The Local Dimension in Israeli Government and Politics
Local Government in Israel
Daniel J. Elazar
Israel is well-known as a state in which political power is
heavily concentrated in its central institutions, both government
and party. The small size of the country, its development as a
result of ideologically motivated effort, and the political
tradition it has inherited from both Jewish and non-Jewish
sources have all coalesced to make this so. At the same time, it
is a mistake to think of Israeli government as "centralized" in
the usual sense of the word. Power is divided among several
centers within the Israeli polity but the centers are organized
on cultural-ideological rather than along territorial lines.
This means that local government in Israel, which is necessarily
territorially based, operates at a handicap. It is often viewed
as the weakest link in the state's political system. From a power
perspective, local governments are indeed subordinate to
governmental and party centers, not to speak of the religious and
ethnic communities, in many ways. Nevertheless, it is a mistake
to underestimate either the role or influence of local government
in the state.
Local government plays an important role in Israeli society,
particularly in connection with the following four tasks:
the provision and administration of governmental services;
the recruitment and advancement of political leadership;
the fostering of channels of political communication between
the governors and the governed; and
the maintenance of necessary or desired diversity within a
small country where there are heavy pressures toward
homogeneity.
All four of these tasks are of great importance in the
integration of what is still a very new society of immigrants or
the children of immigrants. The role played by local government
in meeting the challenges they pose makes it a far more vital
factor on the Israeli scene that it is often given credit for.1
Historical Manifestations of Territorial Democracy
If ideological democracy places a premium on doctrinal
faithfulness (or what passes for it) in the attainment of true
citizenship and political influence, territorial democracy places
a premium for their attainment on simply living some place by
right. In one sense, the entire Zionist endeavor is a reflection
of the Jewish people's movement from ideological to territorial
democracy. Zionism is a recognition that every people needs a
territory of its own to survive in the contemporary world. At
the same time, as we have seen, the initial Zionist efforts were
based upon the notion that the chosen territory would be a minor
factor in determining Jewish public policy, far less important
than the various ideologically based visions of the new society
in the making. Nevertheless, even these ideological movements
found it necessary to develop territorially-based means of
expression in order to develop bases of operations from which to
influence the whole society. The two best examples of this are
the kibbutz and the religious neighborhood. Both reflect that
face of territorial democracy which allows people with strong
common beliefs to settle together and, through the governance of
the territory upon which they are settled, to assure that their
beliefs will be sufficiently dominant locally to make it possible
to protect a common way of life.
Kibbutzim and religious neighborhoods not only reflect this face
of territorial democracy by their very existence but go beyond
that. The kibbutzim are divided among several movements, each of
which has its own particular vision to protect. Similarly,
religious neighborhoods tend to fall into sectarian patterns,
although more of a mixture may be tolerated. For both,
there has been tacit recognition by the state and society of the
legitimacy of their utilization of the first face of territorial
democracy and they are allowed much greater leeway than other
territorial units in protecting their way of life. For example,
kibbutzim maintain their own schools which are nominally part of
the state education system but are left fairly well to their own
devices. Residents of religious neighborhoods not only maintain
their own schools in one way or another but are allowed to close
off their streets to vehicular traffic on the Sabbath and
holidays so as to preserve their particular religious way of
life, even though there are no laws to that effect.
Territorial democracy has two faces. It can be used to secure
political power or influence for specific communities which
occupy specific territories or it can be used in a very neutral
way to secure political power or influence for any groups which
happen to be resident in a particular area at a particular time.
What is common to both is the role of the territorial unit as
the basis for organizing power.
Whatever face is manifested, territorial democracy is not simply
the same as territoriality or the areal organization of power.
Both territoriality and the areal organization of power are
obviously universal. In traditional or premodern political
systems they are often associated with the preservation of a
pre-democratic status quo whereby communities claiming to be
organic in origin and character (Gemeindschaften) are given (or
at least demand) an opportunity to exercise political power to
preserve their internal character within the context of the
modern state.
Territorial democracy is the form of the areal division of power
that is particularly associated with popular government,
instituted as a means to strengthen democratic government rather
than restrict it, by providing fixed bases within which public
decisions can be democratically made on an appropriate scale. It
may be that it is a form particularly associated with new
societies since the territorial units in a new society of
necessity reflect the same general goals as the society as a
whole. At most, they seek to provide expression for specific
facets of those goals. Thus both the towns of Puritan
Massachusetts and the agricultural settlements of pre-state
Israel saw themselves as communal repositories and territorial
manifestations of the highest goals of the new society in the
making.2
Both faces of territorial democracy can be found in Israel.
Indeed, though they were long submerged within the framework of
ideological democracy which continues to hold virtually
undisputed sway at the state level, their origins lie in the
origins of the modern Yishuv itself. Today, the thrust of
territorial democracy has put local government in the vanguard of
political development in the country.
The Local Roots of Modern Israel
Territorially-based polities of the first kind began to develop
as a matter of course as the pioneers settled in and staked
claims to "turfs" of their own. The moshavot, kibbutzim and
moshavim came to conceive of themselves as virtually autonomous
communities in the pre-state days. Their "natural"
territorialism remained within and was substantially compatible
with the existing system of ideological democracy as long as the
territories were populated exclusively by people with professed
ideological commitments who viewed the world in the appropriate
ideological categories and were satisfied to function within the
overall ideological structure of the society, i.e. as members of
movement and party federations.
