An expert on Israel’s social problems predicted today that if the new interim accord in Sinai heralds a period of quiet on Israel’s borders, simmering social tensions in Israel will erupt, possibly with violence, within the next two years. That warning was given by Dr. Eliezer Jaffe of the Hebrew University to members of the United Jewish Appeal Study Mission who met with him after a tour of Jerusalem slums and were visibly shocked by the dimensions of Israel’s social gap as expressed in statistics recited by Dr. Jaffe.
Jaffe, a former American who headed the Jerusalem Welfare Department until recently, stated, “I predict that two years after the (Sinai) agreement we will have a social explosion,” Tensions, he said, were boiling among the lower and lower middle-class families who were “hurting badly” as a result of the government’s new economic austerity measures and the falling value of the Pound.
He said that violent social disturbances in the past have always occurred during interims of relative military quiet about two years after a war. He noted the Wadi Salib riots in Haifa in 1958–two years after the Sinai campaign; the trouble in Jerusalem’s Musrara quarter in 1969–two years after the Six-Day War; and the rise of the Black Panther movement following the 1970 war of attrition with Egypt.
STARK SOCIAL GAP DESCRIBED
Dr. Jaffe cited the stark gap that exists between the underprivileged in Israel who are mainly of Oriental origin and the rest of the population, especially with regard to education. He said that 64 percent of Israel’s population is now Oriental; 60 percent of all children entering grade school are Oriental; 37 percent entering high school are Oriental, but based on present rates of matriculation that will decline to 10 percent by 1984.
Meanwhile, only four percent of baccalaureate degrees are awarded to Orientals and Orientals receive only two percent of doctoral degrees awarded by Israeli universities.
Dr. Jaffe recalled that the Prime Minister’s Committee on the Underprivileged found in 1972 that 200,000 children lived in overcrowded conditions–three or more to a room–and of those, 90 percent were Oriental. The number of families on welfare and the number of girls involved in prostitution–both significant indicators of social disabilities–were sharply on the rise, Dr. Jaffe said. He charged that there is not and never has been a comprehensive social program covering the entire nation. He said this was due partly to lack of funds which made for piecemeal solutions.
Dr. Jaffe told the UJA leaders that some of the special projects sponsored by UJA funds were not the solution. He urged them not “to end the partnership with the donation” but to follow through on their contributions, to demand accountability from local agencies and to familiarize themselves with “the wheeling and dealing” that often surrounds the disposal of welfare funds in Israel.
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