The Arabs in Israel: a National Minority and Cheap Labor Force, a Split Labor Market Analysis
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Loyola University Chicago Loyola eCommons Dissertations Theses and Dissertations 1986 The Arabs in Israel: A National Minority and Cheap Labor Force, a Split Labor Market Analysis Samir M. Miari Loyola University Chicago Follow this and additional works at: https://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_diss Part of the Sociology Commons Recommended Citation Miari, Samir M., "The Arabs in Israel: A National Minority and Cheap Labor Force, a Split Labor Market Analysis" (1986). Dissertations. 2455. https://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_diss/2455 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Theses and Dissertations at Loyola eCommons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Loyola eCommons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License. Copyright © 1986 Samir M. Miari THE ARABS IN ISRAEL: A National Minority and Cheap Labor Force A Split Labor Market Analysis by SAMIR M. MIARI A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Loyola University of Chicago in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor Of Philosophy NOVEMBER 1986 DEDICATION To my wife Yosra and our two beloved daughters, Tanya and Lena, whose sacrifices are beyond repay. To my parents, Samiyah and Mostafa Miari, whose sincere efforts to give me the best were hampered by the Arab-Jewish conflict. And, to all those Arabs and Jews who wish to understand, in earnest, the Arab-Jewish relations so that the future could be made better. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I wish to extend my gratitude to the many people who helped in making this study possible. First and foremost I wish to thank members of my committee for their valuable comments and support: Drs. Kathleen Mccourt, Peter Whalley, co-chairs, Christine Fry, and Vincent Mahler, members. I am particularly indebted to Peter Whalley, co-chair of my committee, for his continuous advice and support throughout, particularly during the early stages of this project. His intellectual contribution has been invaluable in defining the problem at hand. Thanks are also due to Dr. David Fasenfest of the Sociology Department at Loyola University who read the manuscript and provided much valued comments and advice. Special thanks are due to my family whose encouragement, continued support and comfort always came when they were most needed. Without such support and understanding the task at hand would have been impossible. Special thanks are also due to my brother, Suhail Miari, who spared no efforts to make me and my family feel welcomed in his newly adopted country. His help in many ways contributed to the successful completion of this project. I also wish to extend my thanks to my father and mother in-law, Abdul-Rahim and Mariam Haj-Yahia, for their continued support throughout this period. Their frequent visits to iii this far away land served as a reminder of the realities and flavour of the Middle-East. iv VITA Samir Miari is the second of fifteen brothers and sisters born to Mostafa and Samiyah Miari. He was born on June 13, 1946 in Birwa, a small village on the western tip of the hills of Galilee, Palestine. As a result of the Arab-Jewish war of 1948 Birwa was destroyed and Mr. Miari and his family began what turned out to be a series of relocations until 1950 when they finally settled in Maker, another Arab village in western Galilee, where he and his family still live. He completed his elementary education in Maker in 1960. In 1964 he graduated from Yanni High School in Kofer-Yasif, a near-by village. In 1969, Samir graduated from the School of Social Work at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Upon graduation Samir worked as a deputy director of the International Cultural Center for Youth, in East Jerusalem. In June of 1970, he moved to the National Insurance Institute as a rehabilitation social worker in East Jerusalem. There he helped establish the first rehabilitation services for Arab workers. In 1971 Samir travelled to the United States for further education. Between September 1971 and May 1973 he attended the George Warren Brown School of Social Work at Washington University in St. Louis Missouri. During the Academic year 1972-73 Samir was awarded a research assistantship from Washington University and on May 1973 he received his MSW. v Between the years 1974 and 1977 he attended School of Engineering at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. In 1977 Samir returned to his country. During the following five years he worked in a variety of settings. He was the senior social worker for the drug addiction clinic in Akko, in Northern Israel, from 1977 to May 1980; students advisor then lecturer in the School of Social Work at Haifa University, from July 1977 to August 1982; part-time lecturer at Beir Zeit University in the West Bank, from February 1980 to June 1982; and senior supervisor at the ministry of Social Betterment, working mostly with Arab social workers in the Little Triangle, from September 1979 to August 1981. In August 1982 he was awarded a research assistantship for three consecutive years from the department of Sociology, Loyola University of Chicago, where he pursued his doctoral studies. From 1984 to December 1986 Samir worked as statistical consultant at the Loyola Computer Center. Samir plans to return home and resume his teaching career at one of the local universities where he will conduct further studies on the Arab-Jewish relations. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Page DEDICATION . ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS iii VITA v LIST OF TABLES ix Chapter I. INTRODUCTION 1 Race/Ethnicity in the Sociological Literature 1 Contemporary Ethnic/Racial Theorizing 3 The Split Labor Market- Theoretical Formulation 10 Arab Jewish Relations . 19 The Pre-State Period 19 The Post-State Period 24 II. THE ARAB MINORITY . 33 The Demographic Distribution of the Arabs 34 Societal and Institutional Boundary Maintenance 43 Arab Labor . 46 Arab Education 50 Political Organization . 51 Explaining the Status of the Arabs 52 Summary ..... 56 III. THE JEWISH POPULATION AND THE ARABS 58 The Jewish Inter-Ethnic Cleavages and the Arabs 58 Jewish Differential Attitudes Toward the Arabs 61 Jewish Ethnic Voting Patterns and the Arabs 72 Summary . 79 IV. LAND POLICIES AND IMPLICATIONS 81 The Acquisition of Arab Land by the Israeli Government. 83 Land Losses and the Arab Labor Force 94 Arab and Jewish Opposition to Land Expropriation 107 The Leasing of Land to Arabs . 111 The Jewish National Fund and its Land-Purchase Activities 114 Summary . 122 V. THE MILITARY GOVERNMENT 124 vii Chronology of Events . 125 Policies and Practices . 128 The Struggle for the Abolition of the Military Government . 138 The National Security Argument 144 Alternative Explanations 151 A Final Note 158 Summary . 164 VI. THE HISTADRUT AND THE ARAB LABOR FORCE 167 The Pre-State Period 168 The Post-State Period 172 Labor Market Conditions and Arab Labor (1948-1959) 178 The Opening of the Histadrut to Arab Membership . 186 Jewish Labor Protected . 193 Sectoral and Hierarchical Positioning of the Arabs 195 Arab-Jewish Wage Differentials 199 Summary . 205 VII. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS 209 Implications and Future Developments 213 REFERENCES 217 viii LIST OF TABLES Table Page 1.1 Immigration of Jews to Palestine and Israel by Continent of Origin and Period of Immigration 1882-1975 22 2.1 Jewish and Arab Population in Israel 1949-1981 36 2.2 Distribution of Arab Population by District 1948-1973 38 2.3 Distribution of Arab Population by Area of Residence 1955-1973 (percent) .... 39 2.4 Population Distribution of Arabs and Jews by District 1948-1971 . .... 41 2.5 Unemployment as a Percent of the Labor Force 1949-1965 48 3.1 Distribution of Seats, First Through the Ninth Knesset for the Labor Alignment and Likud 1949-77 75 4.1 Expropriation of Arab Land (Selected Villages) 95 4.2 Employed Arabs and Jews by Category of Employment 1931 (Percent) . 97 4.3 Employed Arabs and Jews by Category of Occupation 1963, 1972 (Percent) . 97 4.4 Employed Arabs and Jews by Occupation 1981 (Percent) 98 4.5 Jewish Land Ownership by Year and Purchaser 1882-1947 116 4.6 Land Ownership in Palestine (1936) . 121 5.1 Jewish and Arab Employment by Occupation, Continent of Birth and Period of Immigration 1963 (Percent) . 156 5.2 Yearly Jewish Immigration by Continent of Birth (1948-66) 162 6.1 Nominal Wage Changes and Unemployment Rates (1956-65) 183 6.2 Employed Jewish Men in Agriculture as a Percent of total Employed Men . 184 6.3 Non-Jewish Employed Men by Industry, 1958-1963 (Percent) 185 6.4 Labor Force Participation of Non-Jewish Men by Age 1958-1963 . ....... 191 6.5 Non-Jewish Employed Men by Occupation 1954-1963 (Percent) 195 ix 6.6 Non-Jewish Employed Persons as a Percent of All Employed Persons by Industry 1961-1963 . 197 x CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION RACE/ETHNICITY IN THE SOCIOLOGICAL LITERATURE The era following World War II which signaled the beginning of decolonialization has witnessed a renewed interest by sociologists in the question of race and ethnic relations. This renewed interest in research and theory building reflects, more than anything else, the persistance of ethnicity and the emergence of many ethnic conflicts within and between societies around the world. Aside from class, race and ethnicity are probably the most widely recognized lines along which cleavages within most of the world's societies occur. According to Glazer and Moynihan, until quite recently in the west "the preoccupation with property relations obscured ethnic ones", at least in Western societies, but now "it is property that begins to seem derivative, and ethnicity that seems to become a more fundamental source of stratification".