In the late 1870s and 1880s the very first colonies, beginning
with Motza and Petah Tikvah, were organized by pioneers who
covenanted together to create territorial units which were to be
as autonomous as possible under Turkish rule, protected in their
autonomy to no small extent by the Sephardic rabbinical
authorities responsible for governing the Jewish millet.3 After
the turn of the century, the development of collective and
cooperative settlements extended the principle of territorial
democracy to another sector of the rural pioneering environment.
In this perspective, Degania, the first kvutza, was simply
another form of Jewish covenant community.4 Since it was at
this point that ideological rigor began to develop on the Israeli
scene, they perforce, synthesized their drive for territoriality
with the incipient ideological democracy that was developing.
Israel's cities, the embodiment of the second face of territorial
democracy, began their development even before the first
agricultural settlements. The first of them, the new city of
Jerusalem, begun in the 1860s, was founded as a synthesis of the
two faces, consisting as it did of neighborhoods created as
virtually autonomous communities within the city by like-minded
householders contracting together to found new settlements within
an urban context. The Bokharan Quarter and Meah Shearim are two
of the best-known examples of this arrangement but, in fact,
until the British conquest of the city, all new neighborhoods
were founded as separate associations, some as mere arrangements
of convenience while others were openly dedicated to preserving a
very specific and concrete way of life, much as the collective
settlements were.5
The power of the Zionist back-to-the-land movement was such that
urban pioneering was ignored or denigrated until well into the
first generation of statehood. At the same time, a majority of
the Jews who came to settle in the land of Israel settled in
cities. At its height in the 1930s, the agricultural sector did
not quite reach a third of the total Jewish population in the
country. Thus urban pioneering remained an important factor in
the Zionist enterprise, whether recognized as such or not. It
was the first pioneering sector back during the first founding,
it continued to be important in the intervening years, and became
the dominant pioneering sector once again after the state was
declared.
The conflict between the back-to-the-land movement and the
realities of urbanization led to another tension within Israeli
society regarding the character of urbanization. To the extent
that attention was paid to city-building at all, it was the
intention of the Zionist founders to introduce rural elements
into the cityscape, to build garden cities or suburbs. At the
same time, the models of city-building which were known to them
were almost entirely European, whether of Eastern or Western
Europe, and in both cases they represented the very antithesis of
this melding of rural and urban elements. This, too, is a
tension which has not been resolved.6
The first city consciously founded as an urban settlement without
an ideological base other than the general ideology of Zionism
was Tel Aviv, significantly enough founded in the same year
(1909) as Degania. From the first, Tel Aviv represented
territorial democracy in its most neutral sense. Whoever settled
within the city limits was entitled to the rights of local
citizenship and could participate in political life to the extent
and in the way he or she desired (within the context and
opportunities offered by the political system in general) without
having to subscribe to any particular ideological or religious
doctrine or formula. One result was that for years Tel Aviv went
counter to the nationwide trend towards socialism to become a
stronghold of the General Zionists though, as the city grew
larger, its population became more mixed and diversified and the
city lost even the modest ideological tinge it once had.7
Tel Aviv became at one and the same time the paradigm and the
caricature of the Israeli city as a neutral, democratic,
territorial political unit. In the 1920s and 1930s and then at
an accelerating rate after 1948, other cities followed its lead.
As the country's Jewish population expanded, many of the original
moshavot, the agricultural colonies founded in pre-ideological
days, were transformed into just such neutral territorial units
as they became citified. After 1948, these were supplemented by
over twenty new towns, founded to absorb the new immigrants.
Taken together, these cities became the major vessels for the
assimilation of the waves of mass immigration which came into the
country beginning in the 1930s. Today they contain two-thirds of
the country's total population.8
Local self-government was the first vehicle for asserting the
national goals of the Zionist movement. The first Zionist
colonies were created as self-governing covenant communities not
dissimilar in the fundaments of their political organization from
the early Puritan settlements of New England. Somewhat later,
the first local governments in their present forms were organized
by the Jewish pioneers under the laws of the British Mandate as
the precursor of the state. They were designed to give the
pioneers as much autonomy as possible while the country was still
under British rule.
Historical exigencies led to the development of contemporary
Israel out of local roots. Given the facts of imperial control,
first under the Ottomans and then under the British, the Jews
could only expand their presence on a local basis, by many local
efforts or national efforts expressed locally. Both rural and
urban settlement patterns reflected this reality. In both, small
groups of settlers came together and organized themselves locally
to undertake pioneering tasks. The local role was further
stimulated by the fact that the Ottoman authorities who governed
the land until 1917 saw their function as essentially custodial
and oriented to maintaining minimum security; all else was left
to the religio-ethnic communities to develop as they saw fit.
The British authorities who came after the Turks (between 1917
and 1948) did not depart from this pattern except to make it more
honest and efficient. It was left to the individual
religio-ethnic communities within the country to determine the
kind of public infrastructure they wanted for themselves. For
the ruling powers, this was a natural and highly functional way
to deal with the problem of differing ethnic groups with widely
differing styles of internal organization and highly divergent
expectations from the public sector.
Thus the first local governments were fostered as alternatives to
foreign government and were treated by the organized Jewish
community in Palestine as important elements in the drive for a
Jewish state. Jewish municipalities such as Tel Aviv, local
councils such as Petah Tikva, regional councils (which were
federations of Jewish agricultural settlements) such as Emek
HaYarden (Jordan Valley) and HaGalil HaElyon (Upper Galilee), as
well as the governing committees of the kibbutzim and moshavim
were all encouraged by the Zionist authorities as a means of
advancing the cause of Jewish self-government. In those
pre-statehood days, the Jewish local governments took on many of
the responsibilities that were later to become the province of
the state and provided a wide range of services which they
initiated and organized in the first place. In this, they were
specifically encouraged by the Mandatory government which itself
maintained only the minimum of governmental services for
political reasons, allowing the Jews and Arabs of what was then
Palestine to determine the level of services to be provided in
their own sectors.
