"Layering" as a Mode of Institutional Change: National Civic Service in 1996-2014

Etta Bick

Ariel University, Israel

A quiet revolution is taking place in Israel in civic national service, a change which may have a far reaching effect on relations between Israel's Jewish majority and minority groups and their integration into Israeli society. It will have an impact on employment and will encourage many who up until now were often not employed, ultra-orthodox men, and Druze women, to join the work force. Through a series of policy amendments the opportunity to volunteer to civic national service has been extended to sectors that hitherto were exempted or deferred from service. Primarily through a process of "layering", adding new rules and institutions alongside existing institutions and "displacement", replacing or amending existing legislation, Israel has undergone a process of change in civic national service that has been incremental but may be cumulatively transformative.

Service has traditionally been defined in Israel as service in the military. The national security law, enacted in 1949, established a "citizen army" to which all able body men and women were drafted (three years for men and two years for women). In addition, citizens were required to do additional service each year in the reserves. The IDF (Israel Defense Force) was assigned civic tasks as well in the fields of education, welfare and immigrant absorption. Military service became a rite of passage into Israeli society for young men and women and for new immigrants. It was integrative and inclusive for those who were willing to share the Zionist ethos. Conversely, for the non-Zionist ultra-orthodox who chose to devote themselves to full time study in and for Israeli Arabs who were exempted from military service, failing to serve was clearly a barrier to integration into Israeli society and economy (Levy, 2007; Peled & Shafir, 2002).

The subject of service, military or civic arouses heated debate in Israel. While the overwhelming majority of Jewish citizens support the principle that all citizens should be required to give service to the state, Israel's Arab leaders categorically reject suggestions that they should serve. They point to Israeli governments' inveterate policy of discrimination against Arab citizens and submit that equal rights must precede citizen obligation (Zarik, 2014). Israel's ultra-orthodox sector whose sons enjoy extended deferments from service while they engage in religious studies maintain that studying Torah is their way of serving the nation. According to IDF statistics for the year 2011 approximately 50% of Israelis of conscription age were deferred, excused, or exempted from service, 13% were ultra-orthodox

1 students, 35% religious women (orthodox and ultra-orthodox), 12.5% those unsuitable for service and 20% Israeli Arabs. Druze women were excused as well. This disparity between citizens who serve and the growing number of those who do not generated grass-root protest to change the and multiple petitions to the High Court.

This article explores the process of endogenous institutional change as it has evolved in Israel in the controversial policy area of civic national service. It will utilize the concepts of layering and displacement, as developed by Mahoney and Thelen (2010), and others to explore the process of gradual but yet significant and transformative change in public policy. It will show that through a slow but gradual process of policy layering new populations and new programs were added to the existing model of civic national service and limited change was achieved despite the reluctance of the IDF and the strong opposition of minority groups.

Three modes of gradual institutional change: displacement, layering and drift

In democratic systems, laws and rules which define and regulate public policy are the result of deliberation and compromise. They reflect the prevailing power relations between sectors in society and the dominant interests of the majority. Once defined and translated into law, they endure over time, hence their categorization as institutions. Institutions may be defined as "formal or informal procedures, routines, norms and conventions in the organizational structure of the polity or the political economy."(Amenta and Ramsey, 2010) While stability and durability are characteristics of institutions, it is also clear that transformations and changes do occur. Some historical institutionalists, Paul Pierson (2004) and Theda Skocpol (1995), for example, have adopted a punctuated equilibrium model that conceptualizes institutions as being relatively stable, with historical trajectories that begin in a past point in time and follow a determined path of development into the future. Major changes that occur are regarded as episodic and discontinuous, usually caused by exogenous factors such as revolutions, wars, occupation or financial collapse (Skocpol and Pierson, 2002). Thelen (2009) correctly submits that the punctuated equilibrium model ignores the endogenous processes of incremental change that often characterize revisions and developments in public policy. Endogenous institutional change is more gradual and incremental, the result of distributive competition and negotiation (March and Olsen,1984; Thelen, 2009; Streek and Thelen, 2005).

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Often the choice of slow incremental change is the best strategy for achieving any change at all. The forces that have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo may block far-reaching changes in policy that could threaten their preferred status or shift their allocations to others. Powerful interests may act to prevent modifications in the rules and regulations and will oppose the establishment of institutions that may limit or detract from their influence, funds or clients. This is particularly the case if these interests are well entrenched and enjoy privileges and status that have gone almost unquestioned for many years. Moreover, the nature of the political system, for example, whether the system is a democracy or not, and its political structure will impact on how change can occur. It will determine the extent to which interest groups and the third sector will have access to decision makers and the opportunities they will have to influence policy.

