Israeli Arabs Threaten Strike Amid Charges of Inadequate Funding

Heads of local Arab councils have vowed to step up their protest against what they charge is inadequate Israeli government funding by calling a general strike at the end of this week.

The local Arab leaders say they are fed up with the discrimination that is reflected in government allocations to their municipal budgets that are smaller than the allocations to their Jewish counterparts.

There are 800,000 Arab citizens of Israel who make up 18 percent of the country’s overall population. However, just under 10 percent of the Arab population live in Arab villages or municipalities.

“We want equal funding,” said Hussein Sulemain, the spokesman for the Forum of Arab Council Heads and the head of the Mash’had local council, near Nazareth. “Instead, we get 40 percent of the budgets of the Jewish councils.”

The Israeli Arab leaders are also worried about their spiraling budget deficits, which now stand at more than $80 million.

Sulemain made his comments Sunday at a strategy session of about 75 Arab leaders that took place on the grass in the rose garden opposite the Prime Minister’s Office here.

Nearby was a small tent encampment where council representatives have been holding an ongoing protest vigil. The leaders had earlier staged a motorcade demonstration around the government complex, timed to coincide with the weekly Cabinet meeting on Sunday.

Yitzhak Belek, deputy director-general of the Interior Ministry, said he did not understand the current grievances of the council heads in light of agreements that have been made to remedy the problem.

The Israeli government has recognized the gap in funding between Arab and Jewish local councils and adopted a policy in 1991 to equalize the budgets over time, beginning with a four-year plan, he explained.

In 1990, national grants to the 53 Arab local councils totaled $32 million, while in 1994, the last year of the plan, they totaled $92 million.

For their part, the Arabs were supposed to increase their tax collection rates, but failed to do so, said Belek.

Nonetheless, he said, the government decided to continue the plan for incremental budget increases of about $122 million over the next four years, beginning with an additional boost this year of nearly $12 million.

Belek, meanwhile, was reluctant to make a precise comparison of budgets for Jewish and Arab councils, saying there are items funded for Jewish councils that do not apply to the Arabs, including immigrant absorption, security and Jewish religious services.