Sixty years after the UN partition resolution: What future for the arab economy in Israel?

Journal of Palestine Studies

Volumn 37, Issue 2, 2008, Pages 6-22

  Khalidi, Raja ^a  

^a United Nations Conference on Trade and Development   (Switzerland)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ECONOMIC POLICY; ECONOMIC RELATIONS; ECONOMIC THEORY; REGIONAL ECONOMY; SOCIOECONOMIC CONDITIONS; UNITED NATIONS;

ISRAEL; PALESTINE;

EID: 57749142627     PISSN: 0377919X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1525/jps.2008.37.2.6     Document Type: Article

References (45)

1. Other terms used to refer to this population (depending on the commentator's viewpoint) include "Palestinian Arabs in Israel," "Arabs of Israel," "Arabs in Israel," and 'Arab minority in Israel."
2. In this paper, the economy of the Arab region in Israel is synonymous with "Arab regional economy" in Israel and "Arab-Israeli economy." Other common usages include the "Arab sector" or "Arab minority." Here "Israel/Palestine" refers to the territory of pre-1948 Mandate Palestine (i.e., present-day Israel and the West Bank/Gaza Strip).
3. The most recent comprehensive treatment of the subject may be found in J. Metzer, The Divided Economy of Mandatory Palestine (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998).
4. Two contemporaneous accounts of the Mandate economy are S. Himadeh, Economic Organisation of Palestine (Beirut: American University of Beirut, 1939) and J.B. Hobman, Palestine's Economic Future (London: Lund Humphries, 1946).
5. The course of economic integration between sovereign nations (as for example followed in postwar Europe) usually goes from preferential to free-trade to customs union (as with the European Economic Community) to monetary/currency union (as with the European Monetary Union) to full economic union (still unattained in Europe).
6. Similar to UNGA Res. 181, the Oslo accords included "Annex on Economic Relations" (know as the Paris Protocol), which enshrined and codified a modified version of the customs union between
7. srael and the occupied territories that was in force since 1967.
8. This figure excludes Palestinians living in East Jerusalem, which Israeli statistics include as "Arab-Israelis." The Arabs in Israel also constitute one-fifth of the Palestinian Arab population living within historic Palestine.
9. See Special Document file in Journal of Palestine Studies 36, no.4 (Summer 2007), 73-103.
10. Y. Ben Porath, TheArabLabor Force in Israel (Jerusalem: Maurice Falk Institute, 1966);
11. S. Zarhi and A. Achziera, The Economic Conditions of the Arab Minority in Israel (Tel Aviv: Center for Afro-Asian Studies, 1966);
12. F. Gottheil, "On the Economic Development of the Arab Region in Israel" in M. Curtis and M. Chertoff, eds., Israel, Social Structure and Change (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1973);
13. M. Arnon and M. Raviv, From Fellah to Farmer: A Study on Change in Arab Villages (Rehovot, Israel: Study Settlement Center, 1980) E. Yalan et al., The Modernization of Traditional Agricultural Villages: Minority Villages in Israel (Rehovot, Israel: Study Settlement Center, 1972);
14. Y. Bar-Gal, Geographical Changes in the Traditional Arab Villages in Israel (Durham, UK: Center for Middle East and Islamic Studies, 1980);
15. D. Czamanski and M. Meyer-Brodnitz, "Industrialisation in Arab Villages in Israel" in R. Bar-El, ed., Industrialization in Rural Israel (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1986);
16. M. Semyonov and N. Lewin-Epstein, The Arab Minorityin Israel's Economy: Patterns ofEthnic Inequality (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1993).
17. Ruth Klinov, Ephraim Kleiman, and Meirav Yftach, "Market integration and separation of the Arab and Jewish sectors in Israel" (unpublished paper, 2004).
18. B. Abu Kishk, "Arab Land and Israeli Policy," Journal of Palestine Studies 11, no. 1 (Fall 1981), pp. 124-35;
19. H. Rosenfeld, "The Arab Village Proletariat," New zutlook 7, no. 3 (1962);
20. H. Rosenfeld, "The Class Situation of the Arab National Minority in Israel," Comparative Studies in Society and History, no. 20 (July 1978);
21. N. Makhoul, "Employment Structure of the Arabs in Israel," JPS 11, no. 3 (Spring 1982), pp. 77-102;
22. E. Zureik, Palestinians in Israel: A Study in Internal Colonialism (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1979);
23. I. Lustick, Arabs in the Jewish State: Israel's Control of a National Minority (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1980);
24. M. Sofer, I. Schnell, and I. Drori, "Industrial Zones and Arab Industrialisation in Israel," Human Organization 55, no. 4 (Winter 1996);
25. A. Haidar, On the Margins: The Arab Population in the Israeli Economy (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1995);
26. R.Khamaisi, Planning and Housing Among the Arabs ofIsrael (Tel Aviv: International Center for Peace in the Middle East, 1990);
27. R. Khalidi, The Arab Economy in Israel: Dynamics of a Region's Development (London: Croom Helm, 1988).
28. This relationship was most recently analyzed in the context of a mercantilist relation in A. Shehadeh, De-development: Israeli Economic Policies toward the Arab National Minority [in Arabic], (Haifa: Mada al-Carmel Center, 2006).
29. Another recent contribution to an indigenous socioeconomic narrative is provided in The Galilee Society, Palestinians in Israel, 2004: Socioeconomic Survey (Shafamr: The Galilee Society and Mada al-Carmel Center, 2005). This latter publication was not the first of its kind: In 1992, the now-defunct Jaffa Research Center (Nazareth) published the first indigenous statistical field survey findings on Arab cities and villages in Israel.
30. This process is similar to that of "de-development" analyzed by Sara Roy and to the concept of "adverse path-dependence" introduced by UNCTAD in research on the Palestinian economy in the occupied territories.
31. Raja Khalidi, The Arab Economy in Israel: Dynamics ofa Region's Development (London: Croom Helm, 1988).
32. ee also R. Khalidi, "The Arab Economy in Israel: Dependency or Development," in JPS 13, no. 3 (Spring 1984), pp. 63-86.
33. This had become a rallying slogan of the Palestinian nationalist revival in Israel during the 1980s and until the signing of the Oslo Accord.
34. ICBS, Characterization and Classification of Local Authorities by the Socioeconomic Level of the Population, 2003.
35. Those not covered comprise Israeli kibbutzim and the smallest Arab villages, plus about forty Arab villages and localities (mainly settled Bedouin) not recognized by the state.
36. All of the following gaps would be sharper if comparisons were made between all Arab localities with all Jewish localities rather than with the national averages.
37. ICBS, Statistical Abstract ofIsrael 2005.
38. 1 dunam = 1000 square meters, or one-fourth of an acre.
39. Statistical Abstract ofIsrael 2005, Table 19.6.
40. Participation rate measures the proportion of the working age population actually employed or seeking employment. Labor force data presented here are for 2000 and are taken from ICBS, Statistical Abstract ofIsrael 2005, Table 12.20.
41. The Palestinian economy and the policy environment shaping it has spawned voluminous literature over the decades, including reports and studies by United Nations and international agencies too numerous to reference here.
42. In the classic dependency model, the relation between the dominant and dominated economies is that ofa hub-to-spoke link, whereby the functional economic relation is between the center and the periphery, with limited exchange between the peripheries themselves.
43. Some observers would argue that PA autonomy was illusory and never really existed.
44. According to the Center for Development of Arab and Jewish Enterprise, quoted in Ha'Aretz, 10 September 2007.
45. E. Zureik, The Palestinians in Israel,p.58.