The Jews spend more include educating their children (614-1118 as opposed to 460 in Arab municipalities), investment in health (616-891 as opposed to 520 NIS among Arabs), and cultural and sports events (194-420 NIS as opposed to 63 NIS). Jews invest between 37-67 NIS a month on newspapers, books and writing instruments, while the Arabs almost don’t spend anything on them. Despite certain gaps between rich and poor Jewish municipalities, the differences in consumption reflect first and foremost differences in culture and personal priorities. Is this really cause to riot and murder?
Pouring Millions into a Broken System
But consumption is not the whole story. Not only are the Israeli Arabs doing fine on their own, the government of Israel is helping them even more with taxpayer money.
Every years, the Israeli government provides municipalities with “revenue support grants [lit. balancing grants]” meant to help cover budget deficits which usually derive with problems in tax collection. These sums are transferred to both Jewish and Arab municipalities, based on their financial situation. Unsurprisingly, the proportion of Arab municipalities who receive these grants is far higher than their share of the population.
Thus, according to a 2009 study, although some 14% of the population live in Arab municipalities, only 2% of national municipal taxes were collected there, and they also received 38% of revenue support grants. In 2013, Arab municipalities received 1.6 billion NIS as opposed to 1.6 billion for Jewish municipalities. The same is true of budget transfers in the Education Ministry: in 2009, Arab municipalities received 1,169 NIS per student, while Jewish municipalities received half: 558 NIS.
The average citizen also enjoys this government largesse: as is well known, the evil establishment runs a body known as “social security”, which is meant to allow the legal transfer of money from working and productive citizens to those who are not. You know, for social solidarity. It turns out that “Palestinian-Israeli” citizens have no problem benefiting from this Zionist institution. Although we don’t have the full picture of social security receipts for Jews and Arabs, there are numbers regarding one part of social security – income support: the Israeli Arabs, who are 20% of the population, receive 51.6% of social security transfers for income support. Obviously, Israel is a welfare state, and Israeli Arab citizens are no less entitled to benefit from it than Jews. But surely, this is not grounds for blocking traffic and throwing rocks and Molotov cocktails.
Permeated with Corruption
The main reason for the poor situation of Arab municipalities is gross mismanagement deriving from the politics of extended families and the lack of a proper administrative culture. 18 out of 25 of committees appointed by the government to take over faulty municipalities in 2005 were appointed over Arab municipalities, and almost all were due to “faulty budget management.”
One can get a taste of what this vague phrase means in the case of the regional council of Bustan al-Marj in the Galilee. In 2009, an investigative commission was appointed to examine the council’s conduct after years of accumulating deficits. The commission discovered that the head of the council Ahmad Zouabi intervened in all the professional procedures in the various departments, preventing the bureaucracy from doing its job.