2 The Role of NGOs within Israel’s National Divide

This chapter focused on the role and effect of NGOs within Palestinian-Arab society in Israel.

We suggest this citation for this chapter:

Patterson, J. Coby (2024). “The Role of NGOs within Israel’s National Divide.” In Zeedan, Rami (ed.), Israel’s Divides Explained. The University of Kansas. https://opentext.ku.edu/israelsdivides/

1. General Introduction:

Hello and welcome to the podcast series “Israel’s Divides Explained.”

This episode focuses on the National Divide in Israel. Specifically, this episode is about “The Relationship between Israeli-Arabs and NGOs.”

This podcast series episode was produced in spring 2023 as part of the course Israel: From Idea to Statehood with Prof. Zeedan at the University of Kansas.

I’m your host, Coby J. Patterson.

I like to introduce myself as a rudimentary scholar of history and an interested observer of Israeli affairs. I am working on my undergrad in Global and Intercultural Studies and History. I am also of partial Ashkenazi descent. Both of these things give me a personal connection to the topic of Israeli affairs and the current situation surrounding the state of Israel.

2. Topic introduction:

Today, we will explore what role NGOs play in the lives and communities of average Israeli Arabs and how they relate to the National Divide.

First, to define an NGO:
A Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) is an independent organized entity that acts outside any sitting government, often on a national level. NGOs are usually non-profit and advocacy-oriented. They can be powerful forces on both the community and national levels as they can fulfill the needs of underprivileged or misrepresented groups who otherwise could not act for themselves. I hope to explore their role in affecting the Arabic minority groups within Israel, specifically, how they are a benefit to these groups.

NGOs often exist in areas where people are mistreated or misrepresented (Zeedan, 2019). They can counter underrepresentation, discrimination, and malpractice by aiding needy people. In the case of Israel, Israeli-Arabs do not enjoy all the protections under the law that their Jewish counterparts do. They are marginalized in a myriad of ways. Therefore, I imagine many of them could use NGO’s help here and there. While the Israeli-Arab situation is unique in and of itself, this is not the only instance where an ethnic minority group is mistreated by its government. Similar situations exist worldwide, including in my home country, the United States. Analyzing the Israeli-Arab perspective not only grants us an understanding of their specific plight but also that of misrepresented minorities globally.

The information here is based on a selection of primary and secondary sources; however, this survey is not exhaustive.

One of my major sources for this episode is a study by Amal Jamal (2008), “The counter-hegemonic role of civil society: Palestinian–Arab NGOs in Israel.”

I will be posting my sources online. More details will be provided at the end of this episode.

In our episode today, we will talk about four major items:

1: Short introduction to Israel
2: Introduction to the six divides and the National divide in Israel
3: What role do NGOs play in the lives and communities of average Israeli Arabs, and how do they relate to the National Divide?
4: Looking to the future

Did you know that Arabic communities in Israel are some of the most reliant on non-profit organizations in the world, with nearly 1,500 independent NGOs working on their behalf?

3. Central Section

3.1 Introduction to Israel

First, a brief introduction to Israel.

The people of Israel originate from far and wide and within, representing many parts of the world and the Levant itself. The immense diversity within the Israeli people contributes to a highly varied Israeli populace and culture.

While this diversity should be celebrated, many have found it a cause for contention. Unfortunately, a social hierocracy within Israel prevents some groups from being on the same level when it comes to status or means. Therefore, not all peoples in Israel find themselves represented on the national level.

3.2 Introduction to the Six Divides and the National Divide

I would argue the most relevant topic surrounding Israel today is these extensive internal divisions, namely Its political divide, national divide, ethnic divide, socioeconomic divide, religious divide, and gender divide (Zeedan, 2024).

This episode is focused on Israel’s national divide. At the state of Israel’s inception at the end of the 1948 War, nearly 700,000 Arab-Palestinians were expelled from the country. The remaining Arab population stood at roughly 20% of the total populace. Today, Israeli citizens who are non-Jewish are still underserved by their government in many ways and do not identify with their country’s Jewish-oriented national narrative.