The Arabs resisted all efforts by the British to establish local
government institutions in their communities on the grounds that
they would interfere with the traditional patterns of local rule,
where the leading family or families maintained nearly total
control over their fellow villagers. This policy meant that the
Arab villages remained almost unchanged until the establishment
of the State of Israel. The Israeli authorities encouraged them
to acquire municipal status and the services and facilities that
went with such status. As a result, the Arab villages have been
undergoing modernization with regard to basic municipal functions
for no more than a generation.
The Jewish sector, on the other hand, wished to rapidly develop a
modern, Western-style society, with all that entailed. Indeed,
because of their socialist bent, the Jewish pioneers wished to
provide even more services than many individualistic societies in
the West. Since neither Turkish nor British mandatory
authorities were interested in meeting their needs and since the
Jews were not interested in having others do for them what they
believed they should do for themselves, the Zionist institutions
undertook the task of providing those services. Even within the
framework of the federation of parties, to no small extent the
execution of this task fell upon the Jewish-sponsored local
authorities which served most of the Jewish population.
Local governments also served the cause of maintaining diversity
within the framework of the Zionist movement. The General
Zionists and other right and center parties that were excluded
from positions of power in the Histadrut-dominated, countrywide
organs of the Jewish "state within a state" were able to
establish power bases of their own in a number of the Jewish
municipalities, which gave them a share and a stake in the
upbuilding of the land. Moreover, many of the future leaders of
the state took their first steps on the road to political careers
in the local polities, urban or rural, especially in the
kibbutzim. Finally, the very nature of the Yishuv meant that the
Jewish local governments would be central factors in the
enhancement of political communication among the members of the
new society. The history of local government in pre-state Israel
is yet to be written, but when it is, there is no doubt that the
record will show that it played an important role as a training
ground for the state in the making.9
Even local government law in the country was generally enacted by
the British Mandatory regime after the fact, that is to say,
after Jewish settlers had created local institutions which then
had to be somehow formalized. The regional councils, a basic
element in all rural local government in Israel, are good
examples of this. In the late 1920s and throughout the 1930s, in
those areas where there were a sufficient number of Jewish
colonies to create contiguous bands of Jewish settlement, the
territorial democracy of the pioneers took on an additional form.
The leaders of the various kibbutzim and moshavim in the Jordan
Valley, the eastern end of the Jezreel Valley and the Huleh
Valley -- the three areas with both the requisite concentration
of settlements and the perceived need for cooperative action --
found it useful and necessary to join together and cooperate with
one another for the provision of common regional services. Other
clusters -- two on the coastal plain, two in the Jordan Valley,
and two in the Jezreel Valley -- began to do so in the 1930s,
creating councils on a federative basis, i.e., one representative
from each settlement, and possessing only such powers as were
delegated to him by the constituent settlements, which retained
most powers for themselves. At first they had no legal status,
but in 1941 the Mandatory government took note of those councils
and promulgated a law providing for their recognition as formal
local government bodies and for the establishment of others. The
Yishuv utilized these regional federations of settlements to
create small Jewish republics (their terminology) as a form of
autonomous space within the framework of the Mandate, something
which could only be done from a territorial base.10
The regional council idea spread, particularly after 1948, to
become one of Israel's major contributions to the theory and
practice of local government. Appropriately, regional
federations combined the principles of territorial and
ideological democracy to unite settlements within the same or
similar political movements.
The regional councils, particularly the older ones among them,
have retained a far greater degree of local autonomy than any
other governments in Israel, partly because a number of them
predate the establishment of the state and had the experience of
being virtually autonomous at a time when the legitimacy of the
colonial government was challenged by the indigenous inhabitants
of Palestine and partly because of the special place their
component units (especially the kibbutzim, but agricultural
settlements in general) occupy in Israeli society. As the
embodiments of the Israeli mystique they have a vital place in
Israeli society which tends to reinforce their position as
self-governing communities.
Simultaneously, cities like Tel Aviv created statelike service
systems for their residents under the permissive British rule and
with the blessings of the Vaad HaLeumi (Jewish National
Committee). Thus even the state services of the new society had
local roots to no small degree and were pyramided into
countrywide programs through various kinds of contractual and
federal arrangements established by the parties.
The Founding of Local Government
Formally, modern local government was first introduced in Eretz
Israel in the latter days of the Ottoman Empire with the
enactment of the Vilayet Law of 1864 which provided for the
establishment of nahiyas (rural districts) throughout the
country. Nahiyas were gradually introduced between then and
World War I. These nahiyas were under the control of mudirs.
Under the law each was to have a local council but few such
councils were actually established. Instead, mukhtars were
installed to replace the sheikhs who headed the local hamulas.
Under the law, two mukhtars were to have been elected in each
village along with a council of village elders (ikhtiyariyya) but
in fact most mukhtars were appointed, usually after consultation
with the local notables. The mukhtar was responsible for
assessing and levying taxes among the villagers, settling local
disputes, and acting as an intermediary in the relationship
between the provincial administration and the village.
Initially, the Jewish moshavot were outside of this system.
Indeed, they resisted attempts by the provincial administration
to control them. They were successful in this regard until 1904,
at which time the Ottoman provincial authorities recognized the
four largest moshavot as villages, recognizing their internal
governance structures and accepting those elected by the village
councils as the mukhtars. By 1914 all of the moshavot had
acquired a similar status.
