The Arab Minority In Israel's Economy

Patterns Of Ethnic Inequality

Noah Lewin-epstein, Moshe Semyonov

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781000314663
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Middle Eastern Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The Arab Minority in Israel's Economy considers the Arab population as an integral, albeit disadvantaged, part of Israeli society. Using data from a thirty-year period, the book looks at Arab participation in the economy, especially in the labor market, showing how significant socioeconomic inequality persists despite a fundamental tenet of Israel's declaration of independence asserting equality of political and social rights of all its citizens. Taking an ethnic competition perspective, the authors explore the extent of inequality, uncovering the institutional and social processes that influence it. They examine the role of local labor markets and individual human resources, giving special attention to the growing labor force participation of Arab women. They also consider the gains of the majority Jewish population that have resulted from competition and economic discrimination against Arabs. Although the Arab community in Israel has been studied in the past, this book is unique in its detailed analysis of employment activity within and outside of the Arab sector and in examining both Arabs and Jews within the stratification system. The book fosters deeper understanding of Israeli society and of multi-ethnic societies more generally.

1
Approaches to the Study of Arabs in Israel

Jewish-Arab relations in Israel have been molded under extremely turbulent circumstances—war, population migration, territorial disputes, nation building, and economic competition—all taking place within one century. Over the years, mutual antagonism has not dissipated and conflict is ever present.

There have been several scholarly attempts to explore and analyze the situation of Arabs in Israel from different vantage points. No single approach appears to have untangled the complex relationship in which the two groups are engaged. The cumulative result of research in this area, however, has underscored the profundity of the problem and revealed the multi-dimensionality of Jewish-Arab relations in Israel.

Sociological studies of Jewish-Arab relations in Israel have been carried out along the lines of three major paradigms: the cultural perspective, the pluralism perspective, and the class (economic) perspective. The cultural approach stems from structural-functionalism which views common cultural patterns as essential for social integration. From this point of view, ethnicity, as a focal point for divergent cultures, is considered disruptive to social integration. Following this logic, cultural and social assimilation are required of subordinate groups in order for the successful realization of nation-building to take place. Over two decades ago Eisenstadt (1967) addressed the issue of the "non-Jewish minority groups in Israel" by focusing on processes of economic development and modernization. According to the analytical framework he proposed, the growing contact of the Arab minority with Jews was expected to bring about cultural change and usher in the values of modernity. Economic progress, according to this view, would serve as an integrative force which would diminish the potential for ethnic conflict. Eisenstadt noted, however, that these outcomes were hindered by the unique historical and political circumstances in which Jewish-Arab relations were shaped, namely, the broader context of the Israeli-Arab and Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

More recently an alternative cultural approach was proposed by Ben-Rafael (1982) who applied a general model pertaining to dominant and subordinate cultures to Jewish-Arab relations.¹ The underlying argument of Ben-Rafael's approach is that ethnic encounters between Jews and Arabs, rather than inducing assimilation, in actual fact, reinforce the boundaries of mutual exclusivity. The central concept here is "negative convergence" which, it is argued, characterizes the continuous interaction between Jews and Arabs. The cultural approach proposed by Ben-Rafael addresses ethnic stratification in Israel largely in terms of cultural dominance and subordination, where cultural dominance is derived from a modern scientific technological orientation. According to this perspective, in order for conflict to dissipate, a sense of "Israeliness"—cultural contents and symbols drawn from shared experience and based on a modern orientation—must emerge and stand independent of "Arabness" and "Jewishness." The Jewish-Arab ethnic cleavage which, according to this view, is essentially cultural, is reinforced by the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Arab countries and the Palestinian people. By defining Israeli Arabs as a religio-linguistic minority, the dominant Israeli culture in fact reinforces the ethnic cleavage and limits the ability to develop "Israeliness" as a unified cultural construct (Ben-Rafael 1982).

Indeed, policies of social and economic exclusion, which are the focus of the present study, as well as other forms of separation, have frustrated the prospect of the emergence of such a shared construct. Smooha (1985) has pointed out that Israel's Jewish-dominated world-view sees Arabs as a cultural, religious, or linguistic minority rather than a national minority. In so doing, the Jewish majority sets the stage and conditions for political and economic subordination of the Arabs. From the vantage point of the cultural approach it is also emphasized that Israeli Arabs are part of the larger Arab world surrounding Israel. Hence they hold in common the primordial roots of Arab culture, values, and identity. This in turn leads to their further alienation from Jewish identity. Thus, the dominance of "Jewishness" in Israel on the one hand, and the continuing sense of "Arabness" among Israeli Arabs, on the other, set a course for negative convergence rather than assimilation. Indeed, the two groups appear to be committed to cultural and social segregation.