Policy change may be the result of a series of small adjustments that could be attained only by incremental measures. Moreover, these steps could include a "tango" of policy revisions that may take several steps forward and then a step or two backward because of changes in the government coalition and the resultant shifts in administrative managers. Policy modifications may be put on hold during a change in government or cancelled. In multi-party democracies which typically have coalition governments, small minority parties often control the government ministries that impact on their constituents' interests. They may condition their joining the government coalition with demands for concessions in areas they define as critical.

Mahoney and Thelen (2010) outline three modes of endogenous institutional change, displacement, layering, and drift that we will employ in our analysis. Displacement, or what James Hacker (2004) calls revision, takes place when the partisan balance of power shifts in support of change. New laws are passed or existing laws amended because of a change in circumstances or a shift in the relative power of political interests. It is important here to emphasize, particularly in the case of Israel, that the source of change may be not only from the legislative or executive branches but may also be triggered by a decision of a constitutional court. In democracies with judicial review, constitutional courts have the authority to strike down legislation or to order its amendment. The status quo, while politically expedient, may be invalidated by the court for being inequitable or in violation of human rights. As such, the court may be an important catalyst of policy displacement and endogenous change.

When formal policy change seems unattainable in the current array of political interests, pragmatic actors may choose to adapt existing policies rather than challenge the existing institutions directly. They may work instead within the existing system by adding new rules on top of or alongside old ones, a

3 process called "layering".(Mahoney and Thelen, 2010; Streek and Thelen, 2005; Hacker, 2004). Mahoney and Thelen (2010) correctly suggest that defenders of the status quo may be able to preserve the original rules, but they may be unable to prevent the introduction of modifications. Each may be a small change in itself, yet when they accumulate, they may create a big change.

Institutional change may also depend upon the extent of compliance or non-compliance in the ministry assigned to implement policy. If the minister or top bureaucrats are lukewarm toward a policy, administrative foot-dragging and delays may result. Additionally internecine fights between executive departments, each protecting and advancing its own interests may also cause a delay in implementation. Regulations may not get written; inter-ministerial committees may convene and disband without decision. Moreover, because primary legislation is typically ambiguous and subject to interpretation, the resultant policy may in fact turn out to be quite different from the intent of its statutory architects. (Allison and Halperin, 1971; Kaarbo, 1998)

A third form of gradual institutional change, examples of which we will bring in this paper, is "drift", a situation that occurs when there is a shift in the circumstances surrounding a rule or policy rather than a change in the rules themselves. Such a shift alters policy or institutional outcomes without a change in formal policy or in the institutional rules. Policymakers are aware of this change in circumstances and so are other interested parties, yet initiatives that seek to modify the rules in response to the changed reality fail to gain acceptance. In effect, special interests are protected by preserving the rules that had been apposite in the past and preventing their revision to adjust them to a different reality. (Hacker, Thelen, and Pierson, 2013)

In the next sections we will trace how changes in national civic service policy in Israel have occurred using the analytical tools of displacement, layering, and drift. These tools have been utilized by others (Mahoney and Thelen, 2010; Streek and Thelen, 2005; Hacker, 2004) to analyze social economic policy in western democracies but we have found that they are equally useful in analyzing the policy area of national service. We will suggest that slow but cumulative policy change was achieved mainly through a process of layering that enabled sidestepping politically sensitive issues and avoiding confrontation with minority groups, (the ultra-orthodox, Israeli Arabs) or powerful institutions, (the IDF). We will suggest that interventions by the High Court were a positive catalyst for reform at times and at others a cause of change reversal.

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Displacement and layering: Civic Service for Religious girls

Israel has never adopted a universal policy of mandatory service. Religious girls could request to be excused from service and Israeli Arabs are not conscripted. Yeshiva students could defer service during their studies which are not limited in time. This differential service policy was often rationalized by ideology. In the first decades of the state, secular and religious Zionists shared a strong republican ethos that lauded and extolled military service and sacrifice to the state. These values were promoted in popular youth movements, in the state religious and secular schools and in the media. Israelis being "a nation in arms" regarded service in the "citizen army" as a component of good citizenship. Moreover, service in the military created "social capital" among those who served and promoted integration (Putnam and Goss, 2004; Roumani, 1979). It gave entrance into the "old boy network" and was often a trump card in finding a job (Levy and Mizrahi, 2008; Seidman, 2010). It created bonds between those who served but at the same time, excluded those who were exempted from service, particularly the ultra-orthodox and the Arabs. Consistent with this reverence for army service, Israel has never offered the choice of an alternative track of civic service to conscientious objectors as did many countries in Europe. They were sentenced instead to periods of imprisonment.

