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News from Within Vol. XXII No. 5   May 2006

Hamas: The Man in the Middle
  

a publication of
The Alternative Information Center

Letter from the Editors:
External Pressures, Internal Tensions

On 23 May, one day before Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s speech to the US Congress, the US House of Representatives passed the draconian “Palestinian Anti-Terrorism Act of 2006” (H.R. 4681), by a vote of 361-37. If passed into law, this bill, introduced in February by Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), would severely limit assistance to both the Palestinian Authority (PA) and NGOs working in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The only exception the bill makes, is for “assistance to meet basic human health needs [including] the provision of food, water, medicine, sanitation services, or other assistance to directly meet basic human health needs.” In addition, the bill calls for the US government to withhold the portion of its annual dues to the United Nations that are earmarked for committees focusing on the Palestinian human rights situation, and prohibits the PA or PLO from having representation in the US, including the PLO information office in Washington and the Palestinian Permanent Observer Mission to the UN. Moreover, by demanding that the Hamas and Palestinian Authority explicitly recognize Israel’s “right to exist as a Jewish state,” the bill goes far beyond what was required of Egypt, the PLO or Jordan in order to establish diplomatic relations. In those cases, the requirement was to “recognize Israel” or “recognize Israel’s right to exist” (“Comparison of Proposed Palestinian Sanctions Legislation,” Lara Friedman).

The major exception to these efforts to ostracize PA officials is President Mahmoud Abbas and his allies. The US congressional bill authorizes the transfer of assistance funds “to the Office of the President of the Palestinian Authority for non-security expenses,” and, on 25 May, the Israeli government authorized an arms transfer to Palestinian security forces close to President Abbas.

These intrigues are indicative of a situation that has existed since the results of the PLC elections at the end of January put Hamas in office and terminated the longstanding Fatah rule of the PA. Despite all the talks between the Hamas and Fatah leadership, and Fatah’s post-election promises to allow Hamas the opportunity to freely carry out their elected administration of the PA, there has been maneuvering both from within and outside of Palestine to isolate and incapacitate the regime.

In addition, at the same time that Israel and the US are increasing the pressure on the PA, the Israeli government has been entrenching its control over the Occupied Palestinian Territories, including a recent authorization by Defense Minister Amir Peretz of extensive expansions in four settlements. These and additional tensions, including the international economic sanctions against the Palestinian people, extrajudicial killings, the ongoing occupation and attempts to bypass the elected Palestinian government, have been pushing the situation in Palestine towards economic and social crisis. Both Israeli and international sanctions have led to a three month suspension in payment of the salaries of 165,000 workers employed by the PA. This has resulted in a spike in poverty; according to the United Nations World Food Program, “poverty has tripled, leaving an estimated 47-55 percent of Palestinians poor and a further 16-22 percent extremely poor.” In addition, WFP holds that “37 percent of Palestinians are food-insecure, with an additional 27 percent at risk of hunger; food insecurity is highest in the Gaza Strip” (WFP, February 2006). And, according to a more recent WFP report “Food security has deteriorated significantly over the past weeks and a grave humanitarian crisis is unfolding” (WFP, 12 May 2006). In response to the situation, we have seen growing protests by Palestinian government workers, demanding that salaries be paid; according to Bassam Zakarneh, head of the Fatah affi liated Palestinian Authority Employees Union, the PA requires “about $160 million a month to cover the public payroll and government operating costs.” (Associated Press, 30 May 2006).

Furthermore, following the placement by Hamas of 3000 police in Gaza, clashes between Hamas and Fatah reached the level of military confrontation, leaving more than nine people dead, and many more wounded. Likewise, the demonstrations and counter-demonstrations, with the active mobilization of the Palestinian citizenry, have increased social tensions.

In an effort to reduce tensions between the various Palestinian movements, ten days of intensive talks began in Ramallah on 25 May. However, during the first day of these talks, held in the office of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, the president chose to up the ante and present Hamas with an ultimatum. Unless Hamas and Abbas came to an agreement within ten days, on a common platform that includes tacit acceptance of a two- state solution, the president announced he would submit a proposal to a Palestinian national referendum in mid-July. This proposal—an 18-point plan—was recently negotiated by senior members of the leading Palestinian factions currently being held in prison by Israel.

While Hamas has redeployed the 3000 police from the streets of Gaza as a conciliatory gesture to reduce tensions, they have rejected this ultimatum and the possibility of increased internal confl ict is very real.

At a time when Israeli unilateral actions and international pressure on the PA are particularly damaging, the intra- Palestinian conflict and heightening of tensions among the population is counterproductive. There is a great need for a resolution to this internal conflict in order to effectively promote the inalienable political, economic and humanitarian rights of the Palestinian people, and to tap into the growing grassroots international support for sanctions against Israeli policies.

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THE PALESTINIANS AND THE ECONOMIC EMBARGO:
POLITICAL OVERTHROW OF DEMOCRACY

by Nassar Ibrahim

When the Palestinians agreed to participate in the January 2006 Legislative Council elections, it was an expression of their determination to fulfill their dreams for change. It was also a reaction to the internal problems and contradictions with which the Palestinians live. Moreover, it reflected their desire and determination to endorse the democratic process and abide by its principles, represented in the freedom of choice, as well as in endorsing the principle of a peaceful transfer of power within Palestinian society.

In addition, the Palestinians wanted to convey a strong political message to various parties. The gist of this message was that as a people, as much as we are prepared to establish a just, permanent and comprehensive peace, we are also prepared to resist and remain steadfast, rejecting any political project that does not meet the minimum interests of the Palestinians and their national rights.

However, it seems the influential and active parties involved did not want to realize or comprehend these truths. Hence, the way in which the situation was dealt with, vis-à-vis the elections results, indicates that the situation today is moving towards a new level of crisis. This has created a deepening atmosphere of frustration, desperation and loss of confidence among the Palestinian people—tangible by way of several indicators and through the behaviors of the various political parties.

Internally, following the Palestinian elections, and after authority was handed over to Hamas in a democratic and processional manner, and following the exhaustion of internal discussions regarding the formation of a Palestinian government, the situation has returned to a state of crisis. The built-up pressures and friction between Hamas and Fatah have now reached the point of direct confrontation in the streets—particularly in the Gaza Strip.

This indicates a potentially explosive situation given, in particular, the lack of acceptance of the democratic results by Fatah, which continues to put pressure on the Hamas government. This is clear in the dispute over authorities between the presidency, headed by Mahmoud Abbas and the PA government, headed by the Hamas. President Abbas has made a number of decisions that strip the Hamas government of key authorities, transferring them to the presidency.

This political behavior provided an opportunity for the eruption of existing disagreements. The government, led by Hamas, interpreted the President’s moves as an attempt to overthrow it; efforts which, in the words of Hamas politburo chief Khaled Mashal, are in synch with the Israeli-US pressures and the siege aimed at bringing down the Palestinian government. This is something Hamas says it will not succumb to or accept.

In truth, the conflict between the presidency and the government is somewhat similar to the conflict that rose between late President Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas when he was Prime Minister.

However, during that period, American, Israeli and European pressures were aimed at stripping President Abbas of his authority, especially at the levels of security and finance, and transferring power to the government as a way of isolating Arafat, who they considered an obstacle, and no longer a partner, to peace, “the American way.”

Today, the tables have been turned. Pressures are now being applied with the aim of stripping the Palestinian government of its authority—under the pretence that it is led by Hamas who cannot be considered a partner—in order to transfer it to the presidency.

Hence, in both instances, the motive was not to create a balance between the presidency and the government in a way that would serve to promote the democratic process and end any individual domination by creating harmony and integration between the two institutions. Rather, the goal behind these actions was clearly to bring down the political expectations of the Palestinian people, with the intention that they would become more receptive to Israeli security and political considerations.

There is a real danger that the continuation of this political behavior could escalate the internal Palestinian conflict, leading the Palestinians towards an abyss of internal feuds.