A second manner of conceptualizing ethnic relations in Israel is a pluralistic approach advanced and developed over the years by Smooha (1976, 1978, 1980). The version of pluralism proposed by Smooha may be conceived of as a controlled-conflict approach. Pluralism refers to the objective existence of distinguishable groups based on language, religion, national identity and separate cultural heritage, coupled with ecological and social segregation (residences, schools, friendship networks, and political parties). A basic premise of the pluralism approach is that the source of conflict is exogenous to the relations between ethnic communities. Rather than stemming from the differences between the groups (which determine the pluralistic nature of the social system), conflict originates in competition over scarce resources. This conflict over resources, however, may be exacerbated or attenuated by factors such as the level of inequality and the presence of mechanisms of inclusion or exclusion. While other paradigms have identified either the cultural or the economic sphere as central to the understanding of ethnic relations, pluralism emphasizes the predominance of the polity as the arena in which ethnic groups struggle for control and where structures of cooperation may form. Indeed, according to Smooha, pluralism connotes coexistence and the potential for reducing inequality and conflict. Smooha's approach is essentially prescriptive rather than descriptive—it does not describe present Israeli society but provides a model of pluralism which, if adhered to by Israeli society, might in the long run avert conflict and stabilize Jewish-Arab relations.

In line with the emphasis on the political arena, some social scientists (mostly political scientists) have applied the notion of "control" to analyze Jewish-Arab relations in Israel. Control, as a theoretical concept, has long been used to conceptualize superordinate-subordinate relations in ethnically divided societies. Typically these approaches have not gone beyond listing "control" as one of several possible mechanisms available to the dominant group. Esman (1973) for instance, referred to control as one means of managing communal conflict in multi-ethnic societies. His framework included, in addition, "induced assimilation", "syncratic integration", and "balanced pluralism" (akin to the approach put forward by Smooha). In his approach, the state is set apart from the ethnic groups comprising the society and is given a mediating or managing role. Consequently, the framework proposed by Esman largely ignores the use of the state apparatus by dominant ethnic groups, and the role of the state in creating and maintaining ethnic inequality.

In analyzing the Israeli case, Lustick (1980) takes the control framework one step forward in an attempt to outline the components of control and to examine the ways in which they are woven into the routine of ethnic relations. The "control" perspective adopted by Lustick focuses specifically on the political dominance of the Jews over the Arab minority in Israel. Lustick argues that "... thanks to a sophisticated system of control it has been possible for the Israeli regime and the Jewish majority which it represents to manipulate the Arab minority, to prevent it from organizing on an independent basis, and to extract from it resources required for the development of the Jewish sector" (pp. 25-26).

Lustick identifies three main components of control over the Arab population in Israel: segmentation, dependence, and co-optation. Segmentation, which comprises ecological as well as social and cultural dimensions, refers to the exclusion of Arabs from the political, economic, social and cultural core of Israeli society. Dependence refers to the enforced reliance of Arabs on the Jewish majority for important resources, an aspect particularly evident as it applies to economic resources (as will be elaborated in a later section). By cooptation Lustick refers to " ... the use of side payments to Arab elites or potential elites for purposes of surveillance and resource extraction" (p. 77). This definition, however, is unnecessarily narrow, and co-optation may be viewed more broadly as the counterpart of dependence. Dependence establishes the conditions under which co-optation can take place at low cost to the superordinate group while it appears beneficial to both groups (more on this subject later).

The control framework proposed by Lustick makes it possible to study economic activity of Arabs in Israel as a dimension of Jewish-Arab relations. Nonetheless, it is essentially a political model in which economic activity is marginal and secondary to the political dimension. Without, at this point, debating the issue of the predominance of the different dimensions and institutions in the Jewish-Arab conflict, suffice it to note that a more specific and more concise framework is needed for a comprehensive and analytical treatment of the participation of the Arab minority in the Israeli labor market.