The first legislation pertaining to civic national service was adopted in the in 1953 as part of the republican ethos of service to the state. Ben Gurion proposed that religious women who were excused from military service because of religious reasons should serve the state in a civilian capacity in two years of mandatory civic national service. The national service law was supported by the secular parties but furiously opposed by the ultra-orthodox parties, which resigned from the government in protest (Bick, 2013).

The National Service Law 1953 was passed but never implemented. Discussions between the Ministry of Labor, which had ministerial authority to implement the law, and the Hapoel Hamizrachi religious party failed because the latter insisted that the girls be permitted to live at home if they wished and that their supervisors be religiously observant. In effect, if these demands had been met, they would have rendered the law inoperative since those most in need of the girls' services resided in towns and villages in the country's periphery, far from the girls' homes. The government was confronted with mass demonstrations against the law by the ultra-orthodox at home and abroad who regarded the law as an evil decree that would "defile" their daughters. Reluctant to engage in further confrontations with the religious parties, the new Prime Minister Moshe Sharett suspended the discussions. The law became a

5 dead letter. In subsequent coalition agreements both the Labour party and the gave assurances to the ultra-orthodox parties that they would not implement the national service law (Bick, 2013).

While successive Israeli governments remained committed to the "status –quo" with the religious parties, one group of youth sought to initiate change. In September 1970, religious Zionist girls inspired by the nationalist feelings that engulfed the country after the 1967 war and uncomfortable with their exemption from service, approached members of the Knesset (MKs) from the National Religious Party (NRP)1 and asked their assistance in setting up a program of voluntary civic national service. A pilot program was introduced in several development towns in the periphery funded by the Ministry of Welfare, (controlled by the NRP).

At the time, Israel faced a shortage of 1000 teachers and aides in the north and south of the country. At the initiative of the Minister of Education, the government in 1971 appointed a ministerial committee to study the possibility of setting up a civic service program for religious girls. It considered the possibility of implementing the existing 1953 law which would have proven politically costly, or a voluntary program similar to the program that the NRP had established the year before. The committee recommended a voluntary program, given the anticipated opposition of the ultra-orthodox. The government accepted the committee's recommendation and assigned ministerial responsibility for its implementation to the Ministry of Welfare, a portfolio then held by the NRP. A policy of one year of voluntary service was instituted, supervised by religious personnel. Because it was voluntary, it did not impact on ultra-orthodox women who continued not to serve. This in effect defused the wrath of the ultra-orthodox who were inalterably opposed to civic service (Bick, 2016).

Already then the government followed a strategy of "layering" that established a program for a limited sector, religious Zionist girls, without expanding it to ultra-orthodox men, Arabs, conscientious objectors or those rejected by the military. In that way it was able to sidestep the political minefields regarding national service. It amended the National Insurance Law, (article 287) to include the guidelines of civic service, the fields of assignments, the authority and responsibility of the placement agencies, and the rights and obligations of the volunteer and disregarded the existing 1953 National Service Law.. Because it was regarded as a "project of the religious sector", funding for national service assignments was negotiated each year by the NRP ministers and was not included in the national budget.

A series of amendments to the National Insurance Law 1998 (para.3) and to the Absorption of Discharged Soldiers Law, 1994 were added over a period of years to grant the girls in national service

6 the equivalent benefits to soldiers, e.g., post-service stipends for higher education, housing and businesses and free travel on public transportation. This equalization of benefits upgraded the status of civic national service. The program proved to be very popular in the religious Zionist sector enlisting almost all the religious girls who chose not to serve in the IDF. In 2002 7,524 religious girls served in national service and 11,160 in 2010 (Hatib and Biton, 2011).

More Layering: Service for Boys excused from the IDF

Another limited but important change in civic service policy occurred in 2001 again through a process of "layering" rather than through transformative legislation. The catalyst for change was a petition to the High Court of Justice. In 1995 Shlomit, a new non-profit service organization placed twelve Arab women and ten Jewish men, rejected by the IDF, in civic service. In February 1996 the Ministry of Labor notified the organization that these volunteers were ineligible for national service benefits because the guidelines pertained exclusively to religious girls. In response, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) petitioned the High Court in the name of a disabled Jewish boy and in the name of two Arab girls who were denied "the right to serve"(Eyal Daniel vs. the Director of National Insurance, HC9173/96). The Court issued a decree nisi, requiring the government to defend its policy before the court. The government sought to avoid court interference which could then extend to more sensitive conscription issues, e.g., yeshiva student deferments, and the obligations of Israeli Arabs. It quickly reached an out- of-court agreement with ACRI promising to "study" the question and to develop new guidelines. The Minister of Labor set up a committee to study the issue which recommended that the guidelines be modified to include all those excused from service by the IDF, including Israeli Arabs. Four years after the court petition the government began to partially implement the recommendations. The Knesset at the government's initiative passed the Voluntary National Service Law (Experimental-Boys) in July 2001 which established a limited pilot program of civic national service for 250 boys excused by the IDF.

