan, 7 January 1999, Nazareth. 313 Oren Yiftachel, ‘The Political Geography of Ethnic Protest: Nationalism, Deprivation and Regionalism among Arabs in Israel’, Transactions 22, 1997, p. 100. 314 Interview with Nimr Hussein, 29 July 1997, Shafa ‘Amr. 315 Ghanem and Ozacki-Lazar (1990). 316 Daily reports in Haaretz, Yediot Ahronot, and Ma’ariv (Hebrew); Joel Beinin, ‘From Land Day to Peace Day...And Beyond’, in Zachary Lockman and Joel Beinin (eds), Intifada: The Palestinian Uprising Against Israeli Occupation (London: Tauris, 1990), pp. 205-213. 317 Formed in 1973, Abna al-Balad called for the establishment of a secular democratic Palestinian state over the whole of what has been British mandatory Palestine. It recognised Israel following the PLO’s recognition in 1988. Even before the Intifada, most of the movement’s leaders were placed under house arrest, but during the uprising control became stricter; Raja Aghabariya, a prominent leader, was put under administrative detention and held without trial for four months. By the end of 1988, eight other leaders were detained in this way. Elie Rekhess, ‘The Arabs in Israel and the Intifada’, in Freedman (ed.), The Intifada: Its Impact on Israel, the Arab World, and the Superpowers (Miami: Florida International University Press, 1991), p.346; Interview with Raja Aghabariya, Umm al-Fahem, 1 September 1997; Kretzmer (1990), pp. 144-145. 318 The chairman of the Arab Students’ Union of the Hebrew University, Jaber ‘Asaqlah, for example was suspended for two years in 1988, and five Arab students and one Jewish student were temporarily suspended from Haifa University on November 1990. Interview with Jaber ‘Asaqlah, Haifa, 3 September 1997; Kolbo, 23.11.1990 (Hebrew). 319 ‘MK Mahamid in Gaza: Fight by Every Accessible Means’, Yediot Ahronot, 25.12.1992.
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257
Habib’s arrest did not pass unnoticed. Jewish artists organised public protest and petitioned the government to cancel the procedures against him. Habib’s trial continued until March 1993 when the Supreme Court – also professing a liberal and democratic attitude – exonerated him of all charges. Interview with Shafiq Habib, Nazareth, 22 August 1997; Haaretz, 10.5.1991 (Hebrew). 321 Sikkuy, Report on the Achievements of the Government in Promoting Jewish-Arab Equality in Israel, 1992-4 (Jerusalem, 1994) (Hebrew). Some of the steps the 1992-1996 government took to close gaps between Jews and Palestinians in Israel included the following: The Department of Education increased budgets for Arab education; the Department of Interior increased the budgets for local Arab governments to improve the infrastructure; and the Department of Tourism helped Nazareth develop a tourism plan. The government also supported a law that equated the social security benefits that Arab children receive with those of Jewish children, and a ministerial committee recommended the placement of eighty Arab academics in governmental positions. (Rouhana, 1997, p. 211). 322 The Oslo Agreement was signed by Israel and the PLO on September 1993. It included mutual recognition and the establishment of a Palestinian Interim Self-Government Authority in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. 323 This was the position of the NCALC and of the Communist Party. The latter suffered a blow to its position as its ‘stage-by-stage programme’ – first peace, then equality – failed to materialise. (Kaufman, 1997, p. 42). 324 Morris (1984), p. 282. 325 Ittijah: The Local Preparatory Committee of Palestinian NGOs in Israel Statement submitted to: World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance. www.ittijah.org, 26.9.2003. 326 Haaretz.com (English edition). The official summation of the Or Commission report (translated by Ha’aretz Newspaper), 1.9.2003. 327 Ibid. 328 Shany Payes, ‘Lessons from Probing Committees into Ethnic and Racial Clashes in the USA and Britain’ (Jerusalem: Sikkuy, 2003), p. 12 (Hebrew). 329 Hanitzotz. www.hanitzotz.com/housing/umelfahem.html, 12.10.2003. 330 Gidron et al. (2003), p. 39. 331 Gidron et al. (2003), pp. 25-28.
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Gidron et al. (2003), p. 41. Ori Nir, ‘We Will Love You, but Don’t You be Naughty’, Haaretz, 27.10.2000 (Hebrew). 334 Gidron et al. (2000), p. 24; Zeidan and Ghanem (2000), pp. 15-16. 335 Gidron et al. (2000), pp. 38-39. 336 Nitza Nachmias and Amiram Bogot, “The Government of Israel’s Control of NGOs: Legal Dilemma and Structural Constraints”, International Journal of Not-for-Profit Law, volume 3 issue 2, December 2000, www.icnl.org/journal/vol3iss2/ar_Nitzprint.htm, p. 6. 337 Mossawa Centre and Sikkuy, 1999 Budget Plan and the Arab Citizens, prepared by Amin Fares, Yusuf Khuri and Ja’faar Farah. p. 14. 338 Gidron et al. (2000), p. 33. 339 Nachmias and Bogot (2000), p. 4. 340 Dan Rabinowitz ‘De-Tocqueville in Umm al-Fahem’, in Yoav Peled and Adi Ofir (eds.), Israel: From Mobilized to Civil Society? (Tel Aviv: Van Leer Jerusalem Institute/Hakibbutz Hameuchad Publishing House, 2001), p. 357 (Hebrew). 341 Ibid., pp. 253-254. 342 Ibid., pp. 353-354. 343 Ibid., p. 355. 344 Charles Elliot, ‘Some Aspects of Relations Between North and South in the NGO sector’, World Development 15 (supplement), pp. 5768. 345 Salim Tamari, ‘Palestinian Social Transformations : the Emergence of Civil Society’, Civil Society: Democratization in the Arab World, February 1999, volume 8 issue 86. Civil Society. www.ibnkhaldun.org, 11.7.2003. 346 World Bank, “The Palestinian NGO Report”, July 15, 1997. 347 Kudar Kassis, “Civil Society Organisations and Transition to Democracy in Palestine”, Voluntas 12:1, March 2001, p. 38. 348 Mustafa Barghouthi, Palestinian NGOs and Their Role in Building a Civil Society (Union of Palestinian Medical Relief Committees, 1994), pp. 1-3; Rema Hammami, ‘Palestinian NGOs Since Oslo: From NGO Politics to Social Movements?’, Middle East Report 214, volume 30 number 1, Spring 2000, p. 16. 349 Joost Hiltermann, ‘Al-Haq: The First Twenty Years’, Middle East Report 214, 30:1, p. 43. 350 Kassis (2001), p. 38. 351 Tamari (1999). 352 Hammami (2000), pp. 16-17. 353 Hammami (2000), pp. 17-18. 332 333
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‘Israeli Government Attempts to Link Human Rights NGOs to ‘terrorism’’, 26 May 2003, Al-Haq. www.alhaq.org/interventions, 27.6.2003; ‘Breaking into Al-Amal Centre for the Handicapped Care & Rehabilitation: A Statement from Union of Health Care Committees, 26 August 2002. The Palestine Monitor. www.palestinemonitor.org, 17.7.2003. 355 ‘An Italian Journalist Drove the Terrorists’, Ynet, 2.6.2003. 356 Al-Haq (2003). 357 Sara Roy, ‘The Transformation of Islamic NGOs in Palestine’, Middle East Report 214, 30:1, Spring 2000, pp. 24-27. 358 For state attitudes towards JNGOs, see Yishai (1998), pp. 147-162; Benjamin Gidron, ‘Theoretic Review’, in Not-for-Profit Organisations in Israel 1991 (Jerusalem: Central Bureau of Statistics, publication 1016, January 1996), pp. 18-24 (Hebrew). 359 Yishai (1998), p. 155. 360 The High Follow-Up Committee is composed of all the senior, elected representatives of the Palestinian community in Israel, including Arab heads of localities, MKs, Arab department managers in the Ministry of Education, academics, activists in different educational unions such as the teachers’ union of the Histadrut, the Teachers’ Union, and the Students Union, as well as representatives of the general public. 361 For a historical review of these changes, see Chapter Two: The Evolution of PNGOs in Israel. 362 Muhareb (1988), pp. 23-32 (Arabic). 363 Lustick (1988), p.18. 364 GS: Health Background. www.gal-oc.org, 24.1.2001. 365 Lustick (1980), p. 191. 366 For the financial crisis in Arab local authorities in Israel, see Majid al-Haj and Henry Rosenfeld, Arab Local Government in Israel (USA: Westview, 1990), pp. 145-153; Lustick (1980), pp. 188-189. 367 Lustick (1980), pp. 163-164. 368 Interview with Hatem Kan’aneh, ‘Arabeh, 9 December 2000. 369 Ferguson (1994), p. 256. 370 The geographical expansion of the GS manifested especially since 1992, when it has acted excessively both by providing services and lobbying for the Unrecognised Bedouin Villages in the Negev region. 371 GS: Annual Report 1996. www.gal-soc.org/1996_5.html, 23.12.2000. 372 GS, Comprehensive Program 1999-2003 (Draft, September 1998), p. 3. 354
