בדרך למהפכה בשוק ההנפקות: רשות ני"ע תגביל ספסרים ושחקני הנוסטרו בשוק החיתום

By Yair Ettinger

For the past three years, M'eigal al-Hawashala, his two wives and their 15 children have been dependent on the state for their income - since M'eigal lost his job at the transportation company for which he worked as a driver. At present he is receiving NIS 2,800 a month in the form of guaranteed income; NIS 5,511 a month that he and his wife receive for their nine children who are under 18 years of age; and his second wife gets NIS 1,891 each month as child allowances for another five children. Most of the children are also entitled to a study grant, which, according to their father, comes to about NIS 4,000 a year; in addition, he says, his second wife receives an extra NIS 500 a month for being a single parent.

Thus the National Insurance Institute is the sole provider for this family from the village of Al-Ghara, in the Negev (the 15 sheep next to their dwelling are used primarily for milk and meat for home consumption, al-Hawashala says). All told, then, the family receives from the government about NIS 11,000 a month, not counting birth grants.

Last year the eldest son turned 18, so the allowance for him was stopped, but the family's 16th child is due soon. "For every one that goes, another comes," al-Hawashala, who is 43, says with a smile. In 2006, however, if the economic plan is passed in its current form, the 14 children who will still be below 18 will be entitled not to NIS 7,402 in the form of monthly allowances, as is the case today, but to only NIS 2,016, according to a uniform allowance of NIS 144 per child.

In the meantime, beginning next month, al-Hawashala's monthly guaranteed income payment will decline to NIS 2,300, and later the single-mother allowance his second wife receives will also be slashed. At the same time, the family's expenses will increase - for example, the health tax that the government plans to impose on housewives. If he doesn't find a job, M'eigal al-Hawashala will have to get through the month with less than NIS 5,400. But "there is no work," he says. "And if there is a job available in the Employment Service, a Jew has a 10 times better chance of getting it than a Bedouin."

Mossawa, the Advocacy Center for Arab Citizens of Israel, says that the al-Hawashala family is one of 90,000 poor Arab families in the country that will be hit hard by the new economic plan. The center says that in 2006, another 11,000 families will fall below the poverty line as the direct result of the government's economic measures.

In contrast to other economic plans in recent years - such as the one that sought to reduce child allowances for heads of households who did not do army service - no one is saying that the current plan is discriminatory, at least not in ethnic terms. However, organizations that operate in the Arab sector say that the plan will have an especially harsh impact on the Arab society, in which even now almost every second child lives below the poverty line, according to the National Insurance Institute.

A report issued by Mossawa on "The Impact of the Emergency Plan on the Arab Citizens and the Arab Local Governments" finds that the plan is directly harmful to the Arab population in four areas. First, the shrinkage of the allowances, and especially the child allowances, will hurt many Arab families, which depend on this income. Second, the first victims of the cuts to be made in the development budgets of the Interior Ministry will be Arab local governments, which already suffer from huge deficits. Third, the local governments will also be affected by the plan to merge local governments, as the result will be the dismissal of hundreds of employees. And, fourth, additional funding to "evict interlopers from the state's lands" and to enforce the ban on illegal building - which is also part of the economic plan - will aggravate the distress of the "unrecognized" Bedouin villages in the Negev.

Nothing left
The drive to Al-Ghara, one of the 45 Bedouin villages, which have a total population of between 65,000 and 70,000, villages that are not recognized by the authorities, is a nerve-racking experience. Passengers lurch from side to side in the car as the driver, M'eigal al-Hawashala, veers sharply to avoid potholes and to negotiate sharp turns in the road. "We built this road on Land Day," he says, pointing to the dirt road that cuts across one of the trails in the desert, and referring to the annual event commemorating the first day of protest, in 1976, against the state's expropriation of Arab land. "Like all our houses, the road is also not legal."

The residents of the unrecognized villages are deeply concerned by the enforcement policy that has been introduced against them in the past few months. It has already resulted in the demolition of houses, the poisoning of thousands of dunams of crops and the sickening of flocks because of the sprays used. The new policy, which stems from two recent government decisions - the economic plan and the development plan for the Negev Bedouin, which was passed two weeks ago - means that thousands of illegal buildings and vast farming areas in the Negev are now being targeted by the authorities. The NIS 1.1 billion development plan promises large-scale investment in the existing permanent villages and the establishment of seven new ones, and one of its goals is to dismantle the scattered villages. The residents of the unrecognized villages are vehemently opposed to the new plan, which was worked out behind their backs.

MK Talab a-Sana (United Arab List), who lives in the town of Lakiya, in the Negev, says that the two government plans entail "a large number of blows to the weakest link in the society. Fifty% of the Bedouin children are poor, and the only reason that thepercentage is not higher is the child allowances. In the long run, the profit to the state will be less than the price, because the result will be more divorces, the disintegration of the family cell, an increase in crime and anger at the establishment. They took the land, they took the flocks, they took the allowances - people are left with nothing."

