Empowerment Program at Givat Haviva:
Changing the Face of Arab Israeli Society

In an article dated August 30, 2005, Ha’aretz newspaper reported that unemployment among Arab Israelis soared by more than 10 percent during the second half of 2005, according to a recently published government agency report.

”The increase in unemployment among Israeli Arabs, which stood at 11.3 percent in 2005, up by a whole percent since last year, came despite the reduction in unemployment in the Jewish sector.” (Ruth Sinai, Ha’aretz)

Unfortunately, this state of affairs is not new. According to statistics on poverty in Israel, 60% of Israelis living below the poverty line are Arabs. This statistic is startling considering that Arab Israelis make up only 20% of the population. The average wage for most Arab Israelis is NIS 6,700 per month, while the average wage for Jewish Israelis is double that, at NIS 11,500 per month.

In order to combat the growing gap between the Jewish Israeli community and the Palestinian citizens of Israel Givat Haviva, through the auspices of the Jewish-Arab Centre for Peace and in conjunction with the Arab Mayors Council, has developed a program of empowerment courses that aim to upgrade the professional level of Arab municipal workers in order to combat and change the unacceptable discrepancies between the two communities. The empowerment courses had their beginnings as a staff idea at Givat Haviva, but the connection between the coexistence organization and the Arab Mayors Council is strong. Riad Kabha, former Director of the Jewish-Arab Centre for Peace at Givat Haviva and a prominent contributor to the development of the empowerment programs, was recently elected Mayor of the regional council of three Arab towns, Barta’a, Ain Essahleh and Mu’wiah. The courses aim to improve the skills of public and business officials to effectively deal with the government and to work efficiently and responsibly with the community.

For Dr. Ghazal Abu Raya, Director of the Sakhnin Branch of the Jewish-Arab Centre for Peace, the purpose of the empowerment program is to improve the functioning and the work of the local councils and municipalities, as well as the various public departments such as health and education. “The local councils and municipalities are the central operation for the social and financial foundation of the Arab community in Israel,” says Dr. Abu Raya. “The purpose of the empowerment programs is to give the Arab population the skills and knowledge to make the most of their work.”

“Our population is young: 60% of Arab-Israelis are under the age of 19, 41% of Arab Israelis in the Negev are under the age of 14. This population needs a lot of investment. Netanyahu’s policies as Finance Minister only made life harder for the weaker members of society, and with 33% of Arabs surviving off government insurance it is easy to see how badly those policies affected the Arab Israeli communities,” Dr. Abu Raya commented. “It’s harder for Arab Israelis to find housing in Haifa and Tel Aviv, and even harder for Arab Israelis to own land. Arab Israelis own only 3% of the land in Israel. Most research points clearly to the fact that Arab Israelis are on the margins of Israeli society, financially, politically and socially.”

“There is discrimination against Arabs in Israel, there is no need to prove it. The government admits it has this problem,” says Mohammad Darawshe, Deputy Executive Director of Givat Haviva. “The reasons behind this discrimination lie in the application of government policies; it is de facto discrimination, it is institutional.”

Mr. Darawshe feels that the empowerment program will have a profound effect on Arab Israeli society, and Israeli society in general. “I believe that if we are better able to knock on the right doors of government agencies, accompanied by proper proposals and budgets and be able to follow up with the correct agencies and government institutions, then we will solve 50% of the discrimination against Arab communities in Israel.”

The courses provide so much more than practical business tips and technical skills; with each lesson they are laying the foundation for a proactive and productive civil society in the Arab community. The programs deal with the collective problems of the community, such as the media, and they stress the responsibilities of leadership, including the development of “second layer” leadership, and the importance of due diligence. The courses promote the essential aspect of taking an active role in representing the collective needs of the Arab community, including a responsibility for interaction between the Arab and Jewish communities.

“From communal and shared responsibility we will succeed in establishing a large network of Arab professionals that emulate and transfer that sense of collective responsibility, which will then transfer to the Jewish community and then the government,” says Mr. Darawshe.

Givat Haviva has tailor-made its courses to deal with the unique needs of the Arab community leaders. “We try to bring most of the speakers from the Arab community, those who possess certain skills and who have significant achievements and success in their fields,” says Mr. Darawshe. “These are people with assets who exist in their communities and are being under utilized. These are potential consultants and advisors to those municipalities. We bring them in to speak with our students in order to help them to continue to walk on the right track. These speakers are more than lecturers; they are mentors and contacts.”

Both Givat Haviva and the Arab Mayors Council aspire to create a professional training school or institute that would continue to improve and adapt to proper management needs as well as future needs as determined by the participants of the programs. “We have already had many suggestions from former students about topics for future courses, such as coping with violence within the Arab community,” says Mr. Darawshe. “It is important that the institute is not static, that it continues to be a maturing institute.”

Many of the speakers who lecture for the empowerment programs are government or media personae from the Jewish community. Most of them react very positively to the professionals they meet from the Arab community through the programs. Under normal circumstances professional members from the Jewish and Arab community would not interact. Mr. Darawshe feels that the true importance of the lectures lies in the opportunities to create contacts between the two communities. “We often arrange field trips and internships for our students to government institutions or Jewish professional institutions, municipal offices and media outlets, as well as taking them to universities to meet with professors. For most of the students in our programs these meetings mark the first occurrence of interaction between the Arab professionals and their counterparts in the Jewish community. For most of the public officials, these are people that they should have been meeting with on a weekly basis throughout their term in office. In 80% of cases they have never met their Jewish counterpart before taking the empowerment program. In 80% of cases local Arab public relations officials have never met with the important members of the Hebrew media. The problem is that officials and private business owners do not have the personal links that would help them to get to see the right people in the Jewish community. In Israel a lot of the time connections are made during military service, and this is another area where Arab citizens lose out.