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Research about the Palestinian minority in Israel constitutes a central concern of national PNGOs in Israel. Sociologist Khalil Rinawi, director of the Galilee Institute for Social Research, argues that PNGOs attempt to close some of the gaps that current research about the Palestinian community in Israel has left. The Galilee Institute for Social Research was established in 1988 in light of the criticism of its founders on the relative scarcity of research on the Palestinian minority in Israeli universities, especially the scarcity of research from the point of view of the minority. (Interview with Khalil Rinawi, 23 December 1998, I’blin). 374 GS. www.gal-soc.org/rd.html#intro, 20.11.2000. 375 Interview with Basel Ghattas, 5 November 1999, Shafa ‘Amr. 376 The ICCO/Christian Aid Funding Guidelines: 1995-2000. 377 Ittijah. www.ittijah.org/member.htm, 1.8.2002. 378 Interview with Kan’aneh (2000). 379 ‘Sources in the Galilee Society for Health Research and Services: The Cost of Dr. Hatem Kan’aneh’s Salary Reaches About 200 Thousand Shekels a Year; His Formal Monthly Salary is 10,317.28’, al-Sinara, 23.4.1993, (no author, Arabic). 380 Mash’ur (1993). 3 months later, details of the allegations were published. 381 Interview with Ghattas (1999). 382 Interview with Kana’neh (2000). 383 The emphasis on gender remains one of the major concerns of ICCO. When a project is being considered for financial support, ICCO takes into account the effect the project will have on the ‘human rights situation, to what extent the position of women and girls will improve (gender), and whether the environment will be safeguarded’. www.icco.nl, 5.1.2001 (my emphasis). 384 Interview with Samar Zeidan, 10 June 1999, Nazareth. 385 Interview with Ghattas (1999). 386 The Galilee Society, Comprehensive Program: 1999-2003 (1998), p. 6. 387 Amnah Abu-Ras, ‘1200 Registered Associations, 200 Of Which are Active’, al-Sinara, 27.9.1996 (Arabic). 388 Interview with Ghattas (1999). 389 Interview with Kan’aneh (2000). 390 The Ministry of Health, Regional Health Bureau, The Northern Region, The Galilee Society, 2.4.1998, document 1/1 – 1162 (Hebrew). 391 GS, ‘The Attitude of the Ministry of Health Towards the Galilee Society’, a letter dated 22.4.1998. 373
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MK ‘Abd al-Malik Dahamshe, ‘The Galilee Society – the Instructions of the Ministry of Health to Cut Off its Alliances With It, Dated 2/4/1998’, 26.4.1998, Fax Document (Hebrew). 393 Public Health Services, a memo entitled ‘Emergency State in the Galilee Society’, 26.4.1998 (Hebrew). 394 Interview with Nabila Shlash, 9 December 1998, Haifa. 395 Interview with Suleiman Aghbariya, 26 May 1999, Umm al-Fahem. 396 Israeli Security Services, ‘Summary of Disclosed Negative Security Information’, (Sent to Avigdor Feldman, the lawyer representing the Islamic Relief Committee, 31.3.1996). 397 Northern Tier Headquarters, Major General Chamber, Decree of Place Closure: Extension, 12.1.1997. 398 Abna al-Balad, for example, objected to this participation until 1992. As part of the movement participated in elections in 1992, the movement split over this issue. Rekhess (1991), p. 346. 399 The NIF grants scholarships to remarkable Israeli law students who wish to specialise in human rights advocacy. With this scholarship, Jabareen received Masters of Law (L.L.M.) in International Law and Human Rights from American University, Washington College of Law (USA). 400 Amira Segev, ‘There is a Price for Humiliation’, Haaretz Weekend supplement, 14.7.2000 (Hebrew). 401 Ibid. 402 The different agendas of PNGOs in Israel and the PLO manifest, for example, in the request put forward to the Committee of Internal Refugees in Israel by the PLO to refrain from negotiating on behalf of internal refugees in Israel, demanding to return to their homes. The Committee represents Palestinian citizens in Israel originating from 30 villages that were ruined in 1948. Cited in Haaretz, the secretary of the Committee, Wakim Wakim, said that following Oslo the PLO requested the Committee to postpone its struggle for the return of internal refugees to their homes until the fate of all Palestinian refugees would be determined. Wakim refused the request, explaining that internal refugees stood a better chance of achieving their right of return, because as Israeli citizens they could take advantage of the Israeli legal system to demand their rights. (Ori Nir, ‘Refugees in Israel Want to Return Home Too: The Right of Return/Arabs in Israel Demand a Separate Discussion’, Haaretz, 8.1.2001). 403 Interview with Hassan Rafiq Jabareen, 13 January 1999, Shafa ‘Amr. 404 Adalah. www.Adalah.org/LegalAction.htm, 3.11.2000. 392
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Adalah. www.Adalah.org/CaseList.htm, 5.11.2000. Ibid. 407 Adalah. www.Adalah.org/news4200.htm (10-11.2000), 3.2.2001. 408 Interview with Raef Zureik, 15 July 1999, Nazareth. 409 Raef Zureik, ‘The Unbearable Lightness of Enlightenment’, Adalah’s Review 1, Fall 1999, p. 7. 410 Hassan [Rafiq Jabareen], ‘Positions: Controversy with Raef Bin alZureik’, Internal Letter in Adalah, 17.6.1999 (Arabic). 411 Interview with Zureik (1999). 412 Interview with Jabareen (1999). 413 Hassan Rafiq Jabareen, ‘On the Oppression of Identities in the Name of Civil Equality’, Adalah’s Review 1, Fall 1999, p. 26. 414 Interview with Jabareen (1999). 415 Interview with Jabareen (1997). 416 The attempted separation between state and community affairs is criticised by feminist activists, and is further reviewed in the third section of the chapter. Within Adalah, a feminist criticism of this strategy was pronounced during a case in the Bedouin community. See next chapter. 417 Interview with Hassan Jabareen, 28 August 2003, Shafa ‘Amr. 418 Ibid. 419 Ghassann Agbaria, ‘Response to Shuli Dichter’, Address of the Conference of Adalah’s Board, 26 April 2003, Jerusalem. 420 Interview with Ameer Makhul, 2 September 2003, Haifa. 421 Yoav Kave, ‘My Name is Fathi and I am the New Neighbour’, Haaretz Weekend supplement, 25.6.1999 (Hebrew). 422 PD 6698/95, ‘Adel Ka’adan v. Israel Land Association, 29.10.1995. 423 Legal Landmarks. www.acri.org.il/hebrew-acri/engine/story, 1.3.2002. 424 Jamil Dakwar, ‘To What Extent is it an Achievement?’, Haaretz, 15 March 2000. 425 Interview with Ja’far Farah, 21.7.1999, Haifa (Hebrew). Mossawa implements Farah’s approach. The organisation was established in 1997 as a joint project of two other NGOs, Ittijah and Shatil. It acted as their daughter organisation until May 1999, when it became independent. 426 Interview with Farah (1999); Dafna Levi, ‘Falestin in Haifa’, Haaretz Weekly Supplement, 20.10.2000. 427 Interview with Muhammad Zeidan, 7 January 1999, Nazareth. 428 Interview with Zureik (1999). 429 HRA. www.arabhra.org/core/unia.htm, 16.11.2000. 405 406
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Ittijah. www.ittijah.org/general.htm, 23.11.2000. Such meetings were prohibited by the second amendment to the Prevention of Terrorism Ordinance from 1986. 432 Minns and Hijab, (1990), p. 16. 433 Cf: WG, ‘NGO Report: The Status of Palestinian Women Citizens of Israel’, (Submitted to the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, 17th session, July 1997), p. 8. 434 Lisa Hajjar, ‘Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Arab Women, Liberal Feminism and the Israeli State’, Middle East Report 207, Summer 1998, http://www.merip.org/mer/mer207/lisa207.htm, 2 January 2001. 435 The liberal approach to feminism has played an important role in bonding Palestinian and Jewish women in Israel, acting together in joint peace organisations. While there are tensions between the two approaches, it is notable that national Palestinian organisations are also active in Jewish-Arab nets of organisations, demonstrating the fact that the two approaches are not necessarily exclusive of one another. 436 WG (1997), p. 32. 437 The participating organisations were: The Association of Women Against Violence; The Arab Association for Human Rights; Al-Tufula Pedagogical Centre - Multi-Purpose Women’s Centre; Al-Siwar - Arab Feminist Movement in Support of Victims of Sexual Abuse; The Haifa Crisis Shelter; The Follow-Up Committee on Arab Education; The Committee for Educational Guidance for Arab Students. Also contributing were Arabiya Mansour, a human rights activist, and Rina Rosenberg, a member of Adalah, who acted as the group co-ordinator and the report’s editor. The authors of the report worked on a voluntary basis. 438 WG, pp. 6-9. 439 WG, p. 32. 440 Interview with Shahira Shalabi, 21.9.1999, Haifa (Hebrew). Al-Kian was founded in 1998, although activists started meeting regularly and unofficially from the early 1990s. According to Shalabi, the 12 founders decided to set up an official association as they identified the lack of a feminist think tank among the Palestinian women NGOs in Israel at the time. Al-Kian was therefore created to develop a feminist ideology and make feminist ideas more accessible to Palestinian women in Israel. It focuses on guiding women groups and on writing, and intends to publish its own journal. Kian is a non-hierarchical organisation. It is a 430 431