In Israel, the political and security behavior shows that the current government, now under the rule of Ehud Olmert, has not taken one moment to reconsider the experience from years of ongoing and bloody confrontations since the start of the Aqsa Intifada in 2000, in order to learn from its outcomes and lessons.

The wager is still on, over the culture of coercion and its peculiar logic, which insists on resolving the conflict by force. More accurately, the wager is on the necessity to defeat the Palestinians, make them submissive in terms of security and bring them to their knees politically. In the Hamas victory, Israel found an opportunity to escalate their war and feed this culture of force through ongoing military campaigns, incursions into Palestinian cities, assassination of activists and political and economic embargoes. This is in addition to the continuing construction of the Segregation Wall, and the closing of any window of opportunity for resumption of the political process.

Hence, Israel’s strategy at this stage is based on enforcing facts on the ground, which only plants more mines in a field already filled with them. All of this paves the way for new rounds of even bloodier violence and tragedies for the Palestinian and Israeli peoples.

The American government has been in synch with Israel’s policies and has acted in support of Israel’s actions. Following the election results, which were in contradiction to the White House’s desires, the US began banging the drum of threats and pressure, declaring an economic and political siege on the Hamas government. This secured a cover and the conciliatory atmosphere for Israel’s aggressive actions, which came in tandem with pressure from Europe and the Arab regimes to adhere to the US position.

It was not long before Europe actively joined in this crazy orchestra and decided to freeze economic aid to the Palestinian people.

What is unfortunate about this orchestra’s tune is that while it rings with democracy and human rights, it endorses its position with ludicrous explanations, in which the freeze on aid is said not to be directed at the Palestinian people, but at the Hamas government.

However, don’t the Europeans and Americans realize that the Hamas government is now responsible for the education, health, transportation and services ministries? That is, it is responsible for the administration of the affairs of Palestinian society. So, how can they punish and isolate Hamas without punishing and isolating the Palestinian people?

The declaration of war and boycott began even before Hamas started to put its own house in order, without waiting to see what point of view it would espouse or the changes it may make after finding itself at the helm of the Palestinian Authority.

To justify this, conditions were set, which Hamas was expected to succumb to:

• Recognition of Israel
• Acknowledgement of agreements signed by the PA
• Dissolution of its military wings

Even more interesting is the fact that the Arab states joined in this American campaign as well, applying pressure on the Hamas government by demanding that it recognize the “Arab Peace Initiative” ratified at the Arab Summit in Beirut in 2003, even though Israel refused the initiative at the time and continues to reject it to this day.

All of this unfolds as Israel continues its aggression against the Palestinians and also its rejection and evasion of most international resolutions on the conflict. And still, no one dares to put the blame Israel or criticize its actions. The problem, apparently, is not in the occupation but in the people under occupation.

In any case, these are ramifications of the current political scene which have confused the Palestinians, who at one point believed all the talk about the importance of democracy and the necessity to carry out elections in its name.

The Palestinians accepted this “democracy song” and accepted to sing to its tune, only to find themselves paying a high price in terms of their security, rights and living standards.

Hence, the definition of democracy in this case is imposed from outside, and it is only deemed acceptable if it complies with the standards and conditions placed by Israel.

This dangerous political and moral conduct of various parties will have negative, if not catastrophic, ramifications on the Palestinian people and the entire region.

The pressures and isolation, and the continued assault on the Palestinians because of their democratic choice, will result in a loss of confidence by the Palestinian people in any calls for or talk about democracy. And it is democracy and its values which will directly pay the price. Furthermore, these foolish policies will open the door for any political or social party that does not like the results of a particular democratic election to turn against it, overthrow it and undermine it. Why is this allowed for certain parties and not for others? At this point, the question is, where are things heading?

The American-Israeli alliance and the European forces that support the logic of punitive measures, siege and freezing of aid, may be able to bring down the Hamas government. But what then? A new government or Authority will emerge that will be applauded by this alliance, which will consider it rational and peace-supporting. However, the Palestinian people will consider it an appointed authority, created under American and Israeli pressures.

Furthermore, until this moment, Hamas has been trying its best to control the internal disagreements. That is why its political rhetoric has focused on national unity and dialogue and not resorting to violence as a way of dealing with these contradictions.

However, if Hamas is pushed up against a wall, as a way of bringing it down through isolation and siege, it will regard this process as a coup, to which it may relinquish authority. However, afterwards, it will be free of any political or moral commitment to whoever comes after it. Basically, it will espouse the saying “an eye for any eye, a tooth for a tooth.”

If Hamas doesn’t get its chance, it will try its best not to give the same chance to anyone else. And the first and final loser in this case will be the Palestinians and their democratic experience.

In light of these facts and ramifications, we hope certain parties will regain their balance and that all will shoulder their political and human responsibilities in the face of these conflicts within Palestinian society and within the wider Palestinian- Israeli conflict.

Wisdom in a time of madness is a necessity; otherwise, there is no way of knowing when or where the crises will explode. I am saying this not in defense of Hamas or its political platform and choices, but in defense of the Palestinians’ democratic choice. In the end, democracy has the ability to rectify itself—but only if it is given a democratic chance to do so.

Therefore, if, in the midst of this craziness— whether that of power or of economic pressure—we allow a little space for rationality and calm, perhaps this will open a window of hope for the Palestinians, who have grown accustomed to siege, death and resistance. Perhaps this will also restore some of their faith and conviction in the importance of democracy as a value, principle, pattern of behavior, and a conscious social and political choice.

Nassar Ibrahim is a Palestinian writer and journalist. He is also the editor of the Arabic quarterly journal Rouy’ya Ukhra, published by the AIC.

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THE OCCUPATION DOESN’T STOP AT THE CHECKPOINT

by Yehouda Shenhav

I. The New Israeli Left

The new Israeli Left—Zionist and liberal—reinvented itself immediately following the 1967 war.¹ During the 1948 war and its aftermath, the Zionist Left had difficulty in working out the contradiction between its socialist obligations to social and political justice, and being an inseparable part of the Zionist national occupation of Palestinian lands, upon which the new state of Israel was established. The occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 1967, provided, first and foremost, a partial solution to this schizophrenia. With the opening of new expanses over the Green Line, the Zionist Left gained some breathing room and could now elegantly separate the “here” from the “there,” to create for itself an identity and new agenda which separated the “external” (outside the 1967 borders) from the “internal” (within the 1967 borders). The first deals with Palestinians in the occupied territories in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The second deals with the different groups within the jurisdiction of the state of Israel, mainly with Mizrahi Jews and Palestinian citizens of Israel. “There,” the definitions are based on nationality; “here,” they are based on social class (including Israeli Palestinians). Thus, the Left created and instituted two political discourses, which supposedly do not meet. The fact that the two establish themselves as separate discourses prevents us from seeing how they create each other, and how the distinction between them actually erases three important facts. First, that the bifurcation between there (the occupied territories in the West Bank and Gaza Strip) and here (normal society) is artificial and false. Second, and not without any connection to the previous fact, that the occupation regime does not stop at the checkpoint nor at the Green Line. It is woven into the internal fabric of society in Israel, at all levels and is created within it. Third, that the Israeli occupation regime is directed not only outward but also inward, into the society in Israel.

II. The Israeli Border Regime

Israel has never recognized clear-cut external boundaries. It has never reconciled itself to ceasefire borders. The border served as a one-way valve. It was meant to seal movement from “there” to “here,” but all the while allowing free movement from “here” to “there.” In other words, it was meant to hermetically stop the movement of “infiltrators” in the 1950s, those that came to visit their assets, which were confiscated by the absentee landlord law (any property owner who left Israel between 29 November 1947 and 1 September 1948 and went to an enemy country). But a sealed border does not prevent Israelis from crossing the border. After all, how could we conduct retaliation operations and revenge? How could we hike to exotic and desirable places like the ancient city of Petra in Jordan? It is customary here to say that the long arm of the security forces would catch up with them anywhere. These border crossings were always the object of desire for “the best of our boys,” many of whom were sons of the cooperative settlement movement (the moshavim and kibbutzim), the cradle of the Zionist Left. The border not only served as a one-way valve or thin line. It became a site, a space of its own. It is enough to take notice of the cultural terms used to define this space: “no man’s land,” “the frontier,” “the border zone.”³ After it became clear to the Left that the occupation did not pay off for the Jews (corruption of the youth, the demographic phantom) the Green Line became a symbolic Maginot Line (“with some changes in the border”). The Green Line became a fetish.

