The recent announcement that Palestinian communities in Israel
will be provided with a bus service for the first time since Israel’s founding –
that is, in 62 years – surprised observers who had not realised second-class
citizenship also extends to being deprived of a bus line.
People often object to the comparison of Israel within the Green
Line to apartheid South Africa. After all, there are no segregated park benches
or buses (apart from those kosher lines that the Haredi vigilantes patrol). True
enough, but who needs to segregate buses on an ethnic basis if they are simply
not provided to Palestinian communities in the first place?
A couple of interesting elements to this story, however, have
been missed in the telling.
The first is that – assuming the new bus service actually starts,
as promised – it will be restricted to a very small number of Palestinian towns
and larger villages. How regular it will be is still far from clear. Compare the
minimal service Palestinian citizens can belatedly expect with the service
offered to Jews throughout not only Israel but also the occupied territories.
In fact, an Egged bus line is one of the first services provided
to small Jewish settlement outposts when they are established in remote West
Bank locations. Buses arrive frequently, even though they serve a tiny number of
families living there. The outposts, of course, are illegal – not only under
international (as are all the settlements) but also in Israeli law. So Egged,
the national bus company, and the transport ministry conspire with the settlers
in flagrant law-breaking to make the outposts viable places to live.
By contrast, transport officials have grudgingly agreed to
provide a very limited service to a few Palestinian communities six decades
after Israel’s establishment.
Another point is that the new bus service to Palestinian
communities inside Israel will not end Israel’s special type of veiled
segregation. The bus lines will effectively serve Palestinians only, running
between the main Palestinian towns and villages. From what is known so far, they
will not be integrated into the larger “Jewish” bus network. This seriously
erodes the significance of the service.
Palestinian communities suffer from very high levels of
unemployment, particularly among women, where the rates are among the worst in
the world. Israeli Jews tend to take comfort in blaming a “primitive” and
chauvinist Arab society for chaining their women to the kitchen sink.
Actually, Palestinian women in Israel generally have a better
level of education than the men, and many are keen to work. The chief obstacle
is that Palestinian citizens are largely excluded from what is effectively a
“Jewish economy”. Men can usually find employment as casual workers on building
sites and in agriculture. But most women do not want to engage in hard manual
labour, and in any case their communities lack the state-subsidised creche and
nursery facilities common in Jewish communities.
The few lucky women who still manage to find an office job,
however, need to reach places that provide such employment – which almost always
means in a Jewish community. An integrated transport system would make that
possible. For the past 62 years it has not existed and the new service looks
like it will still do nothing to address this key problem.
A further reason a useful public transport system is so
desperately needed in Palestinian communities is that, without it, Palestinians
have to own a car to search for and keep their jobs. Why should that matter?
Because owning a car automatically disqualifies a worker from receiving
unemployment benefit if he or she loses their job or fails to find one. The law
applies equally to all citizens but, given the lack of a proper bus service only
in Palestinian communities, its effect is chiefly to harm Palestinian citizens.
A related, but little-known catch adds to the precariousness of
welfare entitlements for Israel’s Palestinian workforce – and again clearly
discriminates against them compared to Israeli Jews.
Unemployment benefit is also not available to those who own their
own home. Again, the ruling applies to Jewish and Palestinian citizens alike, so
why call it discriminatory? Well, that is the beauty of Israel’s apartheid – it
looks so clean to the uninitiated.
In fact, as is well known, 93 per cent of the land in Israel has
been nationalised – for the benefit of the Jewish people. Apart from a tiny
number of wealthy Jewish private land owners, Israeli Jews hold only long-term
leases on their land and homes from the state. They therefore qualify for
unemployment benefit.
But Palestinian citziens live on private land – about 2.5 per
cent of Israeli territory the state has not yet confiscated. Almost all
Palestinian citizens own the land on which they have built their homes, often
with their own labour. They are therefore denied unemployment benefit.
The lack of proper bus services is one thread woven into a rich
tapestry of discriminatory laws and practices designed to marginalise, weaken
and exclude Israel’s 1.3 million Palestinian citizens. Unpicking them is a vital
task.
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