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member in two Jewish-Arab coalitions of women organisations: one is a coalition of Haifa-based women organisations; the other is a national coalition of feminist organisations – ‘The Feminist Centre, Haifa’ – that share some of their ideology, and are located at the same building in Haifa. 441 Hanna Herzog, Gendering Politics: Women in Israel (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1999), pp. 55, 264. 442 Indeed, Simona Sharoni, who studied women’s activism in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, has noted that due to the farreaching impact of the conflict for the two communities, women did not ‘separate between the personal, political, and historical dimensions of their social transformation’. Sharoni, Gender and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: The Politics of Women’s Resistance, (NY: Syracuse University Press, 1995), p. 54. 443 The contribution of grassroots, local women PNGOs in Israel for the development of this complex agenda cannot be overestimated, and is reviewed in the next chapter. 444 Interview with Manar Hassan, 27 September 1999, Jerusalem. 445 Interview with a senior social worker (anonymous), the Galilee, 2000. 446 Katz (1989), p. 14 (Hebrew). 447 Yishai (1998), p. 154. 448 Giora Eilon, ‘Gradually They Emerge Out of the Closet’, Yerushalayim 19 July 1991 (Hebrew); Ora ‘Arif, ‘Women First’, Yediot Ahronot 8.9.1993 (Hebrew); Interview with Hassan (1999). 449 Samera Eismeir, ‘Litigation, Legal Discourse and Identity’, Adalah’s Review 1, Fall 1999, p. 15. 450 Consider the campaign of the Follow-Up Committee for Education to introduce autonomous syllabus in Arab schools. See the previous chapter. 451 For a discussion of the autonomy discourse, see Smooha (2000). 452 See the section ‘Security Control’ in the previous chapter. 453 In 1990, out of 178 active NGOs reviewed by the Jaffa Research Centre, 164 were local organisationsGuide, p. 9 (Arabic). 454 Gidron, Alon and Ben Noon (2003), p. 55. 455 Amina Minns and Nadia Hijab, Citizens Apart: A Portrait of Palestinians in Israel (London: I.B. Tauris, 1990), p. 89. 456 Ibid., p. 90. 457 See especially: Michael Kaufman, ‘Community Power, Grassroots Democracy, and the Transformation of Social Life’, in Michael
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Kaufman and Haroldo Dilla Alfonso (eds.), Community Power and Grassroots Democracy: The Transformation of Social Life (London: Zed Books, 1997), p. 5. 458 Nasim Najib Shaqer, Member of the Tel-Aviv-Jaffa Municipality, Arab Community on Existential Crossroad, June 1996, pp. 1-8. 459 Guide (1990), pp. 256-259 (Arabic). 460Interview with Nakhleh Shaqer, 29 July 1999, Tel-Aviv. 461Interview with Nakhleh Shaqer, 7 December 1998, Jaffa. 462 A Prospectus about the League for the Arabs of Jaffa, English and Arabic. 463 Interview with Omar Siqsiq, 8 December 1998, Jaffa. 464 Haim Handwaker, ‘The Municipality does not Recognise the League’, Ha’ir, 18.9.1992 (Hebrew). 465 Haim Handwaker, ‘Tel-Aviv Municipality Against the Appointment of an Arab Engineer as the Ministry of Transportation’s Representative in the Municipal Committee’, Haaretz, 19.11.1985 (Hebrew). 466 Haim Handwaker, ‘Tel-Aviv Municipality Will not Object to the Appointment of an Arab to the Committee of Transportation’, Haaretz, 20.11.1985 (Hebrew). 467 Jessica Kreimerman, ‘Jaffa Arabs Protest Plan to Bring In Immigrants’, Jerusalem Post, 16.7.1990. 468 Ali Waqed, ‘Mid-Term Summary’, Ha’ir, 16.8.1996 (Hebrew). 469 Interview with Shaqer (1998). 470 Waqed (1996). 471 Ibid. 472 Interview with Shaqer (1998). 473 Interview with ‘Isam Makhul, 17 June 1999, Haifa; Interview with Tamar Gojanski, 28 May 1999, Tel Aviv. 474 Petras (1999), p. 432. 475 Interview with Nakhleh Saqer, 28 August 2003, Jaffa. 476 Hanna Herzog, Gendering Politics: Women in Israel (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1999), pp. 55, 264. 477 Mariam M. Mar’i and Sami Kh. Mar’i, ‘The Role of Women as Change Agents in Arab Society in Israel’, in Barbara Swirski and Marilyn P. Safir (eds), Calling the Equality Bluff: Women in Israel (NY: Pergamon, 1991), pp. 218-220. 478 Interview with Husniya ‘Omari, 10 December 1998, Acre. 479 Interview with Mariam Mar’i, 5 December 2000, Acre (in English). 480 Seeds for the Future through the Donations of the Welfare Association, 1983-1998: The Continuous Support for Development and
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Human Resources in Palestine (Ta’awun Publication, undated), p. 7 (Arabic). 481 Interview with ‘Omari (1998). 482 Hanna Vayil, Welfare Services for the Elderly (Jerusalem: Eshel, 1989), p. 60 (Hebrew); Eshel. http://jointnet.org.il/eshlenet/english/about/about.htm, 16.3.2002. 483 Interview with Mar’i (2000); Interview with ‘Omari (1998). 484 Interview with Mar’i (2000). 485 Rubin Peled (2001), pp. 381-386. 486 Raphael Israeli, Muslim Fundamentalism in Israel (London: Brassey’s, 1993); Dmitri Makarov, Islam and Development at MicroLevel: Community Activities of the Islamic Movement in Israel (Moscow: Russian Center for Strategic Research and International Studies, 1997), p. 42. 487 Interview with ‘Abdallah Nimr Darwish, 9 July 1999, Kafr Qassem. 488 Grossman (1993), p. 247. 489 Interview with Hatib Taj al-Din, 26 May 1999, Umm al-Fahem. 490 Interview with Raja Aghabariya, 16 July 1999, Umm al-Fahem. 491 In Umm al-Fahem itself, members of the Islamic movement acted violently towards Communist activists, for instance by burning their cars. Although these were isolated cases, their effect on the image of the Islamic movement was felt for many years. Makarov (1997), p. 64. 492 Nakhleh (1991), pp. 21-22. 493 Mordechai Bar-On, In Pursuit of Peace: A History of the Israeli Peace Movement (Washington: United States Institute of Peace, 1996), p. 327. 494 Ibid., p. 92. 495 Interview with Sarsur (1999). 496 Jalal Bana. ‘The World of Israeli Islam’, Haaretz Weekly Supplement, 26 October 2001. 497 Gidron, Katz and Bar (2000), pp. 16-17 (Hebrew). 498 See, for example, the Poverty Report 1999 by the Israeli National Security. www.btl.gov.il/btl_indx.asp?name=heb_faq&type=m (14.9.2001). According to the report, 40% of the non-Jewish families lived below the poverty line in 1998, a number that rose to 42.3% in 1999. The population of Bnei-Brak, the Ultra-Orthodox city, was the second poorest in Israel, lagging behind Jerusalem – where poverty statistics were the worst in Israel in the Palestinian, Eastern part of the city. 499 Zeidan and Ghanem (2000, p. 15) have noted the high proportion of religious Palestinian organisations in Israel – 25% of the overall. They
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put this high proportion down to the ‘important role of religion in this society’. Gidron, Katz and Bar (2001, p. 70) have noted the high proportion of religious, and especially Ultra-Orthodox organisations, in Israeli civil society. These organisations amounted to 43% of the overall number. 500 Makarov (1997), pp. 51-52. 501 Ibid. 502 Rubin Peled (2001; Middle East Journal), p. 383. 503 Amendment no. 3 to the 1948 Prevention of Terrorism Ordinance (1989). Divrei Haknesset, 22.5.1989 (Hebrew). 504 Minns and Hijab (1990), p. 92. 505 Guide, p. 7. 506 Shatil’s Archive, Summary of the Campaign against the Law to Amendment (number 3) to the Prevention of terrorism ordinance, undated. 507 Lily Galili, ‘Guilt by Association’, Haaretz 19.5.2000. 508 Ibid.; Jalal Bana, ‘On 1 May an Arab Workers Union will be Officially Established’, Yediot HaGalil, 27.3.1998 (Hebrew); The Workers Advice Centre. www.odaction.org/wac/boget.htm, 17.3.2002. The conflict of the WAC with the Registrar has not ended with the trial. On May 17, 2001, WAC received a letter from the Registrar threatening to open procedures against it. In this letter, the Registrar states that after checking WAC’s activities, he may appoint a person to investigate WAC. The Registrar accused WAC for failing to submit on time financial reports. He also accused them for breaking the law that forbids affiliation to a political party, as they are affiliated to the Organisation for Democratic Action. WAC members reject both claims and argue that they constitute a politically motivated ‘witchhunt’. 509 Interview with Wehbe Badarneh, 7 September 2003, Nazareth. 510 Interview with Badarneh (2003). 511 See maps of the unrecognised villages in the north and south of Israel at the end of this chapter. 512 Adalah (1998), p. 56. 513 Arab Association for Human Rights (Nazareth, Israel): The Unrecognised Villages – Demolitions. www.arabhra.org/4article.htm, 7.10.2000; Arab Association for Human Rights (Nazareth, Israel): The Unrecognised Villages – Planning and Construction Law. www.arabhra.org/panning.htm. 7.10.2000. 514 Arab Association for Human Rights (Nazareth, Israel): The Unrecognised Villages – Deprivation of Services. www.arabhra.org/deprivat.htm, 7.10.2000.