Al-Hawashala, who is the head of the education department in the Council of Unrecognized Villages - a job he does on a volunteer basis - also finds a connection between what he calls "the plan to dispossess the Bedouin of their land" and the slashing of the allowances.

"Until now the government never implemented two plans against the Bedouin at the same time," he says.

After driving for half an hour on the dirt road, we stop next to a concrete building that is adjacent to a large tin hut. By the house are ten of al-Hawashala's children, all of them barefoot.

Because of Al-Ghara's temporary character, and the fact that there is no regular power or water supply, the economic plight of the village's residents is sharply obvious. For example, the al-Hawashala family has no refrigerator, because the large expense it entails does not pay, given the fact that electricity is available only four hours a day, from generators.

"Next year 11 of my children will be in the education system. If there is no refrigerator, I have to give them a little money to buy food, but next year I won't have anything to give them. They will have to take food from the house, but we are not able to preserve food in the proper way."

Dr. Mohammed Murad, an expert on health problems of vulnerable populations, has treated residents of both unrecognized and permanent Bedouin villages. "Even now we find people who are abandoning medical care and who think twice before going to a doctor, because they won't have the money for medicines or even for a specialist examination," he notes. This is true also of other poor population groups, but Murad forecasts that many medical problems will become more acute in Bedouin society, especially in the wake of the economic plan.

About half of all Bedouin children suffer from anemia, he says, explaining that this is "an irreversible problem that must be dealt with immediately." In addition, he cautions, epidemics of infectious diseases could break out in the unrecognized villages; Bedouin women are liable to forgo the expensive genetic check before marrying relatives, and doctors will not able to advise them on family planning; and the 20% of Bedouin women who are second wives will not be able to pay the health tax that will be imposed on them. Another outcome of the plan, he says, could be a reversal of the decline in the maternal and infant mortality rates that has been achieved in the past 20 years. "Accessibility to the medical services in the [Bedouin] sector will be reduced," he says. "If more clinics are built [as part of the development plan], they may be geographically accessible, but they will not be functionally accessible. Even now there are many Bedouin who prefer to go to clinics in Hebron and its surroundings, where `black [under the table] medicine' is available cheaply." In the final analysis, Murad predicts, the economic plan "will force the health system to deal with diseases that could have been prevented, and the expense involved will be astronomical."

The Bedouin, and the country's Arab population as a whole, are showing even less inclination than the Jewish population to fight the economic measures, which many academics and social welfare organizations warn will be disastrous for thousands of families. A Jewish-Arab demonstration against the plan is scheduled for Wednesday, but it will be surprising if large numbers of Arabs take part.

Seeking to explain the indifference, al-Hawashala says, "Ninety% of the Bedouin don't have a clue about how the plan is going to affect them." A public struggle "will perhaps begin only when they feel the effects firsthand, but then it will be too late." A-Sana says the battle against the plan must be waged by Jews and Arabs together, adding, "The question is whether we are heading for an egalitarian society or a capitalist society."

However, the Arab leadership is preoccupied with an aspect of the emergency economic plan that is not directly related to the economic situation of many citizens: the initiative to merge local governments. This, too, is an issue that cuts across ethnic lines, but "you have no idea how important the subject of the local governments is for the Arab public - even more than the Knesset," says MK Jamal Hazalka (Balad). The vigorous efforts to prevent the merger of local governments - which included meetings of Arab MKs and heads of local governments with Interior Minister Avraham Poraz, and a special symposium organized by MK Wasal Taha (Balad) a week ago in Nazareth - has overshadowed the efforts to deal with the impact the economic plan will have on the social security of the country's Arab population.

The Arab press in Israel has adopted a similar agenda: the few news pages that have not been devoted to the war in Iraq are filled with reports quoting the furious reactions of the heads of Arab local governments. "It's true that now, for the first time in Israel's history, the economic situation is truly having an impact on the Arab citizens," says Lutfi Mashour, editor in chief of the weekly A-Sinara, "yet the unification of the local authorities of the Arab communities is preoccupying the public far more."

A-Sinara and other papers are deeply engaged with the implications of these mergers in the Arab sector and with the allegations made by Arab politicians that the true intention of the plan is to increase the government's ability to control the internal relations with the Arab society and, even more, to increase its control over Arab land.

As always, then, questions such as whether the plan will pave the way to expand Upper Nazareth and the underlying political reason for the government's decision not to touch the city of Umm al-Fahm are proving far more riveting than issues such as anemia among Bedouin children in the Negev or how much unemployment insurance the jobless in Kafr Manda will receive.

"The issue of the merger of the communities is no less serious than the land expropriations," Mashour observes. "How many stormy demonstrations have you seen in the Arab sector about social and economic issues? None. Maybe that's not right, maybe we're taking the wrong attitude as journalists, but it also means that our physical existence, our legitimacy, is more important than food."