Thirty years after the civic service program for religious girls was established the program formally admitted its first male volunteers. It was the first crack in the IDF's monopoly on service for men. It is important here to note that under the new policy the IDF still retained the exclusive authority to determine who served. Civic service was still closed to conscientious objectors and to Israeli Arabs. In the case of boys rejected from the IDF, the government had dragged its feet (five years) and when it did act, it chose to enact a minimal change with relatively low political cost. Through policy "layering", minor modifications were introduced without reformulating service policy. It also avoided a clash with the IDF which was on record against expanding civic national service. In 1993 the IDF established the Shafir

7 committee to study its future manpower requirements. It reported that the IDF would soon have a large surplus of conscripts, which would be costly and unnecessary. It recommended the establishment of a separate track of national civic service in order to siphon off these surplus recruits and assign them to where they would be needed. The IDF rejected the idea of an alternative and competing track of service and chose instead to expand "military" service to include assignments in the police, in military prisons and tangentially related "security" assignments in government offices (Seidman, 2010). The IDF clearly opposed the expansion of civic service lest it challenge its hegemony in the national ethos and compete with it for funding.

Policy drift and displacement: Ultra-orthodox Yeshiva students

While the status quo on long term deferments for ultra-orthodox yeshiva students was held fast in coalition agreements, grassroots initiatives emerged at the turn of the millennium to protest against what was considered an unjust policy that discriminated against those who bore the burden of service. The number of yeshiva students with deferments in 2000 had reached almost 34 thousand.(Ilan, 1999; Cohen,1997) Many ultra-orthodox men remained students until age 41 in order to evade the draft, during which time they were not permitted to work and were privy to government subsidies, stipends and tax exemptions. Ben Gurion's decision in 1949 to grant deferments to four hundred yeshiva students in order to restore Jewish scholarship after the Holocaust had created a "community of scholars" that based its livelihood on government handouts (Friedman, 1991; Berman, 2000). This was a clear example of policy "drift", as described by Mahoney and Thelen (2010), Hacker (2004) and others. Drift is said to take place when a policy is continued although the circumstances that had prompted the initiation of the policy have vastly changed. Political actors who benefit from the policy protect it from change and by doing so achieve results that were not intended by the policy's architects nor are they necessarily in the interest of the general public. The policy of thousands of long term deferments was viewed as discriminatory by those who served and was a strain on the national economy, but it persisted because of the political power of the ultra-orthodox parties and their pivotal position in successive government coalitions.

The catalyst for policy change did not come from Israeli governments who were mired in political agreements with the ultra-orthodox parties nor from the politically impotent opposition but from the Israel High Court of Justice. In 1998 the court ruled that the long standing policy whereby the Defense Minister, in his administrative capacity, had granted deferments to tens of thousands of yeshiva students was inequitable and as such, unlawful. It gave the Knesset one year to pass new primary

8 legislation to regulate yeshiva student deferments if it so wished (Rabinowitz v. the Minister of Defense, HC 3267/97).

The government appointed a special committee to study the issue. After hearing seven months of testimony, it presented its recommendations in 2001 which were accepted by the government and were translated into law, The Service Deferment Law for Yeshiva Students for whom the Torah is their Trade" (the Tal law) 2002. The law was provisional for a period of five years with the option of renewal for five more. Significantly, this was the first primary legislation in Israel's history that set conscription policy for yeshiva students.

The Knesset accepted in principle that all citizens should be obliged to do some form of national service, but also took heed of the committee's recommendation that conscription should be a gradual process and by consent. It recognized that full and immediate conscription of all yeshiva students would be unenforceable given their strong opposition to service; nor did the IDF need them all. The government hoped that an important outgrowth of the new law would be an increase in the number of ultra- orthodox men leaving their studies and joining the work force (The Tal Committee Report, 2000). According to the law, yeshiva students at age 23 could interrupt their studies for one year and work or study a trade without losing their yeshiva student status. At the end of this exploratory "year of decision", they could choose to return to full time yeshiva studies as before or to enlist in the IDF for an abbreviated period of service. If rejected by the IDF, they would be obliged to serve one year in civic service. After completing civic service they would be eligible for all the benefits that accrued to those who serve in non-combat roles (commensurate with time served) in the IDF and they could join the workforce. The policy paradigm was the civic service program for religious girls.