Israeli-Arabs find themselves in a predicament where their government deems them as citizens but refuses to represent them in public or political realms. The Israeli-Arab’s standard of living is generally worse off than their Jewish counterparts, which is reflected in the lower wages they earn and the lack of infrastructure within Arabic communities. Arabs are not represented in any of Israel’s national symbols, the Israeli national anthem or flag. Arabic is no longer a recognized national language in Israel. Worse yet, there is seemingly no future intention to represent these groups nationally.

In fact, in 2020, a survey was conducted by the Israel Democracy Institute based on the sense of belonging that Israeli citizens feel toward their country. The results showed a notable disparity between a higher sense of belonging among the Jewish populace and a lower level among Arabs. 90% of Jewish citizens felt as if they were part of the State, whereas about 77% of Arabs felt the same way. Also, 66% of Arab respondents felt that Israel has had more failures throughout its history than it has had successes. The inverse result was accurate for Jewish respondents.

3.3 The answer to my question: how do NGOs factor into all this?

So, how do NGOs factor into all this?

NGOs attempt to fill the socioeconomic void the state has created.

It is clear why Israeli-Arabs often need assistance obtaining their general necessities and receiving representation. This is where an NGO comes in. The government doesn’t consistently provide for these people, so the NGO attempts to do so themselves. The government does not represent these people professionally, so the NGO makes an effort to grant them a voice they wouldn’t have otherwise.

There are currently over 1500 NGOs that exist solely to aid Arab communities in Israel. These NGOs play a vital role in providing for the Israeli-Arab in ways the government does not. By doing so, they try to equalize the socioeconomic landscape through their various aid functions.

NGOs fill the void primarily in two ways: By providing direct practical aid and services or by providing ample political representation:

Starting with Providing aid and services: NGOs provide practical aid in a multitude of areas: such as food/goods, housing, employment, and education:

Many organizations distribute food and other necessities. These are primarily religious non-profits and a few secular ones that give food year-round to underprivileged Muslim families. Leket Israel is a notable group that funds over 263 food-providing non-profits, regardless of ethnicity, many of them located in Arab communities.

Many groups, like Adalah (Justice in Arabic), provide public housing in mixed cities, such as Haifa and Jaffa. They aid in planning housing developments and subsidize rent and other housing costs for Arabs.

Several NGOs provide employment centers in places of high unemployment, such as Bedouin towns and mixed cities. Significant disparities exist between Jewish and Arab employment in skilled, professional, and academic work. NGOs often provide Arabs with opportunities in such fields. Either they are employed within the NGO sector as professionals or are provided with training to enter the larger workforce. Many organizations, like the Nazareth-based NGO Tsofen High Technology Centers, hope to train Arabs in hi-tech and cybersecurity skills. Arabs comprise only 2% of Israel’s vast hi-tech industry. That number may jump to 7% in the next five years, primarily due to NGOs work.

Many organizations aid in education for Arabs, such as the Follow-Up Committee for Arab Education, which aids in the development of Arab-oriented curricula and provides scholarships. The Eqraa Association and Iqra’a provide university preparatory programs, after-school curricula, school sports, and pre-schooling—all amenities Israeli Arabs often go without.

In sum, these NGOs providing practical aid and services manage to benefit the struggling portions of the Israeli-Arab populace in many ways. They are extremely notable in their ability to tackle the temporary needs of underprivileged people.

The second way NGOs benefit Israeli Arabs is by providing political representation. Arabic political parties often lack the platform needed to make serious waves in the Knesset on behalf of the Arabic populace, so communities rely on NGOs for the representation they can provide. This side of the NGO sector is focused on protecting the rights of the Israeli Arab populace and fostering social change.
As quoted by Jamal (2008):

“The Arab NGO sector has provided services in many fields where the state has failed. It pressures state institutions to change their policies in various fields. Thereby, the Arab NGO sector plays a strong counter-hegemonic role vs the state, assisting political parties to improve their role in the political arena.”

Some great examples of how NGOs represent the Israeli-Arab are as follows:

The Al-Marsad group engages in researching and monitoring the forced resettlements of Arabs in the Golan Heights, triangle, and elsewhere and provides legal services to those affected.

