The Health Care of the Arabs in Israel by Nira Reiss

Author:Nira Reiss [Reiss, Nira]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Middle East, General
ISBN: 9780813377636
Google: YPo8AQAAIAAJ
Goodreads: 5136834
Publisher: Westview Press
Published: 1991-03-20T00:00:00+00:00

4.B. Expansion of the Sick Funds among the Arabs

Given the significance of Arab labor as well as the significance of Arab votes within the coalitionary system, all the sick funds have established themselves in the Arab communities along the lines of force created by socioeconomic affinities and by electoral politics, although the small sick funds have offered against the HSF a level of competition much less ambitious in its goals than that which had previously been attempted by the IMH.

Openings of HSF clinics, along with local party branches and Histadrut clubs, has been an Integral part of Mapai's (and its successor, the Labor Party's) activities. Clinics were offered as material benefits accruing to party members and as reasons for voting, established as election promises and rewards and as signs of the Party's ongoing involvement in the community. While in Jewish settlements the instrumental aspect of the politics of HSF care was no less potent, it generally focussed on improvements in the quality of service rather than on its very presence. This is so because veteran Jewish settlements already had facilities, while new ones were planned by the Government and the Zionist settlement agencies to include health service, generally HSF (see Chapter 5.A). Only a small number of Jewish localities—moshavim within the Revisionist (Herut) Party planned with its associated Le'umit clinic only—did not include HSF facilities. The significant exception to this norm of planning occurred with the second post-state wave of immigration in 1954-1956, when a policy of dispersing new immigrants to peripheral regions upon arrival placed them in abandoned Arab villages in the Galilee and in some unbuilt locations in the south, without any provision of health care; Generally, however, service was introduced within a few years.

In Arab communities, the phase when mere presence of local services was something to be bestowed lasted at least 20 years longer, and to some degree goes on still today, although most communities have reached the stage where quality is improved or withheld, as prize or sanction by the government. Sanctions have been used against lack of political support. For example a HSF consultative center in Nazareth—where there is consistent communist voting in local and national elections—has not been re-started since its aborted beginning in 1973, despite the large number of Histadrut members in the city, although it has been under constant discussion. HSF full equal cooperation with the four Christian voluntary hospitals in Nazareth, which would significantly ameliorate conditions for the sick fund's insurees, is still only partial. The most rewards, however, did not necessarily go to the most dependable groups, but rather to the least dependent. Bedouin settlements and some small villages, perhaps the most loyal Mapai-voters among Arabs, nevertheless benefited, if at ail, only last and least (cf. Landau 1969).

Soon after the establishment of the state, HSF services were provided in two Arab communities in the context of the Histadrut's Israel Labor League (formerly PLL) which, with its separate Arab section established in 1925, remained active until 1955. Competition with the

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