“There is discrimination towards the Arab population in Israel. On top of that there is the feeling in the Arab community that it is impossible to get a foot in the door. The empowerment programs offered by Givat Haviva aim to lift the blocks that exist both between the Arab and Jewish communities as well as the ones that we have created for ourselves within the Arab community. We want to aid the Arab community in forging new paths and utilizing new skills and assets in order to get what they need from the Israeli government and society.”

Such under-utilized assets include the women of the communities, many of whom hold leadership positions in their towns and municipalities or who own or run businesses. Givat Haviva has designed a course specifically for these women to help them take greater advantage of their position in their communities and to gain greater access to the right people and institutions in the Jewish community. Mr. Darawshe feels these courses are groundbreaking. “The courses encourage the women to push past the social conditioning and restrictions of their society and ask them to take a leadership position in encouraging social action. We teach them how to make the most of their municipal leadership positions and how to develop the role of NGO's in social, cultural and political issues. We want to make sure that their voices are heard.”

Studies show that such action is needed to bring women into the public sphere of the Arab community. Arab Israelis face the same pressures of the modern Israeli society and economy. However only 17% of Arab women work, and even fewer take leadership positions in social, political, cultural and business fields. Most of the women who participate in the Arab empowerment courses at Givat Haviva are already business owners or hold municipal positions, but the intention of the courses is to create a trickle-down effect. The women are trained to become leaders in their own community and pass on their knowledge to other women. Through taking the courses they become a force of grassroots change.

The Spokespersons Program
Givat Haviva is not only intent on issues of social discrimination from a top-down perspective. The empowerment program is designed to raise the level of social responsibility within the Arab community. “The image of Arabs in the Hebrew press and the amount of coverage the Arab population receives needs to change,” says Mr. Darawshe, and it is through the Spokespersons Program that their students will learn to take greater responsibility for news concerning the Arab population.

This year the second session of the Spokespersons Program took place in Nazareth, with 25 people from the Arab Local Council participating. The program, sponsored by the Swiss government, is a 170-hour course that trains spokespeople to improve their ability to work with the Hebrew and Arabic media. Students learn techniques to better communicate with the general public and improve their knowledge of all forms of media, in order to use the media to their advantage. Generating a greater understanding of the media is especially important when dealing with the Hebrew media. “Research shows that in the 50 years of Israeli media on average only 3% of coverage in the Hebrew press is devoted to news in the Arab population.” According to Dr. Abu Raya, 75% of coverage of the Arab population in the Hebrew press is “disorder news,” reports of violence, theft and political and social unrest. “We expect the Hebrew media to serve the interest of the majority in their news coverage, but this comes at the expense of the [Arab] minority when the coverage of our population is stereotyped.”

Mr. Darawshe points out that the source of the news is one of the reasons for the particular coverage. “The main feeders of news to the press are police and security authorities and politicians. When Arab politicians speak to their Arab voters they work to make the headlines, they make inflammatory statements, and the Hebrew press picks this up. Jewish radical politicians strengthen issues about the ‘demographic danger,’ adding fuel to the fire.”

The Spokespersons Project’s aim is to train its students to deal with this information gap by teaching them skills and techniques such as learning to write a press release in Hebrew. “We are asking a new layer of professionals and executives in the community to take responsibility to represent the community with alternative news of a social, economic and cultural nature, not security, political or criminal nature,” says Mr. Darawshe. The students meet with journalists from the Hebrew media, both Arab and Jewish journalists, who give them an inside understanding of the media circuit.

The Community Leadership Program
In cooperation with the Nazareth Municipality, 25 participants recently took part in the Community Leadership program. The program is designed to assist local community leaders in working with their own community. “The program’s aim is to help community leaders to create a civil society in their community, to encourage their populations to take responsibility for their own lives,” says Dr. Abu Raya. The 200-hour program is taking place from March until October of this year, and will touch on social, cultural and political aspects of community leadership, as well as teaching techniques of conflict management and teamwork. One of the things the course encourages is the creation of neighbourhood committees that can work alongside the local council. These committees encourage the growth of civil society, as they create a representative body in each neighbourhood that then works directly with the local council, enabling smaller groups to take action for issues that relate directly to their own communities. Dr. Abu Raya states that generally there are more women than men in the community leadership courses.

Treasurers Course
In November of 2005 the JACP in Sakhnin will be starting a fundraising course for treasurers of local councils. According to Dr. Abu Raya, “Raising funds is one of the weaknesses of the Arab council.” This course aims to empower local and municipal councils with skills that will help them to raise funds from the Israeli government as well as from foreign funding bodies. The course will focus on such practical issues as how to write a funding proposal, and how to petition the government for more funding. “Generally, budgets for Arab communities are smaller than the budgets of Jewish communities. Sakhnin, for instance, is a town of 25,000 people and has an annual budget of just NIS 82 million.”

The point of the fundraising program and the other empowerment programs offered by the JACP is that they give the Arab community in Israel the power to work the system. Certainly there is discrimination against the Arab Israeli population, but the courses provide a stepping stone for leaders in the Arab Israeli community to bridge the gap between their society and the Jewish population.

Most of the training programs take place at Givat Haviva and the Arab Municipal Council headquarters in Nazareth. Some courses are taught in the Jewish-Arab Centre for Peace Branch in Sakhnin in the Upper Galilee, and there are plans to bring the courses to the Negev by next year.