In the interim, the moshavot themselves organized their own
self-governing institutions based upon patterns of Jewish
communal self-government derived from Eastern Europe and held
together by local consensus rather than external legal power. The
general meeting (assefah klalit) was the ultimate authority in
each moshava. It met several times a year. It elected an
executive (hanhalah) annually or biannually, and in some of the
larger moshavot, a council (moetzah) as well, to which the
executive was responsible. Each executive had a chairman (yoshev
rosh) and other officers elected from among its members. In some
of the moshavot all adult members were granted equal political
rights from the start. In others, there were struggles between
the property owners and the unpropertied, principally the
workers, over the issue of political rights, but by the end of
Ottoman rule equal suffrage on a universal basis had triumphed in
all of them.
Municipal government was introduced at approximately the same
time as rural local government and was also a product of the
Ottoman reform (tanzimat). Jerusalem was made a municipality by
special imperial decree (firman) in 1863. It remained the only
formally organized municipality until the enactment of the
Provincial Municipalities Law in 1877 under which 22 towns and
larger villages were granted municipal status in the 1880s and
1890s.
Under the law they had an impressive list of powers and
responsibilities but, in fact, had very little room to maneuver
under the provincial authorities. Municipal budgets were very
small and the municipalities had almost no civil service. Under
the law, the municipal councils (majlis umumi) of 6-12 members
were to be elected by local taxpayers who were Ottoman subjects.
In fact, genuine elections rarely took place. The general rule
was that the local notables would agree upon a slate of council
members. In Jerusalem, the Jewish and Christian as well as the
Muslim communities were represented on the council, although the
Muslims had disproportionate representation. Mayors were
appointed by the government and, of course, were always Muslims.
At the outset of the British Mandate, there were 22
municipalities in western Palestine: 16 Arab and 6 mixed
Arab-Jewish (Jerusalem, Jaffa, Haifa, Tiberias, Safed, and
Hebron). Tel Aviv was still regarded as a suburb of Jaffa
although, in fact, it was administered by a separate autonomous
Jewish council. The British more or less accepted the Ottoman
system until they could introduce a municipal framework of their
own. In the interim, new municipalities were created by the
Mandatory government through orders-in-council. The first
independent step by the Mandatory government was the promulgation
of a town planning ordinance in 1921, a reflection of the British
interest in the aesthetics of the Holy Land. A local council
ordinance promulgated in the same year established the basis for
rural local government in the country for 20 years, after which
it became more an expression of the government of small cities. A
general municipal franchise ordinance was promulgated by the
Mandatory government in 1926. It extended municipal voting
rights to resident male tenants even if they held no property
provided that they paid at least one Palestine pound in municipal
rates annually.
It was not until 1934 that a comprehensive Municipal Corporations
Ordinance was promulgated. It empowered the high commissioner to
establish new municipalities or change the boundaries of existing
ones on the recommendation of a public committee of inquiry, a
system which continued after the establishment of the state,
with the Minister of Interior inheriting the powers of the high
commissioner. The Ordinance detailed the method of elections,
the duties and powers of council members and the municipality,
revenue sources, procedures for approving the municipal budget,
methods of financial control, and regulations for filling the
major administrative positions of town clerk, treasurer, and
medical officer. The law also established procedures for council
and committee meetings and rules for establishing committees.
Local councils were empowered to enact bylaws but only on those
subjects listed in the ordinance, and subject to the high
commissioner's approval. The district commissioners were given
oversight and budgetary approval powers, while the high
commissioner retained the right established in Ottoman days to
nominate the mayors and deputy mayors. This Ordinance was
carried over after 1948 and many of its provisions still apply
although they continue to be modified.
The 1934 Ordinance also confirmed Tel Aviv's municipal status,
broadening the local franchise to include men and women, citizens
and foreign nationals who paid at least half a pound a year in
municipal rates. The Tel Aviv pattern became the model for other
Jewish councils established subsequently. The Ordinance also
modestly changed the distribution of powers in Jerusalem. While
the city had a Jewish majority for many years and a Jewish
plurality since 1860, Jews had only been entitled to 4 out of the
12 seats on the city council. After 1934, the distribution
provided for 6 Jewish council members, 4 Muslims, and 2
Christians, but the high commissioner always appointed a Muslim
mayor with Jewish and Christian deputies.
The 1921 Town Planning Ordinance was basically designed to
safeguard the aesthetic dimensions of the country during a period
of development. It was replaced in 1936 by a more modern
ordinance which provided for the establishment of local town
planning committees identical with the local councils and with
the mayor as chairman, and district town planning commissions
headed by the district commissioner in which the Mandatory
government departments were represented. The latter oversaw the
former and was in turn subject to general directives from the
Mandatory government planning division.
The 1921 Local Council Ordinance became the formal basis for
Jewish self-government under the Mandate, although the Jewish
communities went beyond it in the establishment of powerful
institutions of their own. Petah Tikvah, the oldest of the
moshavot, was the first Jewish settlement to acquire local
council status in 1921. The next year Rishon le-Zion and
Rehovot acquired similar status; Tel Aviv became a local council
in 1923, and Ramat Gan and Afula in 1926. After that it was not
until 1935, when Hadera acquired that status, that it spread to
other Jewish settlements. Bat Yam, Ra'anana, and Kfar Saba
followed in 1936; Bnei Brak and Herzliya in 1937.