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Rinat Ben-Noon, ‘Historic Review of Governmental Policies Towards the Unrecognised Villages in the North [of Israel]’, in A Plan for the Development of Municipal Authority for the Bedouin Unrecognised Villages in the Negev (Enosh: Urban and Community Development, for The Regional Council of the Unrecognised BedouinArab Villages in the Negev and the Jewish-Arab Centre for Economic Development, 29.11.1999), p. 37 (Hebrew). 516 Penny Maddreli, The Bedouin of the Negev (London: The Minority Rights Group, Report no. 81, January 1990), pp. 2-3; Avinoam Meir, As Nomadism Ends: The Israeli Bedouin of the Negev (Boulder: Westview Press, 1997), p. 197. See map of the seven townships at the end of the chapter. 517 The Absentees’ Property Law directs the Minister of Finance to appoint a Custodian for Absentees’ Property, thereby transferring the rights to take care of the property and manage it from the owner (declared as Absentee) to the Custodian. An owner is declared to be an Absentee if he was not present in his property during the period of 29 November 1947 and 10 May 1948. In some cases, a person may be defined as Absentee by the law even if he stayed in Israel at the same period; indeed, it has been claimed that 75,000 persons, who remained in the country after the 1948 war, became “present absentees”. The law does not give an absentee the right to return to his/her property. Kretzmer (1990), pp. 56-57. 518 Interview with Muhammad Abu al-Heija, 8 January 1999, Haifa. 519 The Markovitch Committee issued its report in August 1986, suggesting the divide of the licensed houses in the Arab sector into three parts. One part is recommended for demolition, another one enters the frame of the “grey” houses (a scheme which deprived these houses of any services) and the third part is incorporated into the juridical area of adjacent localities. The committee called for using an iron fist against the Arab citizens in order to put a stop to the phenomenon of unlicensed construction. The Association of Forty, www.assoc40.com, 21.10.2000. 520 Interview with Abu al-Heija (1999); The Association of Forty. www.assoc40.com, 11.10.2000. 521 The Local Committee of Western Kammane (Isma’il Mahmud Sawa’ed, Mar’i Hassan, and ‘Adwan ‘Ali Sawa’ed), A Memorandum, (undated); Uri Pinkerfeld, Eastern Kammane: an Overview (Submitted to the Israeli Lands Administration, 19.10.1992); Uri Pinkerfeld, The 515
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Village of Western Kammane: an Overview (Submitted to the Israeli Lands Administration, June 1990). 522 Ben-Noon (1990), p. 42. 523 Interview with Uri Pinkerfeld, 22 September 2000, Revadim. 524 An enclave that the Israeli government set up for all the Bedouin residents of the Negev in 1951. 525 Interview with Nuri al-‘Ukbi, 26 September 2000, Lydda. 526 Mordechai Artzieli, ‘They Came Riding the Camels, But Left on the Tails of the Dogs’, Haaretz, 28.3.1976 (Hebrew). 527 Ibid. 528 Ibid. 529 Interview with al-‘Ukbi (2000). 530 Master Plan for the Bedouin Population in the Southern Region: Final Report (Association for Support and Defence of Bedouin Rights in Israel, August 1990). 531 Ben Noon (1999), (Hebrew). 532 Interview with ‘Amer al-Huzeil, 28 September 2000, Rahat. 533 Ibid. 534 Interview with Jaber Abu-Kaf, Beersheba, 21 December 1998. 535 Interview with ‘Atiya al-‘Asem, Beersheba, 21 December 1998. 536 Interview with al-Huzeil (2000). 537 Interview with Taleb al-Sana, 22 December 1998, Jerusalem. 538 Interview with Abu-Kaf (2000). 539 Interview with Dr Thabet Abu Ras, manager of Shatil in the Negev, 10 September 2003, Beersheba. 540 Governmental Secretariat, Decision no. ARV/1 of the Ministries’ Committee for the Non-Jewish Sector dated 9.4.2003 which was added to the Governmental Decisions Protocol and approved by the government on 14.4.2003 and numbered Decision 216 (Hebrew). 541 Interview with Al-‘Asem (2000); Interview with Sarah Kremer, Joint General Director of the Jewish-Arab Centre for Economic Development, Herzliya, 11 July 1999. For further review of the Centre, see Chapter Five. 542 Introduction to ACRI. ww.nif.org/acri/aclegal1.html#sec1, 28.2.2002. 543 Legal Landmarks. www.acri.org.il/hebrew-acri/engine/list, 28.2.2002. 544 The Galilee Society. www.gal-soc.org/negev.html, 24.11.2000. 545 The International Water Tribunal Foundation’,Israel – Drinking Water Provision’, October 1991, pp. 18-76.