In actuality, the Tal law did not create a major upheaval since it did not force students to leave the yeshivas against their volition. Its aim was to achieve gradual change by enticing those who were not serious scholars to leave the yeshiva, fulfill their service obligation and then to go out to work. The ultra- orthodox parties opposed the law but understood that the Court had left the government little choice. However, the government, with the ultra-orthodox parties in the coalition, dragged its feet on the law's implementation. For five years it failed to create the administrative infrastructure needed to operationalize the program. Only in 2004 did the Minister of Defense appoint yet another committee (Ivri) to study how best to institute civic national service under the Tal law.

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The Ivri committee concluded that mandatory service, for all citizens, Arab and Jew, military or civic was indeed the optimal policy but was not feasible given the strong opposition of both the ultra-orthodox and Israeli Arab sectors to service. Instead it recommended creating two additional voluntary programs, a track of civic service for ultra-orthodox men and, innovatively, a separate track for Israeli Arabs, the prototype being the program of national service for religious girls. It also recommended the establishment of a Civic and National Service Administration (NCSA) to administer all three tracks of service. The government adopted the recommendations but did not establish the NCSA until January 2008. In the meanwhile, ultraorthodox conscripts redirected by the IDF to civic service were left without placements. An impatient High Court, unimpressed by the government's halfhearted efforts to implement the Tal law warned in 2007 that it would invalidate the law if the government did not vastly increase the number of ultra-orthodox inducted into the armed forces or to civic service.

The NCSA faced a formidable challenge marketing civic service to the ultra-orthodox. Among its first steps was to change the name of the program from "national" service to "civic" service in order to disassociate it from nationalism and Zionism, ideologies opposed by the ultra-orthodox. The NCSA chose a low key marketing strategy and refrained from advertising the program openly. Leaflets describing the program were left at the military recruitment centers but were not distributed in yeshivas or synagogues. The rabbis were purposely not approached to give their stamp of approval because it was feared that if they were asked for a ruling they might forbid students from participating. Recruitment was done by word of mouth and the rabbis' approval achieved quietly, on a case by case basis. Most of the placements were within the community within their insular religious environment. In order to make the program more attractive, the NCSA amended the regulations to allow volunteers to choose to serve half the number of hours but double the length of time, if they wished to combine service with work or study in a yeshiva (Bick, 2010).

While a detailed analysis of the program's successes and failures is beyond the confines of this paper, it is important here to note that in the first years of the program the NCSA administration purposely turned a blind eye toward "manipulations" of the system by yeshiva students. The NCSA was clearly understaffed and often delegated supervision of the volunteers to the service agencies themselves. Abuses were common and supervision lax or non-existent as described in a scathing State Comptroller's report in 2010. For example, over 40% of the ultra-orthodox participants were assigned to education, a field not authorized in the Tal law. Volunteers claimed to be working as "tutors" in the yeshivas where they also studied; disadvantaged youth spent the Sabbath as guests at their counselors' homes and then

10 the latter reported this visit as 25-36 hours of civic service. Administrators of agencies that received volunteers added their own names to the list in order to accrue civic service credit and benefits. (State Comptroller Yearly report 60B, 2011) Without adequate oversight, the volunteers were able to "hijack" the program and convert it for their own needs. After the Comptroller's critical report, supervision was tightened and regulations more competently enforced.

The seeds of change began to take root in the ultra-orthodox community, albeit very slowly. The overwhelming majority (51,000) in 2009 continued to remain in yeshiva and to defer service. Only 3,800 men took advantage of the "year of decision", 1254 served an abbreviated period in the IDF and 1,752, served in civic service. On the positive side, each year the numbers who served increased and the community which had become accustomed to deferments now had many families where one member served in the military or in national service. Moreover, those who served were more likely to go out to work after service.2

Policy Layering: Civic National service in the Arab sector

In the Arab sector too national service was introduced gradually through a process of policy layering. Arab youth are exempt from service, with the notable exception of Druze (boys) who are drafted and Bedouin (boys)who volunteer. Throughout the years, Israeli governments have rejected proposals by MKs from across the political spectrum to enact a universal mandatory program of civic national service that would require Arab youth to serve (Bick, 2016). Similarly, the Israel High Court chose not to broaden the scope of its rulings on conscription to Arab citizens. The subject of service, military or civic arouses strong passions in the Arab community. All are opposed to military service. The Arab leadership has come out against civic national service as well which they claim is a government plot to further the "Israelification" of Arab youth and a prologue to their conscription into the IDF (Zarik, 2014).

