Joshua Mitnick - Israel
Correspondent
Fasutta, Israel
When Hezbollah Katyusha rockets were
raining down on Arab towns in northern Israel last summer,
Israeli politicians were quick to point out that the missiles
didn’t distinguish between Jews or Arabs.
But as
Israel and diaspora Jewish communities ramp up distribution of
$1 billion in planned recovery assistance over the coming
years, the Arab activists in northern Israel are charging
government discrimination in the recovery effort.
A
Supreme Court petition from businessmen in this Arab village
and three others near the Lebanon border accuses Israel’s
Finance Ministry of unfairly excluding them from a generous
compensation package offered to more than 100 Israeli
communities in the same region.
“We pay the same taxes
as our Jewish neighbors, so why should we get partial
compensation while they’re getting full,” said Samuel Dakwar,
the Fasutta attorney whose petition to the court has been
joined by at least one Arab civil rights group. “We have a big
belief that the Supreme Court won’t let this situation
continue.”
The Oct. 30 hearing will be the first major
bias case to emerge from the war’s aftermath, but there is
concern that it is only a symptom of a larger imbalance in the
aid effort. Arabs believe fueling the discrimination are
politicians seeking to punish the country’s one-fifth minority
for their criticism of the war.
To be sure,
politicians like Finance Minister Avraham Hirchson have
pledged to distribute recovery aid equally between Jewish and
the Arab communities. But civil rights activists warn that it
may be too late to dismantle decades of institutionalized bias
in minority funding.
“In general there is reason to
worry about it because of the record of the State of Israel
for unequal division of resources between Jewish and Arab
citizens,” said Shalom Dichter, co-director of Sikkuy, a
Jewish-Arab group that monitors government civil rights
reform. “Patterns of discrimination in government actions are
deeply rooted in the government services.”
At stake for
Israel in the Galilee recovery program is an opportunity to
improve ties between the government and Arab communities or
aggravate tensions still sore from the Palestinian uprising.
For North American Jewish federations who hope to underwrite
about one third of the aid program, it figures as the first
major test of a recent policy shift to actively aid Israel’s
Arab citizens.
Jewish Agency officials are touting aid
projects in Arab communities during the war as evidence of the
new commitment of North American donors to cultivate programs
with the country’s Arab citizens. During the war, the agency
helped evacuate Arab families from hot spots, built community
centers in Arab municipalities and distributed scholarships.
But local officials said they were unable to say
precisely how much donor money is reaching Israeli Arabs.
In the case of the Arab border villages’ petition to
the high court, attorney Dakwar believes that a high court
victory could deter government ministries from discriminating
against Arabs in the aid effort.
The petition demands
the government extend villages like Fasutta the status of
“border communities” — known as “sfar” in Hebrew — which would
make businesses there eligible for full compensation on lost
profit and overhead expenses during the war.
The
designation, which originated in the early 1960s, has been
given to towns within a few miles of Lebanon to offset the
damage of Israel’s intermittent border flare-ups over the past
decades. Except that among more than 100 communities that
enjoy the status, four Arab villages within the same distance
of the border don’t appear on the list.
Those include
Aramshe, which literally hugs the border, Jish, Milya, and
Fasutta, where residents can recount damages from Lebanese
guerrilla attacks stretching back to the killing of two
residents by Palestinian terrorists en route to taking 90
students hostage in Ma’alot. During the summer’s war in
Lebanon, villagers said they were unable to sleep at night
from the constant sound of artillery firing.
Rayek
Matar, a building engineer and contractor from Fasutta,
estimated businesses in Jewish cities just a few miles away
are getting 60 percent more in war compensation — even though
the Arab village was used by the army as a firing ground for
the Israeli artillery cannons used to shell targets in
southern Lebanon.
“We’re saying why should there be a
difference between here and there?” he said. “We were right in
the middle of the whole thing. We were exposed to the same
danger. The army was sitting in the middle of the
village.”
An official in the Finance Ministry, who
asked to remain anonymous because of the sensitivity of the
issue, acknowledged that the border community designation was
based on an outdated list. But if the ministry updated the
list with four Arab villages, it would expose itself to claims
from municipalities as far south as Haifa and bust the
treasury’s budget.
“They can’t get the same
compensation because it’s impossible,” said the official. “If
I were to add them, what justification would I have not to add
Safed and Haifa.”
Other signs of bias have emerged in
the first weeks after the war.
After turning away loan
applications by Arab entrepreneurs, a small business
development arm of Israel’s Industry and Trade Ministry was
forced by a government’s legal counsel to retract the policy
and return the money of a Jewish donor who had requested it go
only to Jews and military veterans.
And one civil
rights activist from Haifa charged that recovery aid from the
city’s partnership with the Boston Jewish federation had
barely reached Haifa’s Arab residents.
“Our feeling is
that aid will be offered by Jewish organizations so that
government ministries” could outsource the financial burden,
said Jafar Farah, director of the Haifa-based civil rights
advocacy group Mossawa, “because that would have required them
to act equally.”
Farah said he doesn’t expect Arabs in
Israel to be the top priority of American Jewish groups and
the Jewish Agency. Agency officials and donors counter that
money is reaching Israeli-Arab communities in the form of new
community centers, bomb shelters, small business loans, and
scholarships. And yet, those interviewed couldn’t say for
certain exactly what proportion of the assistance is received
by Israeli Arabs.
A local spokesman for the
Boston-Haifa partnership said the federation has doled out
$2.5 million, but couldn’t say precisely who benefited, though
he added that “there were many Arabs” who got assistance.
“We have no breakdown on how many Arabs got business
loans. We don’t know how many children were taken out” of the
north for camp and other retreats while the fighting was
raging. ’ They are big numbers,” said Yossi Gluzman, a local
official with the Boston-Haifa partnership. “No one can give
exact numbers, and to do so would be pulling it out of my
sleeve.”
Jeff Kaye, director of resource development
and public affairs at the Jewish Agency, said aid would be
spent “absolutely proportionally.” However, his ballpark
estimate that Israeli Arabs got 25 percent of $70 million in
already-dispersed aid, suggested otherwise in a region where
Arabs make up about half the population.
Civil rights
activists said that if aid agencies wanted to release figures
on the distribution of aid to Arab communities, there are
methods to track the money. And even though the Jewish
Agency’s 25 percent estimate represents progress compared to
the past, activists said there’s still a long road to travel.
“I know what the Agency and the United Jewish
Communities are trying to do,” said Mohammed Darawshe, the
Israel director of development for the Abraham Fund
Initiatives, which funds coexistence projects in Israel. “The
trend is laudable. It’s about time, but we still haven’t
reached its realization. The road is still long. Even though
they want egalitarian policy, there are a lot of gaps to
close.” n |
