Critical Essays on Israeli Society, Religion, and Government: Books on Israel, Volume IV

3. Neighborhood Renewal through the Establishment and through Protest

3. Neighborhood Renewal through the Establishment and through Protest Efraim Ben-Zadok Shlomo Hasson, Urban Social Movements in Jerusalem: The Protest of the Second Generation (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993). (Originally published in Hebrew, Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies, Research Series 26, 1987.) Frederick A. Lazin, Politics and Policy Implementation: Project Renewal in Israel (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994). Decentralization and Local Autonomy ~he Israeli political system has been led since its incepU tion by a powerful central government burdened with national tasks in defense, economy, and immigrant absorption . Hence, Israeli social scientists, preoccupied with the salient characteristics of their own political system, have studied extensively their central government and national politics . Since the early 1970s, the relationship between the central government and local governments have been gradually decentralized. The central government began to share 53 54 Society and Government power with local governments, and the latter became more autonomous in their negotiaLons with central bureaucratic agencies. Israeli social scientists then began to pay more attention to the study of center-local relations as well as local community politics. A growing number of studies on center-local relations and local community politics in Israel appeared in the 1970s. I Although these studies continued to describe the central government as dominant, they also documented the first signs of decentralization in center-local relations. and local autonomy . That trend was clearly marked by Daniel Elazar's argument that the Israeli society of the 1970s was transformed from national-central-based politics into territorial based politics.2 This distlinction between national and local politics was formalized in the 1975 local elections law passed by the Knesset. Mayors used to be elected by the local council on the basis of its party list, thus frequently representing the national-level party which dominated the council. Mter 1975, mayors were elected as individuals, separately from the council, and directly representing the local voters. The trend toward decentralization and local autonomy was also characterized by an increasing number of citizenparticipation groups, such as local voluntary associations, planning committees, and environmental councils. This trend also included a rise in the number of local public protests, such as strikes and demonstrations. A substantial number of studies describing these citizen participation groups and public protests appeared in the 1980s.3 Citizen participation in Project Renewal was most extensive, both as a subject of research and in practice.4 The public protest of the Black Panthers, although less researched, has been perhaps the most intriguing protest in practice.5 A number of books pubhshed in the early 1990s-such as those by Efraim Ben-Zadok and Sam Lehman-Wilzig-integrated the subjects of local politics, citizen participation, and public protest in Israel.E The two volumes reviewed in this chapter represent good examples of this genre. Neighborhood Renewal 55 The volume by Frederick Lazin is primarily about local politics and citizen participation in Project Renewal. with some discussion of public protest. The volume by Shlomo Hasson is primarily about the local politics and public protest of the Black Panthers and other urban social movements , with some discussion of citizen participation. The two volumes also cover center-local relations and report on the growing trend, since the early 1970s, toward decentralization and local autonomy in Israel. How these two volumes converge-but also diverge-in their coverage of the same topics, is the main focus of this chapter. The first section of the chapter discusses how the two volumes converge in their coverage of the population of working-class Oriental neighborhoods in Israel since the early 1970s. It also discusses how Lazin focuses on the upper stratum of this population-residents of Israel's relatively small development towns. Meanwhile, Hasson focuses on the lowest stratum of this population-residents of a large urban center. The second section of the chapter elaborates on the theoretical approach proposed in the two volumes which is based on the same two elements-structures and processes. However, whereas Lazin emphasizes structures, Hasson emphasizes processes. The third section describes the beginning of Project Renewal, and the protest movement which emerged from demands for improvement in social service, housing, and urban infrastructure. Interestingly, whereas Lazin's analysis is limited to the political behavior of the actors during this formative stage in the context of their organizations, Hasson's analysis also includes the political behavior of the actors as independent of the...