III. Fetishism of the Green Line

The fetishism of the Green Line has a dialectical dynamics. It purifies the occupation, reorganizes and elevates it to channels that deny the intensity and injustices of the Israeli occupation machinery. This fetishism allows the artificial separation between the “good guys” and the “bad guys”; it creates a moral indifference and hides the fact that the Israeli colonial occupation is found everywhere, not only over the Green Line. I will give two examples for the political and ethical mistakes which this approach creates. The first one exemplifies how the ethical indifference of Israeli sociologists reproduces the fetish of the Green Line. The second one exemplifies how the symbolism of the Green Line effaces the fact that the occupation regime is turned inward, to within Israeli society as a whole.

IV. Ethics and the Neutrality of Sociologists

In the summer of 2004, Michael Burawoy, then President of the American Sociological Association, asked to me to deliver a lecture about public sociology in Israel and Palestine at the annual conference of the association in San Francisco. Burawoy is a radical sociologist from Berkeley, an exceptional personality in American sociology. Burawoy invited 25 critical sociologists from all over the world, with the overt purpose to “return American sociology to its natural greatness, provincialize it,” and thus recognize its particularity. With pleasure, I agreed to his request. For years it has bothered me that Israeli sociology has clearly been a subcontractor of American apolitical research paradigms, and that there is very little similarity between these paradigms and the context we live in.⁴ The uncritical import of American research paradigms for understanding Israeli society is an institutionalized phenomenon with problems that should be seriously assessed. Because academic promotion of Israeli sociologists is dependent on publication in international journals, most research is written in English for American sociologists. Very often, the price they pay for seeking “universality” is either researching societies other than one’s own or downplaying the specificities of local politics when they do research on Israel. In preparing my lecture at the conference, I checked how sociologists in Israel react to so central an issue as the occupation and its injustices. You will not be surprised that, like many social scientists, Israeli sociologists rarely research the occupation, and refrain from taking a position on ethical questions with the disclaimer of academic neutrality. That’s how sociology established itself from the beginning. The German sociologist Max Weber once wrote that one has to distinguish between science and politics. Weber really meant to defend science from politics, but perhaps he also wanted to defend ethics and politics from the technocracy of scientists. I wonder if following upon Weber it is possible to ask to defend ethics from the violent neutrality of social scientists. For our purpose, I want to show that the fetishism of the Green Line is central in the formation of a neutral and apolitical consciousness of social scientists in Israel.

V. Moral Indifference

In 2004, within the five largest universities in Israel, there were some 133 sociologists; two of them are Palestinians, 14 are Mizrahi Jews. All the rest, 117 sociologists, are Ashkenazi Jews (only 34 of them are women). Between 2002 and 2004, among the 133 sociologists, how many took a moral stand against the occupation? Eight only, which is about six percent of the sociologists (the same ratio is found among historians; and nine percent among philosophers). How many of them belong to protest movements? Six only, that is four percent of the sociologists. How many signed two different petitions in those two years? Seven persons only; about five percent of the sociologists. But what is more worrisome is the fact that in the current political reality, the occupation has never become a real paradigm in the Israeli academe. Only one sociologist, Yuval Yonay, teaches a course on the occupation; only six sociologists research the occupation in any direct manner. In the early 1990s Baruch Kimmerling (and here one can add Oren Yiftachel) broadened the category of “Israeli society” to include the territories beyond the Green Line, but without much success.⁵ In most sociological scholarship, Israeli society is imagined as within the Green Line (Israel’s pre-1967 borders). They see the occupation as a temporary phenomenon, like an accident in the political history of Israel, and not an integral part of the social and political fabric of Israel. Why? Are the territories, which have been occupied for most of Israel’s history, really another planet? Is what is happening there separate from what is happening here? The answer is No with a capital N. This liberal blindness is anchored in a fetishism of the Green Line by the Israeli Left.

VI. No Good Guys, No Bad Guys

The distinction between good guys, the liberal Left within the Green Line, and the bad guys, paramilitary groups in the settlements over there, is artifi cial. True, many of the settlers are land robbers. But let not the Left use this in order to massage their conscience as was done following Rabin’s assassination.⁶ Yossi Sarid, the former left-wing Meretz Party leader, for example, formulated the connection between Hebron and Jerusalem as one between two different countries: The State of Judea and the State of Israel.⁷ Are they really two countries? If that were the case, who is providing the settlers with the economic and physical infrastructure? Who is providing them with the infrastructures for water, sewerage, electricity and telephone lines? Who is providing them with health services and education? What is the role of organizations such as the Histadrut (Israel’s General Federation of Labor), the Jewish National Fund, the Jewish Agency and the United Jewish Appeal as secondary contractors administering the occupation? How many thousands of dunam did the Board of Trustees of the Jewish National Fund acquire in areas “of strategic value” in the West Bank?⁸ How is it that we have an independent Council for Higher Education for institutions of higher learning in the occupied territories? Who teaches the soldiers of the occupation, or the settlers and their children in universities in Israel? Who supplies the legal infrastructure for the destruction of tens of thousands of Palestinian homes since 1967? Who builds and paves the roads that crosscut the West Bank? Who drives on the new bypass “apartheid” road 443 from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, and back? Who speaks about the settlers as “our brothers”? And I haven’t mentioned the soldiers, who come from good homes in Tel-Aviv, or the security inspectors who implement racist practices of the country at the airport, the demographers who make a career out of counting the heads of Arabs, or the correspondents of the occupation, the majority of whom claim to be liberals. The settlements are not a spontaneous and random project of a few eccentric people. There is here state planning into which Messianism has been inserted, and not the contrary.

VII. A Good German is a Dead German

In 1945, Hannah Arendt wrote, “A good German is a dead German”—an expression common in Germany during the war. In racist Israel the expression has been pegged onto the Arabs, but its meaning distorted. Hannah Arendt wanted to explain that in Nazi Germany the distinction between good and bad people was not possible, just as Adenauer’s “zero hour” was problematic. Arendt asked how it is possible that millions of Germans became overnight “normal” because of a political decision. How is it that millions of Germans were cleansed of guilt in the eyes of Israelis and only the Palestinian Mufti remained a Nazi in the historiographic consciousness? In the Germany of 1945, an expression circulated that only a German found hung on a tree was a good German precisely because the Nazis had hung him. And what about the rest of the Germans? It is not clear. Here, in Israel, thank God, they have yet to hang any opponent of the regime, but there is no need. The occupation is an integral part of the society in Israel, not a foreign implant. It is enough to observe how the government planners of the disengagement from the Gaza Strip threatened the settlers that the country and the corporations “will turn off the faucets”—that is, the health clinics, the bank branches, the gasoline companies, electricity and schools.⁹ Israeli society is both the source and outcome of the occupation.

VIII. Old-Fashioned Values

Not many in Israel noticed that the settlers from Gush Katif (a bloc of 16 Israeli settlements which was situated in the southern Gaza Strip) who struggled against the evacuation, received, not unexpectedly, reinforcement from the “salt of the earth,” the veteran workers’ settlement movement. At Moshav Nahalal in the Galilee, about 400 people (once erstwhile settlers) from this movement announced the establishment of a headquarters to struggle against the evacuation. One of the organizers of this initiative, hailing from Moshav Moledet, said: “Gush Katif arose from the cooperative settlement movement of the moshavim and kibbutzim. It founded the Labor Party. We know what it means to establish a settlement and hold onto the Land of Israel.” The coordinator of Kibbutz Hamadia added: “We want to signal to the government that it is still possible to believe in old-fashioned values.”¹⁰ But for the present moment, as historian Idit Zertal and journalist Akiva Eldar show in their book The Masters of the Land: the Settlers and the State of Israel 1967–2004, the settlers in the occupied territories are doing the dirty work directly. And the filth which the settlers are carrying out under state patronage is anchored deeply in the political theology of the workers’ movement.