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The International Water Tribunal Foundation, ‘Israel – Drinking Water Provision’, October 1991, Amsterdam; Interview with Basel Ghattas, 5 November 1999, Shafa ‘Amr. 547 Interview with al-Huzeil (2000). 548 Mohammed Sawahed, et al. v. Minister of the Interior, et. al., H.C. 3607/97, filed 6/97, judgment 6/98. 549 Regional Council of the Unrecognised Villages in the Negev, et. al. v. Ministry of Labour and Social Welfare, et. al., H.C. 5838/99, filed 8/99, order nisi 2/00. 550 Samera Esmeir, ‘The Intersectionality of Nationality and Gender’, Adalah’s Review: 1, Fall 1999, pp. 13-15. 551 Interview with Abu Ras; Interview with Guri (2003). 552 Ori Nir, ‘Thanks to the Jewish Neighbours for the Improvised Electricity Cable’, Haaretz, 30.11.2001. 553 Interview with ‘Id Sawa’id, 27 September 2000, Kammane; Interview with Muhammad Abu al-Heija (1999). 554 Michael Kaufman, ‘Community Power, Grassroots Democracy, and the Transformation of Social Life’, in Kaufman and Haroldo Dilla Alfonso (eds.), Community Power and Grassroots Democracy: The Transformation of Social Life (London: Zed Books, 1997), p. 6. 555 Ittijah: The Local Preparatory Committee of Palestinian NGOs in Israel Statement submitted to: World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance. www.ittijah.org, 26.9.2003. See also Chapter Two. 556 Anita Weiner, Arnon Bar-On and Eugene Weiner, The Abraham Fund Directory of Institutions and Organisations Fostering Coexistence Between Jews and Arabs in Israel (NY: The Abraham Fund, 1992). The authors of the directory defined ‘co-existence’ organisations as those that act within the Green Line and accept the right of the state of Israel to exist, which conducted joint Jewish-Arab activities or had a specific plan for such activity. The directory includes formal organisations such as Magen David Adom (Red Star of David, Israel’s emergency first aid service) alongside informal and even non-Zionist organisations such as the Jewish-Arab youth movement Re’ut-Sadaqa (Friendship). 557 Tamar Hermann, ‘The Sour Taste of Success: The Israeli Peace Movement: 1967-1998’, in Benjamin Gidron and S. Katz (eds.), Peace/Conflict Resolution Organisations: An International Perspective (NY, Oxford University Press, forthcoming). 558 Interview with Ameer Makhul, 31 May 1999, Haifa. 546
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Thus, for example, in 2003 the Ministry of Interior cancelled its funding for Sikkuy’s municipal project, acting since 1997 to improve the municipal services of Arab localities in Israel. 560 ‘Azmi Bishara, ‘Between the Place and the Space’, Studio 37, October 1997, pp. 6-9. 561 Universities are clearly dominated by Jews. In 1999, only 7.1% of University students in Israel were Palestinians, and only 57 Palestinians had senior teaching posts at an Israeli university, in comparison with 5019 Jews (Data by the Israeli Council for Higher Education, Haaretz, 30.1.2002). In September 2003, the first Arab University was established in ‘Iblin, currently as a branch of Indianapolis University, USA. 562 Sammy Smooha, Arabs and Jews in Israel: Conflicting and Shared Attitudes in a Divided Society (Boulder: Westview, 1989, vol. 1), p. 10. 563 Public Survey by Darwish Advertising Agency, 1.1.1997. 564 Nadim Rouhana and As’ad Ghanem, ‘The Democratisation of a Traditional Minority in an Ethnic Democracy: The Palestinians in Israel’, in Kaufman, Shukri and Rothstein (eds), Democracy, Peace, and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publications 1993), p. 174. 565 Lustick (1980). 566 Jacob M. Landau, The Arabs and the Histadrut (Tel Aviv: Ranot Printing Press, 1976), p. 7. 567 Stanley Greenberg, Race and State in Capitalist Development: Comparative Perspectives (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980), pp. 357-379; Michael Shalev, ‘Jewish Organized Labour and the Palestinians: A Study of State/Society Relations in Israel’, in Baruch Kimmerling (ed.), The Israeli State and Society: Boundaries and Frontiers (Albany: State University of NY Press, 1989), pp. 93-121. 568 The New Histadrut. www.histadrut.org.il/serve/Union, 18.3.2002. 569 ‘100,000 Citizens are not Members of Any Union’, Haaretz, 11.2.2000 (Hebrew). 570 Lili Galili, ‘Suddenly They Retrieve the Criminal Record’, Haaretz, 19.5.2000 (Hebrew). 571 Bar-On (1996), pp. 8-10; Peretz Merhav, The Israeli Left: History, Problems, Documents (San Diego: Barnes, 1980), pp. 112-113; 198199. 572 Bar-On (1996). 573 Silberstein (1999), pp. 48-50. 574 Merhav (1980), pp. 70-73; Bar-On (1996), p.8. 559
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Peace Now: About. http://www.peacenow.org.il/English.asp, 5.3.2002. 576 Ibid. 577 Stanley Cohen, ‘Voices from the Sealed Room: The Israeli Peace Movement During the Gulf War’, a reprinted and expanded version of an article which appeared in Il Manifesto, March 1991. Quoted in Kaminer, The Politics of Protest: The Israeli Peace Movement and the Palestinian Intifada (Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 1996), p. 209. 578 Hermann (forthcoming). 579 Joel Beinin, ‘The Israeli Peace Movement’, Middle East Report 205:4, October-December 1997, pp. 45-46. 580 Hermann (forthcoming). 581 Reuven Kaminer, ‘The Protest Movement in Israel’, in Lockman and Beinin (eds), Intifada: The Palestinian Uprising Against Israeli Occupation (London: Tauris, 1990), pp. 240-241. 582 Ilan Pappe, ‘A Modus Vivendi Challenged: The Arabs in Israel’, in Bar’am and Rubin (eds), Iraq’s Road to War (NY: St. Martin’s, 1993), pp. 163-176; Yvonne Deutsch, ‘Israeli Women against the Occupation: Political Growth and the Persistence of Ideology’, in Tamar Mayer (ed.), Women and the Israeli Occupation: The Politics of Change (London: Routledge, 1994), pp. 92-93. 583 Ghanem and Ozacki-Lazar (1990) (Hebrew); Rouhana (1997), p. 211; Interview with Ibrahim Nimr Hussein, 29 July 1997, Shafa ‘Amr. 584 Shalom (Shuli) Dichter, ‘A Discussion following Participation in the NGO Forum of the UN World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance at Durban, August-September 2001, Unpublished Paper (Hebrew). 585 Hanna Herzog, ‘A Space of Their Own: Social-Civil Discourses among Palestinian Israeli Women in Peace Organisations’, Social Politics: International Studies of Gender, State and Society 6:3, Fall 1999, pp. 344-369. 586 Interview with Kifah Daresh, Da’a Waqed and Rula Hardal, 14 December 1998, Haifa. 587 Hermann (forthcoming). 588 Interviews with Basel Ghattas, 5 January 1999, Haifa; Interview with Hatim Kan’aneh, ‘Arabeh, 9 December 2000. 589 Interview with Makhul (1999). 590 Ameer Makhul, ‘“National Service” for Arabs in the Jewish State?’, New Outlook 13:2, February 1997. 591 Deutsch (1994), pp. 88-89. 575
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Sylvia Fogel-Bijawi, ‘Women and Citizenship in Israel’, Politika 1, June 1998, pp. 47-63 (Hebrew). 593 Ibid.; Sylvia Fogel-Bijawi, ‘Women Organisations in Israel – a Synopsis’, Be’ayot Beinleumiot 59: 3-4, pp. 65-77 (Hebrew). 594 Herzog (1999), pp. 344-369. 595 Ibid. 596 Kaminer (1996), pp. xvii, 61. 597 Interview with As’ad Ghanem, 31 January 1999, Haifa. 598 Shalom (Shuli) Dichter, ‘On Coexistence and Talk, Partnership and Dialogue’, Sikkuy. www.Sikkuy.org.il, 2.12.2000. 599 Interview with Sarah Kremmer, 11 July 1999, Herzliya. 600 Interview with Harry Rhodes, 2 August 1999, Acre. 601 The Abraham Fund was established in the USA in 1989 in order to foster Jewish-Arab co-existence in Israel. Since 1993, it provides financial support for co-existence projects in Israel. 602 Weiner, Bar-On and Weiner (1992), p. iv. 603 Ibid. 604 Interview with Dr. Ibrahim ‘Amer, 18 December 1998, Kafr Qassem. 605 New Israel Fund 1996 Annual Report, p.1. 606 Lori Epstein, ‘New Israel Fund to Celebrate 20 Years of Social Activism’, Jewish Bulletin of Northern California, 15.1.1999. 607 Interview with Dorit Karlin, 19 July 1999, Jerusalem. 608 New Israel Fund 1996 Annual Report, p.1. 609 Sarah Coleman, ‘New Israel Fund Pushing Voter Turnout’, Jewish Bulletin of Northern California, 16.4.1999. 610 Epstein (1999). 611 Charles Hoffman, ‘Arab Joins New Israel Fund Board’, The Jerusalem Post, 14.7.1988. 612 Ad Clogs, ‘Donations Sharing, New Israel Fund Celebrates Its 20th Amid Controversy’, Forward, 15.1.1999. 613 Yehuda Lev, ‘How to Hold Many, Varied Jewish Groups Accountable’, Jewish Voice, March 1999. 614 Clogs (1999). My emphasis. 615 Nurit Worgeft, ‘A Bridge: Jews and Arabs’, Kol Yerushalayim, 10.7.1987. 616 Ruth Yovel, ‘Bombed By Mistake’, Haaretz Weekend Supplement, 14.1.1994 (Hebrew). 617 Hofman (1988). The first Arab citizen appointed was Mariam Mar’i. 618 Interview with Karlin (1999). 592