The Regional Council of Unrecognized Villages tries to halt the resettlement of Bedouin municipalities in the Negev. Last year, they and Adalah were able to halt two evacuations of Bedouin townships.

The Mossawa Center created and maintained an elaborate analysis of the State budget and government spending to identify disparities in funds that favor the Jewish populace and neglect Arab sectors. This analysis, in turn, pressured the government to renovate its national budget to be more equitable for all social groups in the nation.

The Galilee Society works to uphold Arab health rights and petitions for the cleanup of government-caused health hazards within Arab communities.

Lastly, Atidna is a coalition of Jewish and Arab educational leaders who first banded together during the COVID-19 pandemic when education systems struggled. They hope to formulate a better education system for several Arab communities that lack educational standardization. They emphasize the importance of upholding an Arab identity within a Jewish state.

These are just a few examples of how NGOs work to counter the Jewish hegemony that dominates the Arab communities within Israel. These organizations grant the Arabs a voice in the public realm. In doing so, they contribute to adding legitimacy to the Arabs’ national narrative, helping to solidify the Israeli-Arab national identity.

Together, these NGOs also loosely amalgamate to create an NGO sector in Israeli society that can potentially elevate the Arab’s position in society. With so much activity happening across multiple sectors of society, all of which are Arab-oriented, this vast web of NGOs band together to create a loose pseudo-national system positioned around the Arab.

Many professionally trained Arabs find work within the NGO sector, as it is easier for them to become employed there compared to the general workforce. Working in the NGO sector also has the added benefit of bringing with it a sense of community advocacy. The Arab-Palestinians working within the NGO sector contribute to a system that directly benefits their community, whether giving students an opportunity for a better education, urban planning for Arabic townships, working in an employment agency, managing a food drive, etc. Whereas working within the general workforce often may feel like doing the opposite, as in opposing their community by benefiting a system that is geared toward benefiting the Jewish populace at the Arab’s expense. The NGO sector provides an alternate workforce that is friendlier to Israeli-Arab affairs.

NGOs do some phenomenal work in aiding and empowering Israeli-Arabs. However, this observation would not be well-rounded if NGO limitations were not discussed.

Each example of an NGO I have mentioned works to fill a gap intentionally left unfilled by the Israeli government. Essentially, these organizations are forever locked in a game of catch-up, trying to fix whatever issue the government leaves broken. They are working in a system that has no intention of changing. There is no way these organizations, who largely depend on donations to function, could ever possibly provide for the Arab citizens on the scale as the government could. While the role of NGOs is necessary, it is not a sustainable solution. It is a band-aid on a gunshot wound. Jamal (2008) puts it this way,

“As pointed out by many NGO scholars, It is doubtful that NGOs can offer a sustainable substitution for state spending, an observation that applies to Arab NGOs in particular, despite their good intentions.”

People rely on these outside organizations because the government shirks its responsibility to care for its citizens. NGOs are invaluably helpful within the national divide, but they can never be the end of the discussion.

3.4 Looking to the future:

As we look toward the future, there is much cause for concern when speculating about the national divide. There are no signs on the horizon that the situation for Israeli-Arabs will get any easier any time soon.

Therefore, NGOs will continue to play important roles in the Arab public’s everyday lives.

However, the proliferation of NGOs in marginalized communities is a recent phenomenon that is picking up pace globally, and indeed so within Israel. More and more Arab NGOs are created every year, which will likely continue to be a benefit.

Personally, I am troubled by the state of affairs within Israel’s national divide. The current system is not fair to the Israeli-Arab populace. As I stated earlier, they are marginalized in a myriad of ways. Their situation mirrors marginalized groups around the world and within my home country. And because of this, I can understand how the Arabic population would feel at odds with their government and why they might hold to a separate nationality. I hope that outside actors such as world governments and NGOs will continue to pressure the Israeli government to shift their practices to being more inclusive and lean into equity for all.