IX. The Zionist Border Regime

It is possible to distinguish between two types of border regimes. One is the neoliberal border regime which is based on lowering economic borders (easing the entry of capital and cheap labor) while raising the political borders (making more difficult granting rights). Migrant workers are a classic example. Only rarely will they obtain political rights. These borders find expression in administering not only Israeli citizenship, but also additional spheres, like the Jewish body and racial purity. Last year it came to our notice that Chinese migrant workers had signed a contract which forbids them from having sexual relations with Jewish women. The second border regime is based on blurring the external political borders while raising the internal borders—be they national, economic, status, or ethnic. This border regime can be called a global colonial one. Israel answers to both models of border regimes. Why does this occur? The reason is simple: the distinction between “external” and “internal” in Israel is artificial.¹¹ Rejection of internal borders would almost collapse the Israeli regime. The internal borders are means to stop the collapse of Zionism within the space within which it lives.

X. External Borders Melt, Internal Borders Harden

The more the external boundaries dissolve and become blurred (“The Separation Fence,” “The West Bank Barrier” or “The Wall,” “The Philadelphia Route” on the border between Gaza and Egypt, “disengagement,” “withdrawal,” and “reinforcement”), the internal boundaries between social classes and ethnic groups harden. We deduced this when we examine the feudal regime of privileges that administers Israeli territory. Within the Green Line, not one new Palestinian settlement has been built since 1948; many communities remain legally unrecognized. Between 1995 and 2001, only 0.25 percent of state lands were transferred for Arab use. The amount of land under Arab ownership ranges between 2.5 and 3.5 percent of all the land in the country.¹² Palestinian citizens of Israel have no access to land, to the Civil Administration’s Planning Department, Israel Lands Authority (the holding company for most of the land in the country), or para-state Zionist organizations that administer lands on a racist basis, such as the Jewish National Fund and the Jewish Agency. The distribution of land in the Galilee shows the ethnic distortion within Jewish society as well as between Jews and Arabs. Sixty-three percent of the land in the Galilee is under the jurisdiction of regional councils, the majority being Ashkenazi Jews (of European origins), who make up six percent of the population. In contrast, 21 percent of the land is under the jurisdiction of local municipalities, the majority being the Mizrahi Jews (originally hailing from the Muslim world). Land under the jurisdiction of local Arab municipalities comes to only 16 percent, while the Arab population makes up 72 percent of the total population of the Galilee. Recently, we are witnessing a significant increase in “border disputes” within the country.¹³ There are not only political conflicts on land resources; they denote the glaring distortion upon which the Zionist ideology is based—expansion by appointing its typical representatives (regional councils) in order to hold on to assets, and prevention of the expansion of “others,” mostly Palestinians but also Mizrahi Jews.

XI. Internal Borders

The distorted spatial distribution fi nds expression in the allocation of lands between the regional councils and the local authorities, in accordance with their taxation potential. While more than 70 percent of the country’s population lives in urban areas, the regional councils—the Jewish Ashkenazi feudal aristocracy of the Israeli republic—control about 80 percent of the country’s land, not only agricultural areas but also industrial areas housing many industries with high taxation potential. ¹⁴ The regional councils maintain an almost total control over land reserves in Israel and the territories with the highest tax potential. The Tamar Regional Council, for example, has an inhabitant/ land reserves ratio of 1:1000 in comparison with the development town of Dimona. It is a good idea to read once more this data. For every kilometer of land for a resident of Dimona, the resident of the Tamar Regional Council has 1000 kilometers. Moreover, all that yields money is within the jurisdiction of the Tamar Regional Council: the nuclear reactor near Dimona, the Dead Sea Works, the hotels along the Dead Sea shore, gasoline stations. It would be enough if some of these were transferred to Dimona in order that the development town would no longer be dependent on the state. Such is the situation in many development towns and Palestinian settlements. This spatial control, which is constituted by political, economic, and cultural control, amazingly agrees with the internal grammar of the Zionist border regime. This is also called internal colonialism, that is to say, control over space through ethnic and racist segregation.

XII. Building the Wall

The main purpose of the Wall which Israel is building in the West Bank is not to protect Israeli civilians from terrorist attacks. The Wall is clearly political, and the international community easily recognized this. It is a wall whose purpose is to annex occupied lands. It is a wall that creates expulsion (population “transfer”) of Palestinians trapped between the Green Line and the route of the barrier. It is a barrier which upsets any possibility of creating territorial continuity for areas under Palestinian sovereignty. The Wall is not a border between two countries. It moves on its own and marks itself. We find similar walls within the Green Line, in Lod, Ramle and Jas’r el-Zarka. They allow physical segregation between Jews and Arabs in mixed cities. But most of all, the Wall expresses the internal colonialism in Israel.

XIII. Between State and Society

It is customary for us to distinguish between state and society and even to formulate a connection between them in different ways. Members of the leftist Meretz Party and the Peace Now Movement once proposed a superficial and limiting formulation: “Money for the Neighborhoods, Not for the Settlements.” This slogan is a false one: the monetary and fiscal policy in Israel is not related to the occupation, but is generated by the American neoliberal ideology, which exists independently. Dani Gutwein proposed another formulation, according to which the welfare state of Israel (if it ever existed) was moved from within the Green Line to the territories, for Jews only.¹⁵ There, the settlers receive all that is ascribed to the classic welfare state: full employment, subsidized housing, health, and subsidized education. The movement of (non-ideological) settlers to the territories stems from the inequality within the Green Line. The end of the occupation goes by the reduction of inequality among Jews within the Green Line. These two formulations (Peace Now’s version and Gutwein’s) are based on instituting the separation between state and society. What I am trying to say is that state and society are one and the same. What is customary to see as social, for example, changes in internal borders, is also political, because these are based on the same principles.

XIV. The Metaphysics of Inequality in Israel

In his well-known Discourse upon the Origin and the Foundation of the Inequality among Mankind, Rousseau wrote on the issue of boundaries. “The first man who, having fenced off a plot of land, thought of saying, ‘This is mine’ and found people simple enough to believe him was the real founder […] [of inequality]. How many crimes, wars, murders, how many miseries and horrors might the human race had been spared by the one who […] [had indicated this lie about fencing the fence].” Rousseau set out to secularize inequality, just as Marx did afterwards. They removed inequality from theology and metaphysics and situated it in society itself. This is also the case for changes in borders. If the existing municipal boundaries were eliminated and redefined, not according to the Zionist principles of occupation, then a large share of the inequality in Israel would disappear. But this is not going to happen so fast, because until then it will be explained away in a metaphysical manner. They will say that the poor don’t work; that they are poor because they have large families; they will grind out innumerable, unfounded economic truths, such as “a rise in the minimum wage produces unemployment”; and they will also quote the ultimate metaphysical argument “We admit that there were prejudices in the 1950s, but what do you want today? Why are the Mizrahi Jews unable to extricate themselves?” The prejudices were not only in the 1950s; they exist here and now, and the border regime is one central example. This regime reproduces the ethnic-national distortion here and there. It’s the same regime—an occupation regime directed inward against society in Israel.

XV. Total Struggle Against the occupation

The struggle against the occupation must be total. It must be an anti-colonial struggle that will connect between external colonialism and internal colonialism. It cannot separate issues of inequality from issues of political justice, or the opposite. It means boycotting companies that produce goods for perpetuating the occupation, such as those companies which produce goods while oppressing their workers in Israel or outside of it. It is a struggle which understands the occupation in its totality. Not a separation between here and there, not a separation between state and society, not a separation between politics and culture, but an outlook which sees the occupation as an inseparable part of the imperial history in the Middle East.