In 1941 a new ordinance was promulgated, replacing the earlier
one. It expanded the powers of the local councils, creating the
anomaly that still exists that in some fields they have more
powers than municipalities and, indeed, were given the power to
act for the public benefit on any matter so long as it did not
come in conflict with other legislation. The 1941 act provided
for the establishment of regional councils as well, based on the
patterns of governance developed for existing federations of
Jewish settlements, which formalized the arrangements which had
already been developed in the Jewish sector.
In 1945 the Local Authorities (Business Tax) Ordinance was
promulgated which allowed local authorities to enact bylaws to
tax businesses operating within their boundaries, subject to
approval by the high commissioner. This completed the bundle of
local legislation under the Mandate.
The Arab village residents regarded these ordinances as an
interference with their traditional way of life and opposed their
implementation. In the first five years, 21 Arab local councils
were established, plus Sarona as a Christian council. Most of
the Arab villages given local council status successfully fought
against the transformation of their traditional organization.
Instead, the Arabs secured a village administration ordinance
promulgated in 1944 which provided for a more modest change in
the traditional government of the villages. Twenty-four villages
reorganized under that law between 1944 and 1948, but even in
those cases the new structure tended to exist only on paper while
the old ways were preserved. By the end of the Mandate in 1948
there were only 11 Arab local councils, while the number of
Jewish local councils had increased to 26, in addition to four
regional councils (Emek Hefer, Kishon, Nahalal, and Tel Hai).
Local Government in the New State
With the establishment of the state in 1948, local government
left the center of the political stage. Not unexpectedly, the
new state began to assume responsibility for many public
functions which had rested in local governmental hands for lack
of central institutions. Political leadership gravitated toward
the offices of the new state, leaving only those members of the
opposition parties for whom the limited responsibilities of
service in the Knesset were not sufficient and those kibbutzniks
who wished to stay home, to seek local office. In the process of
sorting out state and local functions, the party organizations
and the Histadrut interposed themselves between the fledgling
state and the local governments, further weakening the autonomy
of the local leadership.
At the same time, the mass immigration to Israel in the years
1948-1953 shifted the patterns of settlement in the country in
such a way that the kibbutzim and veteran moshavim, the local
communities possessing the best access to the state and the most
power to maintain their local autonomy, declined in importance
relative to other local communities. On the other hand, the
development towns and the immigrant settlements, potentially the
least powerful local communities, became significant elements in
the constellation of local governments. While new kibbutzim were
established in this period, the kibbutz as such failed to attract
many of the new immigrants.11
The reduction in the power of local government was not
necessarily the result of calculated policy but, rather, the
result of a natural transfer of powers that could only have that
effect. Indeed, the new state took it upon itself to foster
local government institutions from the first. Reversing the
pattern established in Mandatory days, the state authorities
themselves moved to establish new local authorities. The number
of Jewish settlements enjoying municipal status rose from 36 in
1948 to 107 by 1968. The number of regional councils rose from 4
in 1948 to to 53 in 1985. Moreover, new rural settlements were
all encouraged to develop local committees of their own for their
internal self-government. Finally, and perhaps most
significantly, the Arab and Druze villages were also encouraged
to establish modern municipal governments of their own and did so
in substantial numbers, thereby opening the door to political
participation for thousands of non-Jews who had previously been
caught in the embrace of a traditional society that confined
political power to a tiny elite. In addition to the
establishment of new local governments, existing local
governments were upgraded and their structures and functions more
or less regularized according to standard statewide patterns.12
The same standardization that was brought to governmental
activities was extended to politics as well. Regularization
brought with it the patterns of voting on the local plane that
were becoming fixed statewide. The opposition parties lost
control of most of the local governments which had been in their
hands in the prestate period and were replaced by new coalitions
dominated by Mapai, the Israel Labor party that was dominant in
the country as a whole. If the establishment of the state
strengthened the hands of central government institutions, the
mass immigration strengthened the hands of the political party
organizations. Whereas in the small Yishuv before statehood the
party members could play significant roles in party
decision-making, as the population grew and the elements which
came in were for the most part politically unsophisticated, the
professional party leaders took over direction of party affairs,
relying upon the new voting masses who turned out for them at the
polls but who were not prepared to participate actively in party
government. This had the effect of increasing the role of the
central organs of the political parties, enabling them to become
the mediating elements between state and local governing bodies
with their respective versions of coalition politics.
Local government reached its lowest point in the political system
in the mid-1950s. At that point, the older local governments had
lost many of their original functions and had been absorbed in
the statewide party system along lines that harmonized with the
patterns of rule established in Jerusalem. The most powerful
local governments, those of the kibbutzim, and secondarily the
older moshavim, were attracting a proportionately smaller share
of the new immigrants and losing their importance in the local
government constellation as a result. The new immigrant
settlements that had been established after statehood were still
too raw and immature to be self-governing. Even where they were
given municipal status, their government offices were occupied or
dominated by outsiders sent in by their respective political
parties to manage local affairs until such time as "proper"
(however defined) local leadership should emerge.13
In the late 1950s, the tide began to turn as local governments
began to find their place in the framework of a state in which
power was divided on other than territorial bases, first and
foremost, but which also wished to encourage local governmental
activity across most if not all of the four tasks or roles listed
at the beginning of this chapter. The process of adjustment
which began at that time has not yet been completed.
In the case of government services, after the period of mass
transfer of functions to the state, the country entered a period
in which shared or cooperative activity began to be stressed.
With regard to functions defined as state services, the state
took primary responsibility for program initiation,
policy-making, and finance, while program administration -- the
actual delivery of services -- was increasingly transferred to
local government. In cases where the division was not so
clear-cut, responsibility for the delivery of services was
somehow divided between the state and the localities. This became
true over a wide range of functions, from welfare to education to
civil defense to sewage disposal.