4. Wrap-up and closing remarks

Altogether, Israel is a complex society. Its National Divide has complex issues that require comprehensive solutions. For now, NGOs are the solution to the extent they can be. They have proven their ability to grant practical aid in the way of necessities, education, employment, housing, and a tapestry of other services that were not mentioned. They can also defend the rights of Israeli-Arabs and uphold their image on a national level through representation in the face of adversaries.

I will post my sources for this episode online. To see them, look at the page where you are listening to the episode.

Thank you for listening and for your interest and concern for the Arabic minority within Israel and for marginalized minority groups everywhere. I’m grateful for your time. Please check out the other episodes in the series “Israel’s Divides Explained.”

5. Bibliography
5.1 Primary sources:

Al-Marsad. (2023). Human Rights Center in Golan-Heights – [المرصد]. https://golan-marsad.org/. Accessed 10 October 2024.

Collect Israel. (2023). Saving quality food surpluses and transferring them to those who need them
2023 ). [לקט ישראל ,2023. הצלת עודפי מזון איכותיים והעברתם לאלו הזקוקים להם] (Hebrew) https://www.leket.org/ . Accessed 10 October 2024.

Deep Thinking – The Podcast Host.

i24NEWS English. (2022, May 15). Poll: 23% of Arab Israelis would support Arab invasion in Israel [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egeA26b2GcY Accessed 10 October 2024.

Inter-Agency Task Force (2019). Arab Civil Society Organizations in Israel: A Review of Trends, Growth, and Activities. https://www.iataskforce.org/activities/view/965. Accessed 10 October 2024.

Legal Center for the Protection of Arab Minority Rights – Adalah (n.d.). [المركز القانوني لحمایة حقوق الأقلیة العربیة – عدالة]. (Arabic) https://www.adalah.org/. Accessed 10 October 2024.

Milshtein, M. (2021, June 21). The crisis in relations between Jews and Arabs in Israel: Can the rift be healed? The Washington Institute. https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/crisis-relations-between-jews-and-arabs-israel-can-rift-be-healed  Accessed 23 March 2023.

Sverdlov, B. L. (2020, September 9). New Arab-Jewish NGO wants to reclaim unity from the Left. The Jerusalem Post | JPost.com. https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/new-arabjewish-ngo-wants-to-reclaim-unity-from-the-left-641485.  Accessed 10 October 2024.

The Galilee Society – Empowering The Palestinian Arab Community In Israel. (n.d.). https://galsoc.org/en/. Accessed 10 October 2024.

The Israel Democracy Institute. Decade-Long High in Israelis’ “Sense of Belonging.” (2020, April 27). The Israel Democracy Institute. https://en.idi.org.il/articles/31437 . Accessed 10 October 2024.

Tsofen (n.d.). Home. Tsofen. https://www.tsofen.org/. Accessed 10 October 2024.

5.2 Secondary sources:

Agbaria, Ayman K., and Muhanad Mustafa. “The case of Palestinian civil society in Israel: Islam, civil society, and educational activism.” Critical Studies in Education 55, no. 1 (2014): 44-57. https://doi.org/10.1080/17508487.2014.857360

Gidron, Benjamin. “Promoting civil society in Third Sector organizations through participatory management patterns.” European Management Journal 28, no. 6 (2010): 403-412. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.emj.2010.06.005

Ichilov, Orit. “Pride in one’s country and citizenship orientations in a divided society: The case of Israeli Palestinian Arab and orthodox and non-orthodox Jewish Israeli youth.” Comparative Education Review 49, no. 1 (2005): 44-61. https://doi.org/10.1086/426160

Jamal, Amal. “The counter-hegemonic role of civil society: Palestinian–Arab NGOs in Israel.” Citizenship Studies 12, no. 3 (2008): 283-306. https://doi.org/10.1080/13621020802015446

Payes, Shany. Palestinian NGOs in Israel: The Politics of Civil Society. (2005) I.B. Tauris.

Zeedan, Rami. “Social Identity and Voting Behavior in a Deeply Divided Society: The Case of Israel.” Societies 14, no. 9 (2024): 177. https://doi.org/10.3390/soc14090177

Zeedan, Rami. Arab-Palestinian society in the Israeli political system: Integration versus segregation in the twenty-first century. Rowman & Littlefield, 2019.