Yehouda Shenhav is a professor of sociology at Tel Aviv University and the editor of the journal Theory and Criticism (in Hebrew).

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Notes
¹ In this context, see Shenhav, Yehouda, 2001, “The Red Line of the Green Line,” in Ofi r, Adir (ed), Real-Time, Tel Aviv, pp. 205-210 (Hebrew).
² See the excellent study of Kemp, Adriana, 1997, Talking Boundaries: The Making of Political Territory in Israel 1949-1957, Ph.D. Thesis (Hebrew), Tel Aiv University.
³ See Eyal, Gil, 2006, The Disenchantment of the Orient: Expertise in Arab Affairs and the Israeli State, Stanford University Press, Stanford.
⁴ See Shenhav, Yehouda, 2000, “Does There Exist an Israeli Sociology,” Israeli Sociology, Vol. 4, 675-680 (Hebrew).
⁵ Baruch Kimmerling, 1992, “Sociology, Ideology, and Nation Building: The Palestinians and their Meaning in Israeli Sociology,” American Sociological Review, Vol. 57, 446-460.
⁶ In this context see Ariella Azoulay who challenges the ideological setup which imposes a choice between “the incitement thesis” of the political left and “the weeds thesis” of the political right. To Azoulay, this division disconnects the assassination of Rabin from the mechanisms producing violence in Israel society, common to left- and right-wing people, the religious and secular, Mizrahi and Ashkenazi Jews, men and women. These mechanisms do not break down the public into good guys and bad guys; they are not polarized between top-down supervision (one system) and an alert democracy (the other system). Azoulay, Ariella, 2000, “The Ghost of Yigal Amir,” Theory and Criticism, Vol. 17, 9-26 (Hebrew).
⁷ Sarid, Yossi, “Excuse Me, The Pain is Over,” Ha’aretz (Part 2) (Hebrew), 24 January 2005. For criticism, see Zertal, Idit, Eldar, Akiva, 2005, The Masters of the Land (Hebrew).
⁸ For example Barakat, Amiram, “Despite its Declarations, the Jewish National Fund Acquired Tens of Thousands of Dunams of Land in the Territories,” Ha’aretz (Hebrew), 14 February 2005, p. 5A.
⁹ Report from the adviser to the Primer Minister on closing the valves. See Harel, Amos, “On July 20 Electricity and Water Will Be Cut Off,” Ha’aretz (Hebrew), 22 February 2005, p. 4A.
¹⁰ Hassun, Nir, “Moshav and Kibbutz Members Established Headquarters against the Disengagement,” Ha’aretz (Hebrew), 15 February 2005, p. 4A.
¹¹ Lev Grinberg has written on the relationship between the inside and outside with reference to the concept of democracy. He is of the opinion that there is a connection between the absence of democracy in military rule over Palestinians in the occupied territories and the limitations of democracy within Israeli society proper. He also used the concepts “imagined democracy” and “imagined borders.” See his “Imagined Democracy in Israel,” Israeli Sociology (Hebrew), Vol. 2/1, 209-240.
¹² For detailed statistics, see Yiftachel, Oren, Kedar, Sandy, 2003, “On Power and Land: The Israeli Land Regime,” in Shenhav, Yehouda (ed), Space, Land, Home: The Origin of the Israeli Territorial Regime, Tel-Aviv (Hebrew), pp. 18-52.
¹³ Hakeshet Hademocratit (Mizrahi Democratic Rainbow), Nov. 2000, “Land and Social Justice: The Entrenchment of the Agricultural Rights in the Land Compared to the Rights of Public Housing Tenants,” Position Paper.
¹⁴ These statistics are based on Ravit Hananel’s research. She also prepared for the Hakeshet Hademocratit the working paper on “The Mizrahi Democratic Rainbow for Reforms in Amending Municipal Borders,” Tel Aviv, Nov. 2004.
¹⁵ Gutwein, Dani, 2004, “Notes on the Class Foundations of the Occupation,” Theory and Criticism, Vol. 24, 203-214 (Hebrew). See News from Within, Vol. XXII, No. 4, April 2006.

Welfare to Work in Israel— Policy of Disempowerment

by Rami Adut and Shir Hever

I. Background on the Welfare to Work (Wisconsin) Plan

In July 2005, Israel began the implementation of a Welfare to Work program, a two-year pilot program with an option for a year-long extension. The program is the first step in a radical shift in the Israeli labor market, and in the privatization of employment services. The program aims to encourage groups who are currently dependent on Income Support (the basic form of welfare in Israel) to find paid work and to stop collecting payments from the government. It is currently implemented in four locations: Hadera, Ashkelon, Nazereth and Jerusalem.

Severe cuts in welfare came into effect immediately preceding the implementation of th e Welfare to Work program, and at the same time total per-capita Income Support paid by the government fell by over 31 percent between 2001 and 2005. The implementation of the welfare to work reform adds insult to injury, by attacking an already impoverished and disempowered population.

The welfare cuts were challenged in the Supreme Court, under the claim that the reduced stipends do not allow people to sustain themselves with dignity. While the Supreme Court rejected the appeal, many studies support this claim.

Despite the low stipends offered, the income-support system was severely criticized by Israel’s neoliberals, and was dubbed inefficient, costly and an encouragement to long-term unemployment. Neoliberal economists and policymakers pushed for privatizing the government’s welfare system. However, in 1998 an inter- departmental government committee recommended that the system should not be privatized. Israel’s treasury, eager to make a move to reduce the “incentive for laziness,” rejected the committee’s recommendations and pushed forward with the privatization of the welfare services.

The program, labeled “Mehalev,”—the acronym for the program’s motto, which also means “from the heart”—is the Israeli version of the Welfare to Work programs that have been implemented in Europe and the US since the mid-nineties, usually through a private company which acts as a contractor for the state.

Among the various Welfare to Work programs, those implemented in the US are considered less sensitive to the needs of the poor than the European programs. Israel has chosen to adopt the most aggressive of the American models known as “Work First,” which focuses on eliminating people from the welfare lists as soon as possible. This makes Israeli welfare reform one of the harshest in the world.

In the ten years since the plan was first implemented in the US, a great deal of criticism has accumulated against the program. The main argument has been that the program is unfair and damaging to people who were already impoverished. So far, Israel seems to have learnt nothing from these experiences.

In Israel, a large-scale campaign was launched to win over public opinion for the plan. Radio broadcasts promoted the plan as a valuable tool for finding jobs for people, and the financial papers quoted officials promising that the plan will solve much of the unemployment problem in Israel. Due to massive public protest against the Welfare to Work program, however, the radio campaign was terminated.

Four companies won the tender to operate the program in the four cities selected for the pilot. Initially 14,000 people were slated for inclusion in the program, but the number rose to 18,000. The estimated annual budget of the program is US $54 million, more than twice the total of annual income support payments to those enrolled in the program. So far, the costs of the program have not been addressed in any form of public debate.

The 2003 Economic Policy law and several additional regulations mapped out the general outlines of the reform, the training and counseling that participants will receive, as well as their rights and duties. Some of these are posted on the program administration’s website. However, the companies have discretion over the particular practices they choose, which are documented only in the confidential contracts signed between the Israeli state and the contractors. Thus, with the companies’ insistence on protecting their “commercial secrets,” important information on their actual policies remains obscure.

Program Components

1. Workshops
Participants must attend a series of mandatory, daily workshops. Formally, participants are required to attend workshops for 30-40 hours every week, but it seems that the actual number of days and hours varies. The workshops are created and planned by the company’s instructors with the official aim of providing the participants with job-finding skills, work ethics and discipline. The workshops include lectures on the labor market and on proper attitudes for job seekers, as well as various exercises. The companies and the administration (part of the ministry of Industry, Trade and Labor) believe that enforcing a school-like discipline on participants is an important preparation for future jobs.

