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Feb. 3, 2006
Bringing power to the people
Bedouin citizens group lobbies for a change to the service levels
provided in their city.
GAIL LICHTMAN ISRAEL PRESS SERVICE
Every time Muna, a single mother of six from the Bedouin city of
Rahat in southern Israel, had to take one of her children to see
a doctor in nearby Beersheva, or needed to buy something in the
big city, she came up against the same problem. Rahat, a city of
45,000 residents, had no public transportation.
Muna could either walk two or three kilometres to the main road
to catch a bus or pay 50 per cent more for an unlicensed (and sometimes
unsafe) transit service. And even this service is not available
after four in the afternoon.
So last year, Muna and 20 other Rahat residents mounted a campaign
to bring a bus service to Rahat, with the help of the Yedid Rahat
Citizens Rights Centre and the Abraham Fund Initiatives (TAFI).
"In the space of a little over a year, we succeeded in convincing
the Israeli Ministry of Transportation that Rahat should have a
bus service," said Muna. "We are now working with planners
to design both an intercity and intra-city service, which we hope
will start this year."
Just a few short years ago, this kind of grassroots social action
was almost unheard of in the Bedouin sector. The opening of the
Yedid (Hebrew for friend) Rahat Citizens Rights Centre some two
years ago, however, has not only increased awareness of the importance
of community empowerment, but is giving ordinary Bedouins the tools
to speak up and obtain their rights.
The Rahat empowerment project is being funded by the Abraham Fund
Initiatives, a nonprofit organization founded in 1989 which is dedicated
solely to promoting co-existence between the Jewish and Arab citizens
of Israel, through advocacy and awareness campaigns and co-existence
projects.
"It is hard to talk about Arab-Jewish relations and equality
when Arab citizens are being denied simple, basic services,"
said Lee Perlman, TAFI's director of programs and initiatives Lee
Perlman. "We were drawn to how this empowerment project can
result in real change in government policy and, therefore, decided
to support Yedid in helping the Bedouin citizens gain access to
services. This is part of TAFI's agenda to mainstream coexistence
and equality within all sectors of Israeli society."
Rahat (Arabic for "people living together") was
established in 1972 as part of Israeli government efforts at resettlement
of the Bedouin in permanent towns. In 1994, it was recognized as
a city. Today, Rahat serves as a hub for the 150,000 Bedouin in
the Negev.
Rawia Aboorabia is director of the Yedid centre in Rahat. She holds
a degree in social work and is now studying law.
"The Bedouin need tools to lead a process of change,"
said Aboorabia, whose father was the first Bedouin doctor in Israel
30 years ago.
"We have people who come to us with personal problems with
the National Insurance Institute, the telephone company or the education
system," Aboorabia continued. "We explain their rights
to them and then help them to achieve them. If at all possible,
we encourage people to act on their own behalf. On the community
level, we run courses to give people the practical tools they need
for such things as family budgeting and leadership empowerment.
And we work as a lobby to affect policy change. This is the part
of the job I really love, since it combines both my social work
training and the law training I am now getting."
Women comprise more than half of Yedid's empowerment group and have
become the agents for change in Rahat. Aside from young mothers,
the group includes Yusra, a grandmother, and Hani, a single man
in his 20s.
The course consists of six workshops to help community members develop
the tools to create policy change. Participants learn how to increase
public awareness, raise funding, work with the media and obtain
legal advice. By the end of the course, participants must implement
at least one advocacy campaign to improve the lives of Rahat residents.
When the group decided to focus on public transportation as its
first project, members spoke with Rahat residents to find out who
would use public transportation and where the routes should be.
They then sent letters to the Ministry of Transportation and to
the Negev Regional Council. As a result of their efforts, the ministry
agreed to issue a tender to plan a public transportation service
both within Rahat and to and from local cities and towns. The Negev
Regional Council agreed to finance the planning stage.
"Before the centre was opened, no one cared if we got our rights
or not," said Muna. "We didn't even know ourselves what
our rights were. I came to the centre because I had problems as
a single mother. I got the tools not only to deal with my own situation
but to help others. I also learned that official organizations don't
like to change. We have to demand change and work towards it."
Ilham Alkamalat, a Bedouin woman who works at the centre, said that
the course "helped us learn what the community wants and to
discover things about ourselves. We looked inside ourselves and
saw our power. We will influence the future of Rahat."
"The empowerment course is a great success story," Perlman
affirmed. "It shows that without volunteers and leadership
groups, there is no community power."
Buoyed by its success with the public transportation issue, the
group is now turning its attention to the National Insurance Institute
(NII). Despite the fact that a good percentage of the population
is in need of NII services, there is no permanent NII office in
Rahat. Two clerks, neither one of whom speaks Arabic, come twice
a week for a few hours in the morning.
The group is now making a survey of NII services in other Israeli
cities of similar size to Rahat. It will then begin writing letters
and gathering signatures on petitions demanding a full-time NII
office with at least one Arabic-speaking clerk.
"The wonderful thing is that the empowerment group learned
to see the transportation issue not just as a personal problem but
as a communal one," Aboorabia noted. "This is a great
change – the emergence of social solidarity. They now see their
problems in the larger social context."
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