On several occasions the government held exploratory talks with Arab leaders regarding civic national service but made little progress. Talks begun in 2000 were discontinued after the October Events, when thousands of Israeli Arabs took to the streets in solidarity with the Palestinian uprising (Second Intifada) in Gaza and the West Bank and in the course of the demonstrations twelve Arabs were killed by police fire. This was indeed a watershed event in Jewish-Arab relations. The government set up an independent investigatory commission to investigate the events. Its report strongly condemned the government for its neglect and discrimination against the Arab sector over the years and called for immediate remedial measures (Or Commission Report, 2003). A ministerial committee (the Lapid

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Committee) was subsequently appointed by the government in September 2003 to study how best to implement the Commission's recommendations. It recommended, among other things, establishing a voluntary program of civic service in the Arab sector in order to improve services, promote greater equality and provide Arab youth with the opportunity to gain the stipends and benefits granted to those who serve. Several months later the Ivri Committee appointed by the Minister of Defense issued its own report, and also recommended instituting voluntary civic service in the Arab sector (Ivri Committee Report, 2005).

In December 2005 the government approved the establishment of voluntary programs of civic national service for all Israelis, Jews and Arabs not conscripted to the armed forces. The decision was a major change in civic service policy after many years of inaction and policy inertia. The first Arab volunteers, 240 in number, began to serve in 2006 and when the NCSA was established in 2008 it created a separate track for Arab volunteers.

Arab leaders responded with a concerted campaign to dissuade Arab youth from volunteering. They charged that the program would further the "Israelification" of Arab youth and distance them from their Palestinian national identity. They also accused the government of trying to cover up its real intent: to draft the Arabs into military service. For these reasons, they objected to any service program that was not placed under their exclusive control. (MK Taleb El Sana, Knesset Proceedings, December 22, 2004.) MKs and regional council heads organized meetings with school principals, students and parents to warn that civic service was in fact a first step toward conscription. They pointed to the fact that the post- service grant came out of the Discharged Soldiers Fund, as clear evidence to the link between the security establishment and "civic" service. MK Ahmed Tibi stated clearly: "We don't want anything like that through the state, no military service and no alternative to military service." Moreover, he argued, Arab citizens should not be asked to give service until they achieve full political, economic and social equality. (Mako News, June 26, 2010) MK Jamal Zahalka charged that civic service was "a colonialist attempt to weaken the Arabs' national identity",(, June 7, 2011) and branded those who served "lepers" who would be ostracized by Arab society (Ynet, October, 27, 2007). He warned that the volunteers will be at a serious disadvantage when they will seek marriage partners (, June 9, 2013).

The Baladna Arab youth organization also launched a viral campaign against national service, mainly through on-line media and workshops in schools and youth movements. Thousands attended Baladna's "anti-service" seminars (The Media Line, July 25, 2011). Heads of regional councils pressured high

12 school principals in their districts not to allow national service representatives to enter their schools to present the program and warned them not to accept volunteers. A principal was threatened by the head of his regional council that his school's funding would be cut off if he accepted volunteers. Some volunteers that were assigned to schools complained that they were obliged to sit and do nothing on the instructions of the principal. Others complained that they had received threats and were subjected to insults. (NRG, July 28, 2013).The NCSA asked the police to investigate the incidents.

Despite the determined efforts by the Arab leadership to derail national service significant albeit slow incremental change is taking place. In 2006 there were 240 volunteers and in 2013, there were already 3,608, a small percentage of those eligible, estimated at 25,000. The volunteers were comprised of Christians (10%), Moslems (54%), Bedouin (19%), and Druze 17%, and 90% of them were women. 75% of the volunteers served in Arab communities near their homes and 56% worked in education. (Shaked Committee, Protocol 27, December 16, 2013.) In another move to make service more acceptable to Arab youth the NCSA pressed the government to take the post-service grants out of the hands of the Discharged Soldiers fund in order to defuse the charge that civic service was an extension of the military. (Ibid.).

Druze women were the newest group to join national service. While Druze men have been drafted to the IDF since 1956, Druze women have been excused automatically because of their conservative religious and cultural traditions. The breakthrough occurred when the Head of the NCRA met with Druze religious leader Sheikh Moafaq Tarif and with the Druze religious council and assured them that the girls would not be asked to bear firearms or to wear uniforms and most importantly, would be able to live at home and serve in their own communities (Ibid.). For the first time, 618 Druze girls served in national service in 2013, more than half of those eligible.