2. The Job Search
The most important function the program offers is that of the Occupational Advisor. The advisor, termed a “case manager,” has a much broader role than that of a government official in the Labor Bureau, who has only a few minutes to offer the job seeker. Advisors are meant to accompany participants throughout their job search; they are to adjust the work search, consider health limitations and make referrals to community service jobs (see below). The advisor is legally mandated to take all of the participant’s needs and wants into consideration, but has the right to cut the participant’s benefits as well. Advisors also register “refusals” and sanction participants who are deemed uncooperative. Their decisions are immediate and based on their personal judgment only.

3. Community Service
Community-service jobs are unpaid, limited positions in community centers, schools and other institutional work places such as the national forests and hospitals. The occupational advisor is required to send the participant to Community Service when the latter cannot find a regular paid job. The service position is expected to be adjusted to the participant’s condition. The participants are required to work voluntarily and to contribute to the community in exchange for the income support, which, until now, had been defined as their basic right. The idea is motivated and justified by the “no free lunch,” ideology, which insists that every welfare recipient can and should work in exchange for his or her benefits. The Community Service is also said to encourage the unemployed to adopt “good” working habits, such as getting up on time and performing work under a boss’s orders. It seems that the participants who are sent to such service are typically the most difficult to place, even in the context of the very low-skill jobs offered through the program. Community Service is supposed to be limited to four months.

Critique of the Program’s Operation

1. Workshops
Participants attest that the workshops are poorly organized and offer little that is valuable. Rather than providing the participants with tools for finding work, the workshops gradually wear out the participants, serving rather to oversee them and manage their time. In fact, the workshops’ main effect is a school-like, some say prison-like, discipline enforced on the participants. Participants are shuffled around the workshops, perhaps in order to prevent them from forming bonds or groups that might empower them to protest. The participants may not smoke, may not use cell-phones and may not talk among themselves during workshops. The companies demand that the participants dress properly and arrive sober; failure to meet the requirements could result in expulsion from the program and loss of the living stipend, even though many of the participants are registered drug addicts. The Community Action Center (Singur Kehilati) in Jerusalem claims that these requirements are illegal.

2. No Vocational Training
Though the program professes to provide job placements, the companies who won the bid are under no obligation to provide professional training. As of now, the companies did not implement any professional training programs whatsoever. In fact, Israel’s former treasurer Netanyahu has claimed that professional training is “useless.”

It should be noted that lack of professional training is widely considered to be one of the central weaknesses of the US Welfare to Work system.

3. Community Service Jobs
For the businesses that employ program participants, “community service jobs” are a godsend—the institutions benefit from the labor, and the government pays the money. The government itself also saves money since participants who cannot meet the requirements lose their income. The participants must now work for a stipend which was intended to support people who are unable to work. The program thus deliberately circumvents laws defending workers’ rights.

Working participants are under constant threat—if their employers aren’t satisfied with them, participants can lose their stipend. Meanwhile, though the worker is performing actual work, it is only defined as “training” and does not earn the participant the legal minimum wage.

The community service jobs have a connotation of punishment, and, in fact, this is what they are. The program’s participants are being punished for being poor and unemployed; their punishment is performing difficult jobs which they have not chosen, and for which they receive less than half of the legal minimum wage (i.e. receive income support).

Larger Questions

1. Little Chance to Find a Job
Because the companies are rewarded for placing workers in any job whatsoever or eliminating people from the welfare lists, they have very little motivation to actually seek to improve participants’ life condition.

Under these circumstances (workshop attendance, Community Service, etc.), program participants have very little free time to look for jobs. The company looks for jobs for them, and mostly places them in difficult, unskilled, low-paying and short-duration positions. Only severe health problems make a job refusal permissible. Refusing a job under any other circumstances brings on an immediate withdrawal of Income Support.

2. Disqualification
The program keeps participants under supervision, making sure that unemployment doesn’t provide them with leisure, and preventing them from working unreported jobs while still collecting Income Support.

Besides keeping participants busy, the workshops may also be a platform for sanctioning and punishing the participants, up to total disqualification from the program. In fact, any behavior that the supervisors judge as “disobedience” can also lead to these sanctions, and to a complete cessation of Income Support.

Each company takes several thousand people under its care, though no information is given about the number of cases that each counselor oversees.

Four months into the program, 35 percent of the participants had lost their stipends. Some 15 percent lost the stipend because they found a job, 10 percent were listed as absent and 10 percent lost their stipend because they were accused of refusing a job that was offered to them.

It seems that the Israeli government has paid little attention to the fate of people who have been disqualified and lost their income.

3. Appeals
A disqualified person has the right to appeal the company’s decision, but appeals are handled only in Hebrew, which creates a barrier for immigrants and Palestinians. Participants must pay a legal fee in order to appeal, which may amount to more than a full day’s worth of the participant’s stipend.

In the end, only 8.3 percent (out of about 350 appeals as of December 2005, most of those approved under restricting conditions) of the appeals were approved by the NII committees appointed by the government, a fact that was celebrated by the program’s administration.

An executive official in the Trade Ministry has said, “It’s not clear how we have gotten ourselves into a program which is aimed more at policing than at treatment. Research in the West has already proven that the plan is faulty.” He added, “I want to rethink what we have done. Choosing the Wisconsin Plan might have been the wrong way to promote employment.”

4. Civil Rights and the Threat of Slavery
Barbara Epstein, of the Jerusalem Community Action Center expressed worry that the plan creates the groundwork for enslaving the participants—by forcing them to perform underpaid jobs.

The Association of Civil Rights in Israel’s 2005 report argues that the plan violates the civil rights of workers in Israel, and actually contributes to their further impoverishment. This trend is especially notable after a series of reductions in the rights of workers and those of the unemployed in Israel over recent years.

Current critiques of the reform relate both to practices stemming from legal or governmental decisions and to the companies’ modes of operation. Public protest on both these fronts is on the rise. The protest began with reports from journalists, evolved into an ongoing campaign by advocacy and grassroots NGOs, and continues with severe criticism in the Knesset. As mentioned above, protests brought the governmental radio campaign to a halt, and created a public atmosphere of opposition to the reform. Large protest demonstrations, however, have taken place only in Nazareth, where Palestinian Israeli citizens lead the dissent.

Income Support in Israel

Income Support is provided to those at the bottommost rung of Israel’s welfare system. The payment provides a basic minimum of income to people without jobs who do not qualify for unemployment. Income Support—a monthly average of 1,621 NIS or 345$—is given to the most vulnerable groups in Israeli society; many of the recipients have no other income source. In 1985, 20,000 families relied on income-support payments. By 2001 the number increased to 145,000. This means that the population that depends on income support is growing at almost five times the growth rate of Israel’s population at large.

After 2002, however, the government began implementing measures to curb welfare assistance. The number of people eligible for Income Support has remained almost constant since 2001, but the average income-support stipend has been continuously eroding. The 1,621 NIS allotment amounts to only 22 percent of the average monthly wage in Israel or 48 percent of the monthly minimum wage.

The Winning Companies

MAXIMUS—the company that won the tender in Ashkelon and Sderot. The company was involved in a series of accounting irregularities, bribes and even embezzlements in the US, which led New York State to revoke its contract. The official administration of the program in Israel (Mehalev) admitted that they didn’t know of the company’s history when they reviewed their proposal for the tender.

A4E—A British company that won the bid in both West and East Jerusalem. A4E works with the Israeli company Aman; their joint company, Amin, manages the program in Jerusalem. A4E is accused of violating British law, as it is providing the Israeli government with governmental services in occupied territory—East Jerusalem. Israel’s sovereignty over occupied East Jerusalem was never accepted by the UK.

CALDER—A Dutch company, working with the Marmet Israeli company, in Nazareth.

AGENS—A Dutch company, working with the Yeud Israeli company, in Hadera.

The four companies are officially under government supervision, but in practice very little supervision actually takes place. The responsible ministry, the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Labor, has taken the role of program advocate in the public debate, and consistently overlooks the companies’ operating failures. The only remaining form of supervision rests in the hands of the appeal committee (discussed above).