A third perspective applied to Jewish-Arab relations in Israel focuses on economic relations and derives primarily from Marxist and dependency paradigms. In a series of research projects, Rosenfeld (1964, 1978) studied the confluence of class and nationality in the case of Israeli Arabs. According to Rosenfeld, the central factors responsible for the class situation of Arabs in Israel are the Zionist ideology of the Jewish nation, and the state control of the economy. The restrictions and expropriations imposed by the Jewish state on the Arab minority, on the one hand, and the large demand for wage labor, on the other, brought about specific class relations whereby Arabs "... live in one place and work in many others, live among Arabs, work among Jews and are employed almost entirely by Jews" (Rosenfeld, 1978:393). The thesis advanced by Rosenfeld and his colleagues underscores Arab dependency as the major explanatory factor for the economic position of Arabs in Israel.

The most comprehensive and radical application of the dependency approach to the situation of Arabs in Israel has been made by Zuriek (1979). Zuriek evoked the theoretical framework of internal colonialism to characterize Jewish-Arab (Palestinian) relations. The internal colonialism model is essentially a class-relations analysis in which ethnicity and nationality are assumed to be aligned with the class cleavage. According to the internal colonialism model developed by Hechter (1975), national development has less to do with spontaneous social structural or economic processes, and more with the exercise of control over government policies concerning the allocation of resources. Referring to geographical territories in which several ethnic groups reside, Hechter contends that the obstacles to national development of the peripheral group relate not to a failure of peripheral integration with the core, but to malintegration established on terms increasingly regarded as unjust and illegitimate. Hence, the internal colonialism model would appear to account for the persistence of backwardness in the midst of industrial society and the apparent volatility of political integration. "[B]y linking economic and occupational differences between groups to their cultural differences, this model has an additional advantage in that it suggests an explanation for the resiliency of peripheral culture" (Hechter 1975:34).

Zureik's analysis of Israeli society begins by defining Israel and the Jewish majority as a colonial regime. The focus of the discussion is on the distinction between capitalist and non-capitalist economies within the state. Zureik proceeds to expose the features and position of Arab society in Israel and compares them to those of ethnic groups in other nations to which the model of internal colonialism has also been applied. The central features noted are the imposition of a capitalist economy on a traditional agrarian system, economic transformation, ecological separation which permits clear identification of core and periphery, and the establishment of an ideological system to justify superordinate-subordinate relations. This approach, then, views the economy as the central arena of Jewish-Arab relations and economic processes associated with capitalism as the driving force of ethnic conflict. However, the "broad brush" used by Zureik, rather than illuminating the unique features of Arab subordination in Israel, simply appears to equate ethnic subordination and economic inequality with colonialism. From this point of view, the model offered by Zureik is uni-dimensional and deterministic. Once colonialism is established it takes on static characteristics.

In a recent book, Raja Khalidi (1988a) offered yet another economic framework for studying the position of Arabs in Israeli society. He identified four aspects of the economic status of Arabs in Israel which set the Arab population apart from the rest of Israeli society: (1) state policies and popular attitudes which underlie the differential treatment of Arabs in Israel, (2) spatial separation of the Arab population from Jews whereby Arabs are concentrated in specific geographic regions, mostly distant from the center, (3) unique cultural and social structural features which still clearly distinguish the Arab population despite the many years of contact with the Jewish society, and (4) economic, political and social differentiation along ethnic lines.

Taking the above characteristics into account, and approaching the issue from an economic perspective, Khalidi proposed "regional economic analysis" as a tool for examining and understanding the status of the Arab minority in Israel:

In the broadest definition, our conception of the Arab region in Israel... can be construed as a homogeneous region in light of common features (economic, social, and geographic): a functional region in terms of the importance of its relation to the national economy and polarized patterns of differentials in many regional-national characteristics; and a programming region in terms of the systematized context of Arab-state relations in Israel and the existence of specific state policies toward Arabs (1988b:26).

From an economic perspective, Gottheil (1973) has characterized the Arab region as having undergone transformation from a subsistence agricultural economy with an embryonic industrial and commercial structure, to a consuming entity with its productive capacity resting primarily on reproduction of exportable labor power.

While recognizing that the Arab sector is separated from mainstream Israeli economy, some social geographers (Arnon and Raviv 1980; Bar Gal and Sofer 1976) have proposed that the contact with the industrialized and modern Jewish sector has initiated rapid changes in the traditional, less developed Arab society. According to this view, continuing integration into Israeli society is seen to benefit rather than to harm Arabs, and to result in their improved economic conditions. By way of contrast, Gottheil, Zuriek, Khalidi, among many others, have underscored the potential for the development of a dual economy whereby the Arab region is "integrated" as an external factor in Israel's national economy. One clear feature of this structure of relations is the "near-exodus of Arab labor (especially of young people) to available industrial and construction employment in the (Jewish) towns" (Zarhi and Achiezra 1966:5).