Each year more and more Arabs serve despite the fact that Arab public opinion is increasingly against service. Only 62.9% of Israeli Arabs surveyed in 2011 said that they were in favor of voluntary national service for Arab youth, down from 76.2% in 2007. This number rises to 78.5% if the civic service were to be completely under the auspices and control of the Arab leadership. Among Arab youth the numbers are clearly against service. Only 39.7% said in 2011 that they were willing to serve, down from 53% in 2009 (Smooha and Lechtman, 2012). While these statistics are troubling, if we look at the bigger picture, Arab citizens, for the first time in Israel's history, have the opportunity to do civic service and to gain the commensurate benefits. Incremental change is taking place, through a series of administrative reforms.

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Displacement and confrontation: the High Court intervenes

In February 2012, the High Court of Justice reentered the picture in response to citizen petitions against the Tal law. Dissatisfied with the low number of ultra-orthodox serving in the army (1280) ) in 2011 and in national service (1070) the Court struck down the law. (Resler v. Knesset, HCJ 6298/07) In the majority opinion Chief Justice Edna Arbel argued that the new deferment policy for yeshiva students was still inequitable because it discriminated against the majority, the soldiers who risked their lives while their compatriots engaged in study. The constitutional right to equality, she wrote, was derived from the right to human dignity, which is protected under Israel's Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty. While acknowledging that slow progress had indeed been made and that the number of conscripts and civic service volunteers had risen steadily each year, they were deemed insufficient.

Forced to reformulate policy, the Knesset appointed two special committees (Plesner and then Shaked) to formulate a new law. Despite the angry demonstrations and protests by the ultra-orthodox, it approved amendment 19 to the Defense Service Law, ("The Equal Sharing of the Burden" Law) in March 2014 which created a new deferment policy. It exempted yeshiva students currently ages 18 -22 from all service if they continued to study until age 24. However, if they chose to leave their studies they would be required to serve in the army, and if rejected by the IDF, to serve in civic service. Civic service would be two years, rather than one under the Tal Law, and could begin only at age 21.

Under the law, the government will set conscription targets for the ultra-orthodox starting in 2017. If a sufficient number volunteer to fill the targets, others would be allowed to continue their religious studies and at age 26 would be exempted completely from service. However, if the target number of conscripts is not met, there would be a general conscription of yeshiva students, with the exception of 1,800 promising scholars selected by their rabbis who would be allowed to remain in the yeshiva. The most controversial provision in the law was the inclusion of criminal penalties, imprisonment, for non- compliance. Those rejected by the IDF would serve in national service.

The ultra-orthodox responded with fury to the new law, and organized mass demonstrations. They were particularly incensed by the sanctions for non-compliance. Their rabbis announced that they would direct their students to choose incarceration rather than cooperate with conscription. However, since the second stage of the law was mandated to begin only in 2017 it leaves open the possibility that a future government with the ultra-orthodox parties in the coalition may amend the law again.

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Regrettably, the court decision and the subsequent new legislation caused a setback to civic national service. Yeshiva students at age 21 were less likely consider signing up for military or civic service since under stage one of the new law they will be exempted from all service at age 24. The number of ultra- orthodox in civic service plummeted after the legislation was passed. Only half of the expected volunteers had signed up to civic service in 2014 (Shaked Committee, Protocol, November 24, 2014)

In March 2014 the Knesset passed the National Civic Service Law – 2014, the first primary national service legislation since 1953. It relates only to ultra-orthodox yeshiva students and specifies their conditions and fields of civic service, the approved service agencies, their responsibilities and obligations and delineates the powers of the regulatory body.

Conclusion:

In societies marked by deep cleavages based on religion and/or national identity it is a daunting and perhaps impossible task to formulate and implement a common universal policy in areas that impinge upon group values, beliefs or norms. This is true, for example, in education where the values and goals of the majority may conflict with the faith and culture of a minority, but it is also germane to the policy area of conscription/national service which by definition exerts control over the lives and behavior of conscripts, albeit for a limited time. Minorities if they perceive government policy to be a danger to their way of life or contrary to their political beliefs may oppose this policy and resist its implementation. A program whose intent is to compel change may in fact prove counter-productive; it may result in the protective reinforcement of community values and norms and increase a minority's alienation from the state. For this reason, the choice of strategy of institutional change is of critical importance. The mode of change and the likelihood of its effective implementation will depend on the relative power of the political actors and on the policy instruments that are applied. Political alliances may protect the minority against changes in policy, thereby resulting in policy drift that continue a policy adopted years before. However, at some point these alliances may begin to unravel as electoral fortunes change and new advocacy groups organize to challenge the status quo.