The companies who won the bid are making a profit and accumulating capital. If the plan will be expanded to other parts of Israel, the government’s ability to provide basic social services will be compromised and held hostage to private companies that can withdraw their services at any moment. In addition, the companies might be in a position to affect the labor market by cutting deals with large employers and providing them with free labor, all under minimal government supervision.

Single Parent Families

Over a third of all Israeli children, 34 percent, live under the poverty line. The proportion of poor children grew by 50 percent since 1998, mainly as a result of the neoliberal policy of welfare reduction. The Jewish immigrant population, which comprises about a third of all Income Support recipients and of the program participants, has an exceptionally high rate of single-parent families—10.6 percent.

Also, 20.2 percent of all Russian immigrant children live in a single- parent family. Most single-parent families receive Income Support and the importance of this money to their livelihood cannot be exaggerated. The official figures for 2003, before the cuts in NII benefits, showed 56 percent of single parent families in Israel under the poverty line before Income Support, and only 25.3 percent after. In general, some 41 percent of all unemployed women have children under seven—years old and 36 percent of them have more than one child under the age of seven.

As we can see, impoverished mothers and their children have been losing economic ground fast over the last three years. In Israel, these mothers have “colors.” They have ethnic identities, a notable “otherness,” which will be specifically demonstrated below. This “otherness” makes it easier for the authorities to target these groups, as they encounter less public resistance than if they were to target stronger groups.

II. Privatization of Social Services

The implementation of the Welfare to Work system in Israel has another dimension which deserves our attention, that of privatization. The plan essentially gives private companies a type of authority normally reserved only for an elected government. The four companies selected to manage the first stage of the project are private, international companies. Their goal is to make a profit. The idea of privatizing the service is that companies working for profit can achieve better results and at lower costs than the government. The plan therefore strives to offer such companies incentives to pursue goals compatible with the public good.

The companies who won the tender have the authority and responsibility to provide job-placement services, to test and categorize the participants of the program and to determine whether a participant is “uncooperative” and should therefore lose their stipend. The companies also have the leeway to choose the extent of support provided to the targeted population. The government provides the companies with special a budget for their operation. Part of the companies’ budget is slotted for support services, but the tender fails to provide any means of ensuring that the money is used for this purpose. The companies are not obligated to provide specific professional training or basic supporting services for employment (such as transportation costs, child-care services or other support to families). Though the budgets for such forms of support exists, the companies do not profit from using the budget and their decisions as to how to use it are not regulated by the authorities.

The companies’ conflict of interest is evident. Their profit is proportional to the number of people they eliminate from income- support lists, while these very companies have the right to eliminate people from these lists. (at their discretion, without giving grounds, etc)

The companies get more money if a participant holds on to a job for 6-9 months, but less money if the participant loses her job and returns to the program. It is therefore easier for the companies to simply take the money for every participant that has given up and was removed from the program. This is a built-in mechanism which the government installed to hasten the process of reducing the number of welfare recipients.

The companies agreed to save the government at least 35 percent of its income-support spending. Above that, the companies get 40 percent of every stipend that they have managed to cancel. This is extra profit, in addition to the company’s operations costs, which are covered by the government.

The government saves the remaining 60 percent of these stipends, but must still cover the operating expenses of the companies. The only incentive that companies have to place people in steady jobs is a negligible bonus (about US 4$) if the placement lasts for more than nine months.

III. The Plan’s Effects on Disempowered Groups

Welfare reform has met with little resistance from the upper classes in Israel. This is not surprising, as the people who rely on income support are unemployed and impoverished. And it is essential to remember that people who rely on income support as their only source of income are well below the poverty line. This means that the Welfare to Work program is actually targeting people who are already marginalized within Israeli society. These include mostly immigrants, Mizrahi Jews and especially Palestinian citizens of Israel and Jerusalemite Palestinians. Among these minority groups, single mothers, the sick and the elderly are those affect most seriously by the reform.

Targeting Single Mothers

The Israeli model of the welfare plan was inspired by American models not only in its aggressive “work-first” approach and its discourse of blaming the (ethnically other) poor, but also in its focus on families and on single mothers. Law revisions in 2003, which preceded the Welfare to Work pilot plan, already substantially damaged the welfare entitlement of mothers with young children. The revisions cut child subsidies and reduced the age of children that qualifies mothers for exemption from the “occupational test” (where they must prove that they are willing to take any job offered to them) from seven to two. As a result, mothers of children older than two must participate fully in the plan, though like others they receive no supporting services.

The authorities did not specifically state that mothers were targeted, but the decision not to exempt mothers from the plan has far-reaching consequences.

Targeting the Sick and Old

Like mothers, sick people were indirectly selected to participate in the plan. The only criterion for exemption from the plan is a health disability, but the minimum level of disability required for an exemption is very high.

A parliamentary committee established just before the implementation of the program discussed the need to exempt those welfare recipients who were too disabled to work from the program. The government declared, however, that until the law is revised, only those with a 75 percent work disability or more would be exempted. This statement, if adopted as a policy, will still force people with 60 percent work disability to work— meaning that they will have to face an “occupational test.” During the test, participants must persuade their advisor that they cannot perform the work offered to them or attend the workshops (see the testimonies from East Jerusalem below). Officially, taking the “occupational test” is a declaration that the participant is willing to take on any job offered, unless they are exempt from it for health reasons. At present, the participants don’t even know what the final government decision is and who will be called to take the test.

There is a large proportion of participants who suffer from health problems. Numerous cases were recorded, in which the company sent participants to work in jobs that they were physically unfit to perform.

If the doctor working for the company decides (based on examining medical papers and not on examining the applicant herself) that the person is capable of working, the only choices left to that person is to jeopardize her health and work anyway, or to give up her income support stipend.

Targeting Ethnic Others: Immigrants and Palestinians

Jewish immigrants comprise about 33 percent of the plan’s participants. These immigrants, who are struggling with the language and with Israeli culture, and who in many cases face more or less blatant discrimination, are another disempowered group targeted by the plan. Single-parent families, who suffer a significant reduction in welfare benefits, are especially prevalent among the immigrants because many families split over disagreements whether to stay in Israel or whether to come to Israel in the first place.

But the most disempowered group targeted by the plan is Palestinians. In 2004, poverty was rampant among the non-Jews in Israel (the vast majority of which are Palestinians). Compared with a 15.9 percent poverty rate among Jews, poverty rate among non-Jews was 49.9 percent (calculated at one-half of the median wage, and taking taxes and transfer payments into account).

Some 20 percent of Israel’s citizens are Palestinians (not including the Palestinian non-citizens), but Palestinians make up 30 percent of those receiving Income Support. However, of those selected for the Welfare the Work pilot, Palestinians made up at almost 50 percent. The choice to focus on recipients of Income Support (rather than on the unemployed in general) resulted in Palestinian citizens being represented in the program at double their ratio in Israeli society.

One also wonders about the criteria for selecting cities and neighborhoods for the pilot plan. Nazereth contributes 4,700 Palestinians to the program (already bringing in 26 percent of participants). But of the five cities with the largest numbers of income-support recipients, only Jerusalem was selected to participate. Furthermore, planners decided to include East Jerusalemite Palestinians, who comprise 33 percent of the total population of Jerusalem, but as many as half of the Jerusalem participants in the plan. An unknown number of Palestinian participants come from Ashkelon, Hadera and Sderot.

This undeniable targeting of Palestinians has led to large-scale protests against the program, especially in Nazereth; many Palestinians believe that they were enlisted to the program because policymakers don’t want government money to fall to the hands of non-Jews.

IV. Blaming the Victims

The plan’s premise is that the poor are to blame for their condition. The idea behind it is that the people who rely on Income Support don’t want to work—and that the plan will force them to.