The above discussion of previous research on the status of Arabs in Israeli society has illustrated the multitude of perspectives put forward in an endeavor to understand the issue. More importantly, this body of literature has underscored the complexity of Jewish-Arab relations in Israel and has revealed several noteworthy findings. Arabs, on the whole, are disadvantaged relative to Jews in every dimension of inequality, be it economic, social, or political. Their standard of living is lower and they receive less than their share of public funding and investment. Their earnings from work are lower, as is the social status attached to the jobs they hold. They are all but absent from the political arena and positions of authority in government. The Arab population is spatially segregated from the Jewish population and Arab communities do not have the infrastructure to support advanced industrial structures. Their development is dependent on and constrained by policies of the central government of Israel. The majority of Arabs today are employed outside their communities of residence, mostly by Jewish employers in Jewish communities. Whether this reflects the integration of the Arab population in Israeli society, or its exploitation, is a point of continuing debate embedded in alternative paradigms applied to the study of Israeli society.

Researchers also agree that the Arab population has remained rural, for the most part, and more dependent on agriculture than the Jewish population. Its age structure is younger, and, recent achievements notwithstanding, it is significantly less educated. However, research into occupational and earnings inequality between Arabs and Jews, found that differences in education, skills, and work experience cannot account for the gaps in earnings, living standards and life chances. Not surprisingly, then, studies have devoted themselves in part to uncovering the ideological factors and institutionalized arrangements which constrain opportunities for Arabs while still maintaining a semblance of an open system.

Notwithstanding the contribution of the studies discussed above, we propose that theoretical models along the lines of control, internal colonialism, or dependency, are not sufficient to capture the complexity of Jewish-Arab relations in the labor market. Specifically, although the control perspective proposed by Lustick provides a useful framework for explaining Arab "acquiescence" in Israeli society by outlining the institutional conditions that produce and reinforce Jewish-Arab inequality, it stops short of analyzing the labor market processes and the differential consequences for Jews and Arabs. Moreover, this perspective is essentially deterministic in that it views all socioeconomic outcomes for Arabs as resulting from political institutional mechanisms. It largely ignores the role of labor market processes and outcomes in determining the position of the Arab minority.

The dependency approach, and in particular the internal colonialism version employed by Zureik, and the class conflict perspective utilized by Rosenfeld, have centered on capital-labor relations. They view the position of Arabs as deriving primarily from their exploitation by Jewish capital. Both Zuriek and Rosenfeld place the emphasis on employers' need for cheap labor in an expanding Jewish economy. Hence, they focus on the mechanisms that ensure the supply of cheap (Arab) labor. According to these approaches, Jewish-Arab relations are viewed as class relations; that is between Jewish employers and government, on the one hand, and Arab workers on the other, excluding, for the most part, the majority Jewish workers. According to these models, market processes are largely predetermined and hence the study of labor market processes under different structural conditions is irrelevant. It is our contention that the differential resources of the dominant Jewish and subordinate Arab populations, as well as the structural conditions they face, must be taken into account in order to understand the patterns of Jewish-Arab socioeconomic inequality. We propose, therefore, that an understanding of the socioeconomic position of Arabs in Israel can benefit from applying a theoretical framework which underscores competition in the labor market (albeit with different resources) as central to the study of ethnic relations and emergent inequality.²

Ethnic Stratification in the Economic Arena

In an endeavor to generate a theoretical framework for the study of ethnic stratification systems, Lieberson (1970) points out that most often, ethnic groups in a multi-ethnic society differ in their occupational opportunities and the rewards they receive from employment, as well as in their power, privilege and influence. To the extent that these differences exist because of their group membership per se and are not simply a result of the factors which determine stratification within ethnic groups, it is said that ethnic stratification exists. More important for the case under study here is the fact that,

[T]he most fundamental difference between ethn...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Tables and Figures
• Preface
• 1 Approaches to the Study of Arabs in Israel
• 2 The Arabs: Profile of a Disadvantaged Minority
• 3 The Arab Economy in Israel
• 4 Community Segregation and Socioeconomic Inequalities
• 5 Arab Women in the Israeli Labor Force
• 6 Who Benefits from Economic Discrimination?
• 7 Jews in Arab Labor Markets
• 8 An Israeli Dilemma
• Bibliography
• About the Book and Authors
• Index