In the case of Israel and its civic national service policy, layering as a mode of change was a pragmatic and less politically costly way to go than broad legislation or policy displacement because it allowed for a measure of fluidity rather than compulsion and for a differentially constructed policy. It could take into account multi-cultural difference and contest the wisdom and implementability of a "one size" fits all public policy. For example, religious girls could be exempted from service but encouraged to do

15 voluntary national service without obliging all orthodox girls or all those exempted from service (including Arabs) to do so. Boys rejected from the IDF could be incorporated into civic national service, without opening it up to conscientious objectors. This process of "layering" allowed consociational arrangements to continue or to be marginally amended without upending the political understandings that had been reached decades before (Lijphardt, 1977; Don Yehiye, 1999).

However, if policy change is remanded to partisan political actors alone policy drift may create a gross imbalance that they may choose not to tackle. While cognizant of the gross inequities of the policy, it may be in the interest of the government to maintain the status quo in order not to jeopardize political alliances and the stability of the coalition. For that reason, it is willing to pay lip service to institutional change but in fact delay its adoption because of its expected political fallout. It will appoint committees to study reform, to make recommendations and in the meanwhile lets the status quo prevail. In such cases, the intervention of an outside actor, not constrained by political agreements or considerations can be an important catalyst for institutional change. The outside actor, which in the case of Israel was the High Court of Justice can be effective if it has the constitutional authority to compel reluctant political actors to correct an imbalance created by policy drift.

However, there is an important distinction to be made between intervention to remedy an inequity in response to a petition by a minority or individual who claims that government policy discriminates unfairly, and an intervention which orders the majority to cancel its consociational concessions to a minority group. In the first instance, court intervention brings relief to individuals who are unjustly treated. Such was the case in the petition by the boys rejected by the IDF's who were rendered ineligible for service under the National Insurance Law. Their appeal to the court served as a catalyst to the government to reassess and amend existing policy, albeit marginally, to redress this injustice.

In the case of yeshiva students however we have a different kind of judicial intervention with more far reaching political consequences. In its first more limited decision in 1998 the Court invalidated the longstanding deferment policy and ordered the legislature to anchor policy in primary legislation rather than in administrative directives. It left the contents of the legislation to the legislators "political discretion" and did not rule out new consociational arrangements with the ultra-orthodox. Its ruling was also specific to yeshiva students and did not extend to other sectors. The lawmakers chose to implement a relatively moderate program of change, which encouraged rather than forced yeshiva students to leave their studies. As a result, the Tal Law began a process of gradual change on the grassroots level with a small but growing number of ultra-orthodox men leaving their studies and doing service, military

16 or civic. However in its decision in 2012 the Court served not as a catalyst but also as a key player in determining the direction of change. It invalidated the Tal law for not meeting a universal standard of equality and in effect overruled denied the majority the right to make concessions to the minority, multi-cultural considerations and political exigencies notwithstanding. This decision and the resultant legislation that included penal sanctions against yeshiva students who failed to comply set back the nascent process of change that had begun in the ultra-orthodox community.

In the Arab sector the numbers of those volunteering to national civic service have been increasing steadily despite the steadfast opposition of Arab political leaders and we anticipate that as more youth engage in the program their leaders may reconsider their opposition especially if they are integrated into the program's administration. If however Israeli lawmakers decide to legislate mandatory national service or if the High Court will order a universal and more equitable policy of service, it will set back civic national service in the Arab sector significantly.

Our study of the evolution of civic service policy in Israel has provided some insights that may be useful when considering institutional change in western democracies in policy areas that of politically sensitive for minorities, religious and ethnic. Political negotiation rather than adjudication is the correct mode of policy change, particularly in sensitive issue-areas that are sectarian in nature. Change should be incremental and differential. We have shown that in the Israel experience endogenous change occurred through a long and uneven process of administrative initiatives and legislative amendments. Their starting point may have been the government, the legislature, a committee recommendation, grassroots advocacy, or semi-exogamous interventions by the Court. The mode of change, its breadth and momentum, was contingent on the political environment within which policy was determined and the relative strength of the political actors who promoted or resisted institutional change.

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1The National Religious Party (NRP) was the union of the Mizrachi and Hapoel Hamizrachi parties in 1956.

248.6% of the ultra-orthodox who completed national service were employed after service compared to only 23.2% before service and compared to ultra-orthodox males in general (41.5%). (Malchi, 2011)

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