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New Israel Fund 1996 Annual Report, pp. 35, 38. For full details on Mossawa’s activities, see Chapter Three: National PNGOs in Israel. 621 New Israel Fund 1996 Annual Report, p. 45. 622 Ibid., pp. 35-44. 623 Interview with Fathi Marshud, 26 November 1998, Haifa. 624 Interview with Karlin (1999). 625 Ibid. 626 The Movement for Stopping Hotze Yisrael. http://www.stoproad.org, 11.1.2002 (Hebrew). 627 Interview with Mar’i (2000). 628 Ibid. 629 Giv’at-Haviva is a Jewish institution established in 1949 by the Kibbutz Artzi Movement (identified with Mapam) as an educational institution. The Jewish-Arab Centre for Peace was established within it in 1963. BetHagefen is a community and youth centre in Haifa. Van-Leer Jerusalem Foundation is a research centre that focuses mainly on issues of pluralism in Israel. 630 Rachel Hertz-Lezerovitz and Hagai Kopermintz, ‘mifgashei no’ar Yehudi-‘Aravi betzel haIntifada [Jewish-Arab Encounters in the Shadow of the Intifada], Studies in Education: new series 1:2, 1996, pp. 36-37 (Hebrew). 631 Avi Kfiri, ‘Following a Complaint on Connections with the PLO, Abu Hana and Hadad were Dismissed from Bet Hagefen’, Kol Haifa, 23.8.1991 (Hebrew). 632 Naomi Cohen-David, ‘Came Out’, Kolbo, 19.1.1990 (Hebrew). 633 Dani Rubinstein, ‘Encounters of the Right Kind’, Haaretz Books, 2.10.1996 (Hebrew). 634 David Hall-Cathala, The Peace Movement in Israel, 1967-1987 (Hampshire and London: Macmillan in association with St. Antony’s College, 1990), pp. 139, 209. 635 Mohammed Abu nimer, Dialogue, Conflict Resolution, and Change: Arab-Jewish Encounters in Israel (Albany: State University of NY Press, 1999), pp. 151-152. 636 See Chapter Two. 637 Majid Al-Haj, Education, Empowerment, and Control: The Case of the Arabs in Israel (Albany: State University of NY Press, 1995), p. 217. 638 Abu Nimer (1999), pp. 152-164. 639 Dichter (2000), pp. 5-7. 640 Ibid., pp. 8-12. 641 Interview with Shalom (Shuli) Dichter, 3 December 2000, Tel Aviv. 619 620
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Sarah Ozacki-Lazar, ‘Education to Co-Existence’, Shadmot 118-119, 1991 (Hebrew, original emphasis). 643 Interview with Sarah Ozacki-Lazar, 13 December 2000, Giv’at Haviva. 644 Farhat Agbaria and Cynthia Cohen with Marci McPhee, Working with Groups in Conflict: The Impact of Power Relations on the Dynamics of the Group (Waltham, Massachusetts: Brandeis University, September 2000), p. 2. 645 Interview with Farhat Agbaria,13 December 2000, Giv’at-Haviva. 646 Rabah Halabi, ‘A Different Jewish-Arab Encounter’, in Halabi (ed.), Identities in Dialogue: Arab-Jewish Encounters in Wahat alSalam/Neve Shalom (Tel Aviv: Hidekel, 2000) (Hebrew), p. 11. 647 Halabi (2000), pp. 11-12. 648 Interview with Anwar Daud, 7 December 2000, Neve-Shalom. 649 Rabah Halabi and Nava Zonenshein, ‘Consciousness, Identity and the Challenge of the Reality: The Approach at the School for Peace’, in Halabi (2000), pp. 16-27 (Hebrew). 650 Haviva Bar and David Bar-Gal with Jaber ‘Asaqlah, Living with the Conflict (Jerusalem: Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies, The Gutman Institute for Practical Sociological Research, 2000). 651 Halabi and Zonenshein (2000), pp. 16-27. 652 Interview with Saber Rabi, 8 December 2000, Kafr Qassem. 653 Ibid. 654 Sayed Kashu, Dancing Arabs (Ben Shemen: Modan Publishing House, 2002), p. 51 (Hebrew). 655 Halabi and Nava Zonenshein (2000), pp. 16-27 656 Interview with Uri Davis, 9 September 2003, Hertzliya. 657 Interview with Shuli Dichter, 12 September 2003, Tel Aviv. 658 Yael Gviretz and Tova Tsimuki, ‘The Association that Changed the Face of Israeli Society’, Yediot Ahronot (hamusaf leshabat), 6.12.2000 (Hebrew). 659 ACRI. www.acri.org.il/english-acri, 11.10.2003. 660 Aviv Lavee, ‘The Politics of the Victim’, musaf haaretz, 17.1.2003 (Hebrew). 661 Gviretz and Tsimuki (2000). 662 Antonio Gramsci, Letters from Prison (London: Cape, 1975), p. 204. 663 William F. Fisher, ‘Doing Good? The Politics and Antipolitics of NGO Practices’, Annual Review of Anthropology 26, 1997, pp. 439-464; Arturo Escobar, Encountering Development: The Making and 642
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Unmaking of the Third World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995); Gerard Clarke, Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) and Politics in the Developing World, (Papers in International Development no. 20, February 1996, University of Wales, Swansea). 664 Donald L. Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), pp. 86-89; Pierre du-Toit in Civil Society, Democracy and State-Building in South Africa (Stellenbosch: Centre for International and Comparative Politics, Research Report no. 1, 1993), pp. 4-8; Christopher G.A. Bryant, ‘Civic Nation, Civil Society, Civil Religion’, in John A. Hall (ed.), Civil Society: Theory, History, Comparison (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995), pp. 142-145. 665 See especially: Eyerman and Jamison (1991). 666 Yoav Peled and Adi Ofir, ‘Prologue’, in Peled and Ofir (2001), pp. 917. 667 Eyerman and Jamison, (1991). 668 Yishai (1998), pp. 147-162. 669 NGOs have this role in common with political parties that take part in the elections to the Knesset, as both act to change the system from within. 670 Pappe (1995), pp. 617-658. 671 Petras (1999), pp. 429-440.
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Appendix One
LIST OF ORGANISATIONS 1.
Abna al-Balad Level of interaction: 1*
1973
2.
Acre Arab Women Association Level of interaction: 3
1976
3.
Adalah http://www.adalah.org ** Level of interaction: 3
1996
The legal centre for Arab minority rights in Israel.
4.
Al-Fanar Level of interaction: 1
1991
Feminist organisation.
5.
Al-Ahali http://www.ahalicenter.org Level of interaction: 1
1999
Promoting political participation and civil society among Palestinians in Israel
6.
Al-Kian Level of interaction: 1
1998
Feminist organisation.
7.
Al-Rabita Min Ajli ‘Arab Yaffa Level of interaction: 3
1979
Local organisation for Palestinians in Jaffa.
8.
Alternative Information Center http://www.alternativenews.org Level of interaction: 1
1993
Disseminating information on Palestinian and Israeli societies and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
9.
Arab Association for Human Rights www.arabhra.org Level of interaction: 2
1989
Lobby for human rights.
10.
Al-Siwar Level of interaction: 1
1997
Feminist organisation.
Political movement with a nationalistsocialist ideology. Nursery for Arab toddlers; Training centre for kindergarten teachers.
Palestinian NGOs in Israel
11.
B’Tselem http://www.btselem.org Level of interaction: 1
1989
Lobby for human rights.
12.
Centre for Jewish-Arab Economic Development http://www.cjaed.org.il Level of interaction: 2
1988
Lobby for economic equality.
13.
Ittijah http://www.ittijah.org Level of interaction: 1
1997
Umbrella organisation for PNGOs in Israel.
14.
Mossawa Level of interaction: 2
1996
Lobby for civic equality.
15.
Neve Shalom/ Wahab al-Salam http://www.neveshalom.org Level of interaction: 1
1972
Jewish-Arab organisation and village.
16.
Shatil http://www.newisraelfund.org Level of interaction: 2
1992
17.
Sikkuy http://www.sikkuy.org.il Level of interaction: 2
1991
Professional aid for organisations promoting social change. Lobby for civic equality.
18.
Ta’awun (The Welfare Association) http://www.arabworld.com Level of interaction: 2
1983
Funding PNGOs.
19.
Tandi Level of interaction: 1
1973
Women association for peace, affiliate of the Communist Party of Israel.
20.
The Adam Institute for Democracy and Peace http://www.adaminstitute.org.il Level of interaction: 1
1986
Promoting democracy among the youth.
21.
The Arab Student Union, Haifa University Level of interaction: 1
1972
Student union.
22.
The Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) http://www.nif.org Level of interaction: 1
1972
Lobby for civil rights.
317
Appendix One
318
23.
The Association for Support and Defence of Bedouin Rights in Israel Level of interaction: 1
1976
Lobby for the Bedouin in Israel.
24.
The Association of Forty http://www.assoc40.org Level of interaction: 2
1978
Lobby for recognition of Palestinian unrecognised villages in Israel.
25.
The Committee for the Arabs in Lydda Level of interaction: 2
1992
Local organisation for Palestinians in Lydda.
26.
The Committee for Educational Guidance for Arab Students Level of interaction: 1
1991
Lobby and services for Palestinian students.
27.
The Committee of High-School Graduates, Dalyat al-Karmel Level of interaction: 1
1982
Local organisation.
28.
The Druze Initiative Committee Level of interaction: 1
1972
29.
