Two years ago an uproar followed reports that young Israeli Arab women were volunteering for national service programs in schools and preschools in the Dir Hanna and Ilut villages. This was an experimental pilot program. Within the national service framework, the Arab women served their own communities. After the disclosure, skeptics and militants applied pressure to the local councils, and also to the volunteers and their families; the project collapsed.
At Shlomit, the non-profit group that organized this pilot project, this result was regarded as a devastating blow to efforts to integrate Arab citizens in national service programs.
Haya Shmuel, who directs Shlomit - the only secular NGO of the four groups which work with the national service - says that time had to elapse after this initial failure. Today, for the first time, after two years, young Arab men and women are displaying some willingness to volunteer for national service, she explains. These are a few dozen volunteers, most of them young women who prefer to volunteer discretely (some of them conceal their activity from their parents).
In his address at the Herzliya Conference last month, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon spoke in favor of "an equal distribution of burdens, the conferral of rights, and the bearing of responsibilities and duties by all sectors of the population, via some form of national service." Appearing at the same event, Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz declared: "We should expand the scope of national service for those who cannot serve in the IDF, for their own reasons."
Sharon elaborated on his position during a Christmas season visit to Nazareth. "There can be no rights without obligations," Sharon told the heads of local Arab councils. "So long as the Israeli-Palestinian dispute continues, there is a problem [with this national service plan]; and so this subject, the issue of obligations, has to be addressed gradually. I myself view the subject of national service for everyone as an item of vast importance....I believe that the day will come when the dispute will be resolved - but, even in the meantime, many things can be done in the sphere of national service."
Supplementing the Tal Law
Over the years, dozens of proposals for expanding national service have been floated in public. Sources working on the issue say that the most popular idea with the political leadership today derives largely from recommendations submitted by Israel's National Security Council last May, holding that minority populations initially be integrated in national service on a voluntary basis. Under this proposal, national service programs would not be operated by the Defense Ministry; instead, various government agencies or non-profit groups would operate the frameworks; and each volunteer would have the option of serving in a non-sectarian program, or one catering to his or her population group, in areas of education, social welfare, environmental protection and more.
In keeping with statements and implicit promises delivered by Mofaz and Sharon, a special Defense Ministry committee appointed by Mofaz will begin work soon, and attempt to promote national service plans. The panel, headed by David Ivri, will examine the possibility of national service being run as a volunteer framework, and as an alternative for those who are not drafted by the IDF.
The proposal, Deputy National Security Adviser Dr. Reuven Gal believes, will "within a year coalesce as a decision holding that a national service framework should materialize in the State of Israel, and be open to Arabs and Jews, secular and religious, young men and women."
Ivri, for his part, has more modest expectations: "The intention - to help - is a laudable one, but I have no illusions. It's very complicated."
In fact, promoting national service plans is so complicated that intensive efforts undertaken in past weeks to find a credible, respected Israeli Arab leader who is willing to take part in the new Defense Ministry panel ran afoul. Together with Ivri and Gal, committee members include former Supreme Court Justice Prof. Izhak Englard, IDF Major General (res.) Gideon Shefer, and attorney Yaakov Weinroth.
With regard to the ultra-Orthodox population, the committee is expected to propose a supplement to the Tal Law, which went into effect close to a year ago. The Tal bill offers ultra-Orthodox men the option of leaving yeshiva frameworks for a one year acclimatization period; at the end of this phase, the religious men can choose between returning to their yeshiva institutions and enlisting for shortened periods of IDF service (should the IDF discharge these volunteers, they are to serve in national service frameworks).
Today, cabinet members favor an approach (which will be reviewed by Ivri's committee) furnishing the ultra-Orthodox men, and also Arabs, the option of working outside of their own communities, or within them.
According to one source who worked on a past public committee that reviewed national service plans, the annual cost to the state of running a national service program would range between NIS 500 million and NIS 1 billion.
Apart from opposition to the price tag, which is likely to come from the Finance Ministry, some skeptics point to other practical problems raised by national service plans. Is there utility, they ask, to running national service programs at a time when the public sector is bloated with workers from various population sectors, particularly the Arab one?