The nature of these sharing arrangements should be made clear.
They did not involve a sharing among equal partners but rather a
sharing between superior and subordinate. But sharing did become
the norm, which meant that, at the very least, the local
governments were forced to develop cadres of civil servants with
sufficient administrative skills to provide the services that the
state promised all its citizens. This opened the door to the
recruitment and development of a new class of participants in a
governmental process which out of necessity has drawn people from
all segments of Israeli society.14
Moreover, unlike local government in countries with very
heterogeneous populations like the United States, local
governments in Israel undertake a range of social and cultural
functions which extend beyond the ordinary police functions of
local government. These range from the provision of religious
services to the management of orchestras and drama groups, from
the maintenance of day care centers to the awarding of literary
prizes. No small share of the importance of local governments in
Israel flows from its role in undertaking these functions as part
of their task of fostering the social and cultural integration of
the community.15
Forms of Local Government
Urban government in Israel legally takes two forms, cities and
local councils, with the distinction between them minimal. The
largest local communities are legally cities with full municipal
powers, but, in the English tradition of ultra vires, they
possess only those powers specifically granted to them. In the
case of conflict with the state, city powers are interpreted
narrowly. Small urban places are formally termed local councils,
a status which gives them almost as much power as cities and in a
few cases more, but which makes them more dependent on the
Ministry of Interior for hiring personnel.16 Both kinds of
municipalities are governed by mayors elected directly and by
councils elected on the basis of proportional representation.
Normally, no party gains a majority in the council and a
coalition is formed to govern the city, much as is the case on
the state plane. Usually, even parties winning a majority will
form coalitions in order to strengthen the hand of the local
government or to better distribute local political rewards in
consideration of statewide coalitions.17
While cities and local councils are the basic urban municipal
units, they can confederate with one another to create larger,
special-purpose municipal bodies designed to undertake specific
tasks. These bodies, termed confederations of cities, can be
established by two or more municipalities and can undertake one
or more functions. They range from the Lod-Ramle joint high
school district to the federation of cities of the Dan region,
which encompasses the better part of the Tel Aviv metropolitan
area and provides several services which seem to be best handled
on a metropolitan-wide basis.18
Israel has also utilized special authorities for certain
purposes. Certain of these authorities handle water drainage and
sanitation problems which require adaptation to watersheds that
do not follow existing municipal boundaries. In addition, there
are the local religious councils in the Jewish-dominated
localities, local planning committees, and the state-mandated,
quasi-independent local agricultural committees established in
most former agricultural colonies that have become mixed
urban-rural communities.19
The cooperative sector is represented locally by workers'
councils which are elected by the vote of all members of the
Histadrut within each council's jurisdiction (which, in most
cases, more or less conforms to the municipal boundaries). While
formally private, many of their activities are of a
quasi-governmental character, and they often wield substantial
political influence, especially since cities are often dependent
upon decisions taken by the cooperative sector at the higher
echelons of its bureaucracy, over which they have minimal
influence.20
The kibbutzim and moshavim, on the other hand, are elite
elements in the cooperative sector. They are organized as
cooperative societies and also have municipal status as a local
committee (Vaad Mekomi) under state law. They are actually
governed by two principle bodies, the general meeting (equivalent
to the American town meeting), which elects the local committee
on a yearly basis and which meets monthly to consider major
issues, and the local executive committee, which meets as
frequently as necessary, sometimes daily, to deal with current
business. Most of their day-to-day business is carried on
through a multitude of committees involving as many members as
are capable of participating. Every kibbutz and moshav is also a
member of a regional council that provides secondary local
government services, in which it is represented by a delegate or
delegates chosen by its own general meeting.21
Because of the particular character of rural settlement in Israel
where even family farms are concentrated in villages with their
own local institutions, the 728 rural settlements with their own
local governmental autonomy have an average population of under
800.22 In a self-selected population (which is what these
settlements represent), it is possible for these small
communities to provide a very high level of services. Even so,
it has been increasingly necessary to broaden the scale of
services as evidenced by the growing power of the regional
councils. For example, all but the smallest settlements choose
to maintain their own elementary school, but the provision of an
adequate high school requires a somewhat larger population base.
Hence, the provision of high schools is increasingly entrusted to
regional councils. Yet the regional councils themselves are
relatively small, ranging in population from 678 to 20,378, with
only four over 10,000.23
There are today a total of 1,409 local authorities functioning in
Israel, or approximately one local government per 2,823
inhabitants. Table 1.1 summarizes the types of local authorities
functioning in Israel and the number of each type. By any
standard, this is a high figure. It is particularly high given
the strong formal commitment in Israel to centralized government.
Table 1.1
LOCAL AUTHORITIES IN ISRAEL
| Type | Number |
| Cities | 37 |
| Local councils | 125 |
| Regional councils | 54 |
| Local committees | 825 |
| Federations of cities | 32 |
| Religious councils | 204 |
| Agricultural committees | 26 |
| Planning committees | 84 |
| Drainage authorities | 22 |
| Total | 1,409 |
Most local authorities serve relatively small populations.
Jerusalem, the largest city in the country, has approximately
415,000 residents and is growing primarily as a result of the
reunification of the city in 1967. Tel Aviv, once the largest
city in the country and still the central metropolis, has a
declining population, now less than 330,000, having peaked at
approximately 385,000 in the mid-1970s. It is now undergoing the
process of dedensification which has become common in central
cities over much of the Western world, as the movement to better
housing in newer parts of the metropolitan area plus urban
renewal with the construction of new housing at lower densities
within the city has its impact. Haifa has approximately 227,000
people and is the third largest city. There is a second cluster
of five cities with populations between 100,000 and 140,000. The
other cities and towns range in size from 200 to 80,000. The
average city size is under 18,000. While the country is highly urbanized,
nearly half the population lives in villages or small cities of
under 40,000 population while approximately 25 percent live in
cities of over 200,000.