The Follow-Up Committee on Education in the Arab Sector Level of interaction: 1
1980
Representative of the Druze community in Israel . Sub-committee of the High Follow-Up Committee for the Arabs in Israel; Lobby in the field of education
30.
The Galilee Society for Social Research Level of interaction: 1
1988
Research on the Palestinian society in Israel.
31.
The Galilee Society: The Arab National Society for Health Research and Services (GS) www.gal-soc.org Level of interaction: 3
1981
Health lobby and services.
32.
The Islamic Movement in Israel Level of interaction: 2
1975
Political movement with religious ideology .
Palestinian NGOs in Israel
33.
The Islamic Relief Committee Level of interaction: 1
1991
Supporting orphans of people who got killed during the first Intifada; affiliate of the Islamic Movement in Israel.
34.
The Jewish Arab Centre for Peace, Giv’at Haviva http://www.dialogate.org.il Level of interaction: 3
1963
Promoting JewishArab co-existence, established by Hakibbutz Hameuchad
35.
The Kafr-Qasim Association for Informal Education Level of interaction: 1
1989
36.
The Local Committee, Kammaneh Level of interaction: 2
1985
37.
The National Organisation of Islamic Associations Level of interaction: 1
1992
Local organisation promoting education and Palestinian culture . Local committee of the previously unrecognised village of Kammaneh . Co-ordinating local NGOs affiliated to the Islamic Movement in Israel.
38.
The New Israel Fund http://www.newisraelfund.org Level of interaction: 2
1979
Funding organisations active for social change in Israel.
39.
The Regional Council for the Unrecognised Arab-Bedouin Villages in the Negev http://www.arabhra.org Level of interaction: 3
1985
Lobby for recognition of Bedouin unrecognised villages in the Negev.
40.
The Regional Council of Heads of Arab Councils (NCALC) Level of interaction: 1
1974
Representative organisation of the Palestinian minority in Israel.
41.
The Social Development Committee (Haifa) Level of interaction: 2
1985
Local organisation for the Palestinian community in Haifa.
319
Appendix One
320
42.
Wolfson Community Centre (Acre) Level of interaction: 1
1986
Educational and cultural activities for Jews and Arabs in the Wolfson neighbourhood.
43.
Women Against Violence Level of interaction: 1
1992
Operating shelters for Palestinian women victims of violence; Lobby for preventing violence against women.
* ‘Level of interaction’ reflects my kevel of interaction with the organisation, graded as follows: 1. Interviews with 1-2 activists. 2. Interviews with 3-5 activists. 3. Interviews with more than 5 activists, repetitive visits and/or participation in activities organised by the organisation. ** Website included where applies.
Appendix Two
COMPARATIVE DATA ON HEALTH AND EDUCATION CONDITIONS OF JEWS AND PALESTINIANS IN ISRAEL*
Figure 7: Infant Mortality per 1000 Births, in per centage Jews
% of Deaths per 1000 Births
14
Arabs
12
10
8
6
4
7
14 4.7
8.8
2
0
Until 1997
From 1997
Years
*Sources: Human Rights Watch, Second Class: Discrimination Against Palestinian Arab Children in Israel's Schools, http://www.hrw.org/reports/2001/israel2, 14.3.2002; Sikkuy’s Report on Equality and Integration of the Arab Citizens in Israel, 1999-2000; Sikkuy’s Report on Equality and Integration of the Arab Citizens in Israel, 2000-2001; ‘The Situation of Israeli Arabs – Numbers,’ Haaretz, 7 July 2000.
Appendix Two
322
Figure 8: Comparative Educational Data for Jews and Arabs (1994-2000), in per centage
100
Jews
90
Arabs
80
Per Centage
70 60 50
99
83.2
92.9
78.8
80.7
40
64.4
30
47.1
40
20
36.2
25.8
10
1
7.1
0
Academic staff members
School with psycological counselling
University students
High-school graduates with Bagrut (GCSE Equivalent)
Schools with libraries
Schools with educational counselling
Educational Categories
Figure 9: Number of Employees in the Ministry of Health (1999)
Number of Employes
Jews 30,000 25,000 20,000 15,000
27,330
10,000 5,000 0
1,731
Arabs
Index ‘Athmaneh, Ghassan ‘Omari, Husniya 1909 Ottoman Law of Associations Abna al-Balad (Sons of the Country) Abraham Fund Abu al-Heija, Muhammad Abu Baker, Khawla Abu Nimer, Mohammed Abu-Kaf, Jaber Abu-Lughod, Lila Acre Arab Women’s Association (Mu‛asasat Niswan ‘Arab ‘Akka). Adalah, the Legal Centre for Arab Minority Rights in Israel Adiv, Assaf Adva Agbaria, Farhat
126 155 68-72 93, 159, 184, 234 117, 203-204, 223 170 92 211 178-180 14 145, 147, 154157, 185
10, 96, 111, 112, 118, 124130, 134, 139143, 181-183, 198, 231 165-166 156 213-214
Aghbariya, Suleiman Agranat, Shimon Al-‘Ukbi, Nuri Al-Amal Al-Aqsa (second, current) Intifada Al-Ard movement Al-Beit Al-Didi, Yasir Al-Fanar Al-Haj, Majid Al-Haq al-Husseini, Amin Al-Huzeil, ‘Amer Al-Ittihad Al-Kian Al-Rahma Anti-Drug Association Al-Sabar Al-Sana, Taleb al-Sinara Al-Siwar American civil rights movement, the Antoun, Richard
102, 123 65 174-176 105 9-10, 47, 96, 105, 107, 189, 228, 229-230 69-70 219-220 105 112, 137-140, 143 55, 211 105 48-49 117, 177-179 56, 65, 128 112, 136 162 165 177, 179 56. 84, 119 197 40-41 30
Index
324
Arab Association for Human Rights (HRA) Arab Democratic Party Association for Support and Defence of Bedouin Rights in Israel, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) Association of Forty Ayubi, Nazih B’tselem Badarneh, Wehbe
92, 111, 134, 144, 168, 206 72, 158 174-176
72, 124-126, 130-133, 165167, 181, 198, 221, 231-232 169-171, 173174, 187, 188 42 222 165-166
Banarama Bar Mor, Hadara Barak, Aharon Barak, Ehud Bar-Moha, Yossi Bar-On, Mordechai Barzilai, Gad Basic Laws: Human Dignity and Liberty, and Freedom of Occupation (1992) Begin, Menahem Ben Eliezer, Uri Ben-Gurion, David Bernard Foundation Bet-Hagefen Bilance Bishara, ‘Azmi Bogot, Amiram Brith Shalom (Covenant of Peace) CBSP Chatty, Dawn Chazan, Naomi Children Teaching Children
56 72 66, 132 129 71 160 66-67 66-67, 94, 229
51, 88, 193 62 51, 181 117 209-210 117 58, 128, 190 89, 100 193 123 34 29 211-212
Palestinian NGOs in Israel
Christian Aid Clarke, Gerard Cohen, Cynthia Committee of Guidance for Arab Students Communist Party in Israel (CPI)
Crystal, Jill Dahamshe, ‘Abd al-Malik Darawi, Dawoud Darwish, ‘Abdallah Nimr Daud, Anwar De Tocqueville, Alexis Derekh Hanitzotz (Path of the Spark) Diakonia Dichter, Shalom Doron, Gideon Dunchurch Aid Edwards, Michael
117, 118 8, 20, 28, 34, 79, 225 213 122-123 49, 51, 56-59, 65, 87, 88, 94, 103, 108, 125, 136, 144, 150153, 158, 189, 194, 200, 219, 228, 233 30 121 105 60, 158-159 214 21, 101 165
117 99, 196-197, 211-214, 220221 85 117 36
Elliot, Charles Escobar, Arturo European Union, The Eyerman, Roy EZE Farah, Ja’far Ferguson, James Fisher, William Fogel-Bijawi, Sylvia Foucault, Michel Galilee Society (GS): The Arab National Society for Health Research and Services Gavison, Ruth Gellner, Ernest Ghanem, As’ad Ghattas, Basel Giacaman, Rita Gidron, Benjamin Giv’at Haviva Gramsci, Antonio Gross, Ayeal Grossman, David