"Under present conditions, what will [national service volunteers] do?" wonders Hebrew University of Jerusalem sociologist Prof. Moshe Lissak, who served on past forums that supplied recommendations about national service options for Israeli Arabs. "Will they establish a special bureaucracy? I doubt seriously that the government will give this issue high, or even moderate-level, priority right now."
Whether they are practical options or not, the national service proposals are rejected outright by leaders of Israel's Arab minority. Shauki Hatib, chairman of the Higher Arab Monitoring Committee, said that Israeli Arab leaders "will not relate" to concrete national service proposals.
Hadash chairman MK Mohammed Barakeh says that "beyond the national question - that is, without regard to the fact that we will not serve [in civilian frameworks] as an alternative to our unwillingness to go to war against our own people - the formula by which rights are won in exchange for obligations is unacceptable. Rights are absolute. What they are trying to do here is drawn an analogy and a link between the lack of rights, and non-participation in national service. It's an attempt to justify discrimination. No such talk makes any difference: the state is obligated to pave roads. I only agree with Sharon about one thing: this whole issue is to be discussed against the backdrop of the resolution of the Palestinian issue."
Balad chairman MK Dr. Azmi Bishara says, "National service poses a choice between loyalty and Zionism: the goal is to make us endorse the State of Israel's Zionist character. The Arab population is drowning in problems. Young Arabs must take the initiative themselves - perhaps they should do Palestinian national service, but the National Security Council should leave them alone, and drop all this nonsense."
As Bishara sees it, "the payment of taxes is the central obligation of a democratic society, and here there is much to do with the Arab population. Obedience to the law is also very important."
A way of reducing gaps
"As a citizen, I think that the state can manage without Arab volunteers in national service," explains Haya Shmuel, from Shlomit. "The persons who are hurt by the fact that Arabs don't serve are the young people who want to contribute, just like Jews, and receive rights equivalent to those who serve, like Jews [who serve in the army]."
Describing difficulties that plagued the pilot project, Shmuel recalls: "At Dir Hanna and Ilut, young women volunteers did great work. Those who derailed the project, and who have disdain for the concept of volunteering, deal with politics, and not the Arab citizen's welfare."
Gal says that "the Arab population has to distinguish between leaders and young people." Surveys, he continues, show that between 50 and 60 percent of young Arabs are willing to volunteer in national service. Such service commitments which confer on volunteers the rights and benefits that are conferred on IDF veterans and will reduce material and other gaps, he believes.
Yet such optimistic scenarios continue to hit obstacles, not only at Dir Hanna and Ilut. Three years ago, the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs and the National Security Council experimented with the idea of integrating men who do not enlist in the IDF in national service frameworks (the programs are open formally only to women). This experiment, sponsored by the Barak government, aimed at testing levels of volunteer enthusiasm among ultra-Orthodox and Arab males.
Despite widespread promotion in Hebrew and Arabic media, quotas allotted under this experiment for national service volunteers were not filled. Most of the volunteers were Jewish men who had been discharged from the IDF for medical reasons. The program was extended (the third cycle of volunteer programs is currently being run), but the number of Arab volunteers has been small - out of 500 volunteers in the program's three cycles, less than 20 have been non-Jews (this tiny group includes Druze and Bedouin).
David Knafo, who directs the Labor and Social Affairs Ministry's department for special projects, says that this experimental program has "worked fairly well for the Jewish population." However, "with the Arab population it has hit a wall of opposition put up by the leadership; the leaders boycott the volunteers. The experiment, you can say, has failed with the Arab population."
Shmuel believes that some Israeli Arabs have found ways to bypass their leadership's stiff opposition, and volunteer for national service programs. Her Shlomit association works with 60 women volunteers; participants work in hospitals, Magen David Adom medical service stations, and even in a kibbutz community.
If the number of Arab volunteers has risen, why has a public committee been formed to deal with the issue of national service? Shmuel provides one explanation: "Officials in the Defense Ministry are worried about headlines," she says. "I believe in processes. Shlomit is a good example. When we established the non-profit association, we faced obstacles. Today, there are still those who don't want us to make headway - they don't want us to work with non-religious groups. This is a process which takes time. Ten years ago, we started with 18 young women; today we have 1,700 volunteers, including 127 men. Today, there's no problem recruiting volunteers. Volunteering among Arabs is beginning to take root."