Neighborhoods have real meaning in most cities. In part, this is
associated with the very formation of the cities themselves,
whose modern founding was the result not only of associations of
pioneers established by compact for that specific purpose, but
also of a compounding of different neighborhoods, each created
independently by a pioneer association and then linked through a
second set of compacts to form the present city. Both large and
small cities have clearly identified neighborhoods. In fact, it
is fair to say that this pattern can be found in any city of over
10,000 population and in some that are even smaller because of
the history of city building in Israel.24
Haifa, where formal neighborhood institutions are strongest and
most widespread, reflects this process to the fullest.
Neighborhood committees evolved, each with specific if limited
responsibilities for the provision of services and for
participation in the development of certain common city-wide
services. Finally, taking advantage of a provision in the law,
the residents of Kiryat Haim, one of the city's neighborhoods,
voted to formally establish an elected neighborhood council and
to assume the powers to which it was entitled.
Jerusalem was unified by the external decision of the ruling
power, but because most of the older neighborhoods represented
clearly distinct socio-religious communities, the city has
consistently refrained from imposing itself upon them in those
fields of particular concern to each. Today the city is trying
to extend more formal devices for neighborhood participation to
newer neighborhoods. In the early 1980s, there were successful
experiments in formally institutionalized neighborhood
self-government which operate today in seven neighborhoods, both
old and new. As a result, Jerusalem has opted for
decentralization of municipal functions throughout the city.
In Tel Aviv the merger of neighborhoods was more thorough and
little, if anything, remains of the earlier framework other than
names and recollections. In the past few years, however, the
city has made some effort to revive consultative bodies in at
least those neighborhoods which have preserved the most
distinctive personalities.
The phenomenon of neighborhood committees is widespread in
Israel. A recent study shows that there were approximately 385
active neighborhood committees throughout the country,
characterized by intensive activities in various physical and
social areas within their respective neighborhoods.25
Project Renewal has enhanced the already-strong neighborhood
orientation of Israel's cities. This massive program of urban
redevelopment undertaken by the government of Israel and diaspora
Jewry, is based on targeting aid to specific neighborhoods
through local steering committees which bear major responsibility
for determining what should be done to improve their
neighborhoods. These steering committees determine projects, set
priorities, and negotiate with state and diaspora counterparts.26
In Israel, as in other parts of the world, there has been
periodic pressure to consolidate small local units. Despite the
fact that the Minister of Interior has full authority to abolish
any local unit or consolidate two or more units, this authority
has rarely been used and then only when such a move had
sufficient political backing from local elites. In the early
days of the state when political elites did not include
representatives of the localities in question, more
consolidations were effected. Since the early 1960s, however,
even the weakest local governments have acquired political bases
of their own, and any attempts at consolidation are strongly
resisted. As a result, consolidation efforts have essentially
ground to a halt, being replaced by efforts to create
confederations of cities in order to undertake those functions
which the individual communities cannot undertake by
themselves.27
The State Commission on Local Government (Sanbar Commission),
which completed its work in 1980, rejected the notion of
consolidation as a basic tool of local government reform,
recommending that it be considered in only one or two cases.
After extensive fieldwork, the Commission concluded that the
civic virtues of the smaller local authorities compensated for
most of the disadvantages of their small size and that, through
interlocal arrangements based on federative principles, those
disadvantages could be overcome.
To date, the federation of cities device has been generally used
to undertake functions of metropolitan concern and has been
little used in the more rural parts of the country. This is
partly because the confederation of cities idea was developed to
serve cities that adjoin one another, that is to say, those in
metropolitan regions. The device has not been extended to
free-standing cities within a region which may be separated by no
more than a few miles but which see themselves and are treated
as totally separate entities. Thus, a certain amount of very
real intergovernmental collaboration in planning and service
delivery has been developed in the Dan region, which consists of
some 20 cities whose boundaries are contiguous with one another.
Yet in the Galilee, a region of several hundred thousand people
with no single city of 40,000 population but with six cities of
over 10,000, all within an area of less than 1,000 square miles,
there are relatively few intermunicipal arrangements and little
local concern with moving in that direction. This is true even
though the region as a whole shares common state facilities
(e.g., a large hospital in Safed, university extension courses in
that city and at Tel Hai near Kiryat Shmona, district offices in
Nazareth, rudimentary sewage treatment facilities near Tiberias)
and has the potential of becoming a kind of multinodal
metropolitan region of the kind that has developed elsewhere in
the world.
State-Local Relations in a Government-Permeated Society
The fact that Israel is a government-permeated society strongly
affects state-local relations. One of the major consequences of
this is that local government officials must spend as much time
working with outside authorities to either provide services or
fund services as they do in directing their own affairs. Another
is that local governments have been quite restricted in their
ability to finance municipal activities. Relatively few tax
resources are at their disposal, and the local share of total
governmental expenditures in Israel has been on the decline for
nearly twenty years.