325
102 31-32, 225 117 38-39, 235 117 133 33-34, 43, 117 11, 12, 37, 225 198-200 37 111, 114-120, 121, 124-125, 140, 143, 181, 198, 233
66, 221 21, 26-27, 30 53, 58, 85, 91 118, 120-122, 181-182 36 62-62 125, 209, 211213 16, 19, 23-24, 190, 222, 225, 236 66 14, 159
Index
326
Gujanski, Tamar Guri, Hamutal Gurr, Ted Habermas, Jürgen Habib, Shafiq Habibi, Emil Halabi, Rabah Hall-Cathala, David Hamas Hammami, Rema Hawatmeh, Naif Helfen Muslim Hermann, Tamar Herzog, Hanna High Court of Justice High FollowUp Committee for Arab Affairs Hijab, Nadia Hiltermann, Joost Histadrut Hofnung, Menahem Holyland Foundation Horowitz, Donald Hulme, David
153 73 40 38-40 94 49 214-215 210 107, 123 104-105 165
Hundell, Tom I’lam Ibrahim, Nazim Ibrahim, Saad Eddin Interchurch Organisation for Development Co-operation (ICCO) Interpal Intifada (19871993)
123 11, 189 137, 197, 200 172, 198, 219 See also: Supreme Court 101-107, 12788-90, 92-93, 110, 112-114, 133, 142-143, 163, 163, 179 2, 13, 87, 145 104 48-49, 56, 63, 88, 192-193 68, 72 123 25, 225 36
Islamic Jihad Islamic movement in Israel (alHaraqa alIslamiyya fi Iisrail) Islamic Relief Committee, the Israel Land Administration Israeli Centre for Third Sector Research Ittijah Jabareen, Hassan Jaffa Research Centre
106 96, 133 121 33 82, 117, 118, 119
123 9, 91-94, 95, 104, 107, 112, 123, 134, 145, 163, 195-196, 198, 200, 208, 229 107 12-13, 58-61, 80, 96, 101102, 108, 118, 123, 143, 144, 146, 157-162, 184, 228 123, 142 131 13, 44, 63, 75, 77, 78, 85 95, 118, 130, 198, 206 124-130, 220 13, 76, 80, 81, 82, 154
Palestinian NGOs in Israel
Jamison, Andrew Jewish Agency Jewish National Fund Jewish NGOs
Jewish-Arab Centre for Economic Development Jubran, Salem Ka’adan, ‘Adel and Iman Kabub, Khaled Kafr Bara Kafr Qassem Association for Informal Education Kafr Qassem Massacre, 1956 Kan’aneh, Hatem Kardoush, Mansour Karlin, Dorit Kashu, Sayed Katz, Ofir Katzir Kaufman, Michael Keane, John
38-39, 235 116, 131-132, 173 48, 116 57, 75-76, 78, 99-101, 130, 144, 164, 167, 180, 200, 235236 180, 201
125 131-132, 221 151-152 223
Khalidi, Rashid Kimmerling, Baruch Kol Akher Bagalil (Another Voice in Galilee) Kol Ha’am Judgement Kook, Rebecca Korten, David Kremmer, Sarah Kretzmer, David Labour Party
Lahav, Pnina Land Day
51 115-116, 118119, 121 92, 134 207-208 216-217 72 131-133, 219220 26, 43, 185 22
Law of associations
327
49 85 219
65-66 52 8, 27, 79 201 65 57-58, 63, 94, 152, 162, 179, 192, 193, 196, 201, 230 66 6, 7-8, 58, 8788, 92-93, 112, 148, 175, 228, 234 1, 9, 60, 68-74, 75, 78, 84, 101, 111, 139, 145, 157, 184, 228, 232, 234, 235
Index
328
League for the Arabs of Jaffa, the (al-Rabita Min Ajli ‘Arab Yafa) Levental, Alex Levin, Amiram Lewin-Epstein, Noah Likud Lustick, Ian Madrid Peace Conference of 1991 Mahamid, Fathi Mahamid, Hashem Makhul, Ameer Mandatory Defence (Emergency) Regulations Mapai Mapam Mar’i, Mariam Mar’i, Sami Markovitch Committee Mash’ur, Lutfi Matzpen McCarthy, Thomas Mi’ari, Suheil Midreshet
145, 147-154, 233
Adam Migdal, Joel Military Government
122 123 56
Ministry of Education
57, 68, 70, 94, 104 50, 86, 113, 116 94, 195-196
Ministry of Health Minns, Amina Morris, Aldon Mossawa
56, 84 195, 200
Nachmias, Nitza Nakhleh, Khalil National Committee for Defence of Arab Lands National Committee of Heads of Arab Councils, the (NCALC) National Democratic Alliance, the (Balad) NeveShalom/Wahat al-Salam New Israel Fund (NIF)
83, 84 215-216
Norton, Richard
219-220 94 142, 153, 198 7, 46, 49, 50, 52, 54, 65, 6768, 69, 102, 115, 123-124, 143, 172, 192, 200, 218 57, 191 51, 173, 175, 193, 195, 211 155-157, 208 155 170
24, 64 6, 7, 47, 50-52, 55, 58, 68, 103, 104, 151, 193194, 237 55, 100, 122, 157, 162, 209211, 236 115, 121, 172, 181-182, 322 2, 13, 87, 145 40, 95 72, 96-97, 111, 133, 141, 206 100 13, 14, 48, 8384, 90, 160 5, 87, 113
8, 75, 87-90, 108, 110, 112114, 129, 142, 163, 234 128
209, 213-214, 217, 233 72, 84, 117118, 124, 126, 152, 163, 176, 183, 204, 208 22, 28, 29, 30
Palestinian NGOs in Israel
October 2000 Events
Or Commission of Inquiry into the October 2000 Events Oslo Peace Process
Ozacki-Lazar, Sarah Palmon, Yehoshua Pappe, Ilan Peri, Ya’akov Petras, James PLO
Prevention of Terrorism Ordinance 1948
Qul al-Arab Rabin, Yitzhak Rabinowitz, Dan
3, 10, 16, 9599, 129-130, 153, 180, 183, 189=190, 218222, 228, 230, 237 10, 97, 129, 220
9, 18, 26, 29, 83, 94-95, 105107, 125, 150, 189, 190, 195196, 222, 229230 91, 212-213 51 50, 237 74-75 37, 237 3, 9, 60, 68, 70, 83, 89, 93, 103, 135, 148, 150, 166, 195, 196, 210, 229 68, 70, 146, 167, 184, 186, 231; and the campaign against the amendment to the Ordinance 163-164 56 88, 222 14-15, 92, 101
329
Regional Council of the Unrecognised Arab-Bedouin Villages in the Negev, the
177-180, 183
Rekhess, Elie Rhodes, Harry Rodinson, Maxime Roha Lands Rosenhak, Zeev Rouhana, Nadim Rubinstein, Amnon Rubinstein, Elyakim Saban, Ilan Sabra and Shatila massacre Salah, Raed
91 202 52-53
Sarraj, Iyad Sarsur, Ibrahim Sawt al-‘Amel (“The Voice of the Worker”) Schillinger, Hubert Schrire, Robert Seligman, Adam Semyonov, Moshe Shammas, Anton
97-98 63-64 52, 91 72 126 65 8, 88, 127, 228 58, 60, 98, 102, 158 105 60 11, 146, 164, 165-167 41 42 26-27, 61 56 14
Index
330
Shaqer, Nakhleh Shaqer, Nasim Shatil Shemer, Rahamim Shin Bet (Israel’s general security services) Shohat, Ella Silber, Ilana Silberstein, Laurence Smith, Brian Smooha, Sammy Soffer, Arnon South Africa Stroschein, Sherill Stubbs, Paul
148-150 149, 150-152 72-73, 84, 118, 163, 183, 205208 159 74-75, 149, 163, 236
7, 53 63-64 63 35 25, 52, 91 91 25, 41-43, 44, 130, 196, 227 32-33 32, 37
Summani, Raji Supreme Court See also: High Court of Justice Tamari, Salim Tamir, Shmuel Tarif, Salah Technion – Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa Toledano, Shmuel Toma, Emil Truman Doctrine United Arab List (Ra’am) United Nations Van-Leer Foundation Waltzer, Michael Waqf Waterbury, John Welfare Association (called in Arabic Ta’awun) Wolfson Community Centre Workers
105 9, 48, 65-67, 69, 71, 94, 127, 130, 132-133, 139, 141, 166, 179, 182, 221222, 232, 234 103 70 58 122
75, 88 49 31 60, 121, 128, 158 10, 31, 34, 38, 95, 105, 130, 185, 196 201, 209 22 49, 150, 151, 160 29 82-84, 90, 116, 149, 152, 156, 179 201-202, 223 165
Palestinian NGOs in Israel
Advice Centre, the (WAC, Ma’an in Hebrew) Working Group on the Status of Palestinian Women in Israel (WG) Yiftachel, Oren Yishai, Yael Zeidan, Muhammad Zeidan, Samar Zonenshein,
Zureik, Elia Zureik, Raef 136-137, 139
52, 87 17, 61-62, 235 92, 134 119, 140 215
331
54 126-127, 134