The program’s ideology is thrust upon the participants during hours of repeated lectures. The message is clear: “there is no free lunch,” and “the problem is in your attitude.” It is therefore crucial to discuss the social implications of the program, as well as its economic effects. The people drafted into the program are stigmatized as lazy and incompetent. They are already poor and disempowered, as we’ve seen, yet they are portrayed as people who enjoy their freedom from work, and are satisfied to have their needs paid for by taxpayers. Welfare is no longer seen as a form of a socially-responsible insurance (people pay taxes so that they will be taken care of in times of need), but as a form of charity.

Professor Nancy Fraser from the New School for Social Research claims that the welfare state often stigmatizes the victims of social inequality, and blames them for their condition. The Welfare to Work program in Israel exemplifies this attitude, with its depiction of participants as people who enjoy a life of leisure at the public expense. The program thus forces people who do not shift to paid to employment to suffer for their income support, or, in fact, to work for it and receive even less than minimum wage for their time.

The program encourages public resentment towards this population with the workshops as a form of punishment— people who failed to fi nd a job shouldn’t enjoy free time. Economists support the program, because it is supposed to be effective against “free-riders.”

Israeli journalist Yuval Karminzer has argued that it was because the program targets disempowered sectors of Israeli society that it didn’t receive adequate media coverage, and that the public was left unaware of the numerous humiliating and cruel violations committed by the companies who won the tender.

The plan can thus crush the selected populations, because they occupy a blind spot in decision makers’ field of vision. When they are noticed at all, they are seen as a nuisance at best, or a threat that must be controlled.

Rami Adut is an international advocacy researcher for the AIC.
Shir Hever writes the economic bulletin for the AIC and is completing his Master’s at the Cohen Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Ideas, Tel Aviv University.

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Sources
—Abergil, Reuven, 2005, The Wisconsin Plan, a lecture given to Kav Laoved in Tel-Aviv, 6 December 2005. —Abunimah, Ali, 2005, “Did UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw help sell out Jerusalem?,” Electronic Intifada, 28 November 2005, http://electronicintifada.net/.
—Ahdut, Lea, Cohn, Refaela and Miri Andelberg, 2005, The Extent of Poverty and Income Gaps 2004, Main Findings, NII, Center for Research and Planning, Jerusalem, p. 13.
—Attas, Daniel and de Shalit, Avner, 2004, ‘Workfare: The Subjugation of Labor,’ Journal of Applied Philosophy 21, pp. 309-320.
—Beinish, Avishai, 2004, “The Tension Between Profit and Welfare,” Yesod, www.yesod. net/yesod/archives/2004/09/post_10.php, 1 September 2004. —Beinish, Avishai, 2005, ‘Implementation of the “Wisconsin Plan” in Israel—Legal Aspects,’ Work, Society and Law, Vol. 11.
—Cohen, Reli, 2005, “Dirty Job,” Kol Ha’ir, 26 August 2005.
—David, Merav, 2006, “Study: The Wisconsin Plan in the U.S Did Not Improve the Situation of the Unemployed,” Maariv, 7 March 2006.
—Dayan, Arie, 2005, “These Are the Appealers, This is Their Existence. Where is the Dignity?,” Ha’aretz, 15 December 2005.
—Edri, Ytzhak (Jacki), 2005, “The Wisconsin Plan, Mehalev—Where does the Cruelty Come From?,” Haoketz, 29 August 2005, http:// www.haokets.org/.
—Fraser, Nancy, 2004, ‘Dillemas of Justice in the “Post-Socialist” Age,’ in Ram, Uri and Filk, Dani (eds), The Power of Property: Israeli Society in the Global Age, Van-Leer Institute, Jerusalem.
—Golan, Gadi, 2005, ”The Wisconsin Plan Will Cause a Social Intifada,” Globes, 3-4 August 2005.
—Greenbaum, Lior, 2005, “The Wisconsin Plan Suffers Criticism in the Arab Sector: “Revokes the Stipend,’” Globes, 13-14 December 2005.
—Greenberg David, Ashworth Karl, Cebulla Andreas, Walker Robert, 2004, “Do Welfare- to-Work Programs Work for Long?,” Fiscal Studies, Vol. 25, no. 1.
—Greenberg, Mark, 2005, “Testimony of Mark Greenberg,” Sub-committee on 21st Century Competitiveness, Committee on Education and Work Force, U.S. House of Representatives. Available at http://www.clasp.org/publications/ greenberg_testimony_031505.pdf
—Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics, 2005, Profile of Israel’s Population in 2004, http:// www1.cbs.gov.il/reader/cw_usr_view_ SHTML?ID=629, King, Yehudit, 2004, ‘Obstacles and Resources for Finding Employment Among Unemployed Receiving Income Support,’ Social Security, Vol. 66, August 2004, p. 16.
—Karminzer, Yuval, 2005, ‘The Curtains Drop,’ Ha’ain Hashvi’it, Vol. 58, September 2005.
—King Judith et al., 2001, “Welfare Recipients: their occupational status and their needs in finding employment,” Joint-Brookdale Institute and the National Insurance Institute. see MEHALEV administration website at the ‘Ministry of Industry, Trade and Labor’ website www.moit.gov.il. CBS—Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics (ICBS), 2004, Demography Table, see http://www1.cbs.gov.il/reader/.
—Lavi, Zvi, 2005, “The Radio Campaign for the Wisconsin Plan Will Stop,” Globes, 15-16 December, 2005.
—Magen, Hadas, 2005, “ACRI: 3 Months Since Wisconsin Started—Only 11 percent Work,” Globes, 12-13 December 2005. MEHALEV administration website at the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Labor website www.moit.gov.il.
—National Insurance Institute (NII), 2004, Poverty and Inequality in Income Distribution in the Market, 2003, Central Findings, Jerusalem.
—National Insurance Institute (NII), 2005, Statistical Yearbook, Third Quarter.
—Regev, David, 2005, ‘Social Security: More Poor and Less Aid to the Weak in, Globes, 25- 26 December, 2005.
—Shye, Shmuel and Mironichev, Natalia, 2003, What is the Minimum Income Required for Dignified Living? Demonstration and Implementation of the First Relative Saturation Approach, Center for Social Justice, Van Leer Institute, July 2003, Jerusalem. —Sinai, Ruti, 2005, “Among the Conditions of the Wisconsin Plan: Don’t Talk on the Cell- Phone” [Bein Tnaeit Tochnit Wisconsin: Lo Ledaber Banayad], Ha’aretz, 15 August 2005.
—Sinai, Ruti, 2005, “Eighty Percent of the Wisconsin Participants in Hadera Want to Get a Doctor’s Exemption,’ Ha’aretz, 31 August 2005.
—Sinai, Ruti, 2004, “Managing the Wisconsin Plan in Israel: Companies from the Netherlands, UK and the US,” Ha’aretz, 16 December 2004.
—Sinai, Ruti, 2005, “Netanyahu and Ulmert at the Start of the Wisconsin Plan: ‘Will Change the Work Culture,’” Ha’aretz, 2 August 2005.
—Sinai, Ruti, 2005, “The Dilemma of the Assisting Organizations: Influence from Within or Struggle from the Outside,” Ha’aretz, 1 August 2005.
—Sinai, Ruti, 2006, “The Treasury: Wisconsin Saved 35 percent of the Income Support Stipends Already,” Ha’aretz, 4 January 2006.
—Tsakh, Ronit and Fishbein, Einat, 2005, “Con Job,” Ynet, http://www.ynet.co.il/articles/ 0,7340-3044023,00.html, 11 February 2005.
—Tsakh, Ronit and Fishbein, Einat, 2005, “We Knew They Will Play Golf,” Ynet, http://www.ynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L- 3044445,00.html, 11 February 2005.
—Yeshuvi, Naama 2005, Human Rights in Israel, 2005 Situation, Association of Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), http://www.acri.org. il/hebrew-acri/engine/story.asp?id=1233.
—Youdelman, Sondra and Getsos, Paul, 2005, Executive Summary: The Revolving Door, Community Voices Heard, New York.