By and large, Israeli local governments manage to maintain their
freedom of movement by managing deficits, which have become the
functional equivalent of grantsmanship in other polities. While
there are great restrictions on local government's taxing powers,
there are almost no restrictions on its borrowing powers,
providing that any particular local authority can pay the high
interest involved. Thus, local authorities borrow heavily from
the banks in order to provide services and then turn to the state
government to obtain the funds to cover the loans. As long as
the services they wish to provide are in line with state policies
(and there is almost universal consensus with regard to those
services, so that is not generally an issue) and there is some
degree of unanimity within the local ruling coalition with regard
to what is being done, the state will provide the requested
funds. Nevertheless, this does mean that the local authorities
must spend a very large share of their time in negotiations with
their state counterparts.28
Local leaders are also able to turn, in some matters, to the
Jewish Agency and through it (or even directly, in some cases) to
foreign donors to gain additional resources, mostly for capital
investment, e.g., the construction of a new high school,
community center, or a child-care center. Where services are
provided directly by the state, local authorities will use their
influence to try to negotiate more and better services or to
influence those responsible for delivering those services
locally, but in this they are notably less successful than they
are in mobilizing funds for their own programs, partly because
the Israeli political culture encourages every officeholder to
act as independently as possible.29
Sharpening the Trend Toward Territorial Democracy30
At least since 1969, the local elections have been major factors
in Israel's transition from ideologically-based politics to
politics based on territorial subdivisions. In many respects,
that is their most significant aspect. More specifically, the
trend toward territorially-based politics rests upon three
separate components:
the increasing political integration of the Israeli
polity;
the growing localization of political action and, by
extension, of political power;
the increasing differentiation of local political
systems, as systems with distinctive patterns and
orientations of their own to political action.
Israel's cities and local councils became the first frontier of
political integration in the country. They provided the first
opportunities for non-ideological participation in Israeli
political life, which meant, in effect, opening political
participation to younger people, political "amateurs," and to the
new immigrants from the Afro-Asian countries or their children.
As early as 1967, approximately 47 percent of the political
leaders and public officials (taken together) in the local arena
were drawn from those groups in sharp contrast to the situation
then prevailing in the Knesset and the ministries. Moreover,
many had become mayors, giving them concomitant political and
social advantages.31 A decade later, they were in the vanguard
of the Sephardic leadership in the Likud who moved into key
positions in the Knesset and the government.
By any of the measures available, it appears that local
government, by applying the principles of territorial democracy,
is serving as a channel of recruitment of otherwise excluded
groups into the political process. Even where attempts were made
to send political veterans into new towns to assume positions of
responsibility in the early days of their development, these
people were soon overwhelmed by the rise of local leaders able to
move ahead simply by virtue of their being who they were
vis-a-vis their reference groups where they were. Ultimately,
the parties had to accommodate them and seek to co-opt them,
making necessary concessions in the process. Not the least of
these concessions was an almost total ignoring of ideology in the
recruitment of new local leadership so that now one finds even
members of Mapam who are observant Jews and members of the Labor
Party who do not have even the beginnings of a commitment to
socialism. In sum, local politics has become far more pragmatic
than ideological.
Significantly, split-ticket voting, a phenomenon which increased
during the 1960s, continued its upward trend in the elections of
the 1970s. This was widely recognized in Israel and hailed
throughout the country as a sign of the growing maturity of the
electorate. The increase in split-ticket voting should be
understood as an indicator of greater political integration. The
ability of voters to discriminate between parties and candidates
on different governmental planes is a sign of the citizenry's
increasing "at homeness" as members of the body politic. Since
political integration, particularly in a democratic society, must
necessarily involve greater rootedness within the body politic on
the part of the citizenry itself, this is an important measure.
An unintegrated citizenry can be brought to the polls by party
organizations to vote in overwhelming numbers. This was the case
in Israel in the 1950s and early 1960s, as it was in other
countries of immigration during parallel periods in their
development. It is clear that the link to politics for the
average voter in such circumstances exists only through the
mediating force of the organization which provides certain
services, frequently apolitical in character, to the new
immigrants in return for the right to manipulate their votes.32
The shift away from this in Israel, at first confined to the
local elections, led in 1977 to a radical shift in voting for the
Knesset and the Likud electoral victory.
Beyond the vote itself, the characters of the candidates and of
the campaigns reflect this growing political integration.
Increasingly, the candidates represent not only local interests
and issues, but also a common statewide orientation and style.
While local lists have proliferated, they rarely present
themselves as "ethnic" lists, even when their internal
composition reflects a particular local balance between blocs of
country-of-origin subcommunities. The more successful ones
present themselves as "good government" lists, designed to appeal
to the voters on the basis of their ability to improve local
programs and services (usually by taking a non-partisan stance
vis-a-vis the national parties). In this way they emphasize what
has become a common Israeli phenomenon and deny particularism as
such.
The success of local lists in places like Kfar Shmaryahu, Kiryat
Tivon and Ramat Hasharon (all typical upper-middle-class suburban
communities) could well have been forecast by observers familiar
with similar phenomena in similar suburban communities in other
western countries. The residents of these communities are
oriented toward the separation of local government from the
larger political arena, because they perceive local government as
a means for providing appropriate services administered
efficiently rather than as a mechanism for political reward. The
emergence of such suburban communities in Israel over the past
decade has been predictably accompanied by the emergence of local
non-partisan lists.
The triumph of local lists in cities like Nahariya, Kiryat Bialik
and Rishon le-Zion was less predictable but not necessarily
surprising. Each is a full-fledged city in its own right with a
distinctive character of its own, even though the latter two have
been engulfed by suburbanization in recent years. In all three
cases, old elites (the children of older settlers) sought to
preserve the character of their communities, and turned to local
lists as a means of gaining political control. In 1973, for
example, the Nahariya list was called, appropriately enough,
Ichpat Lanu (We Care) -- a slogan that has been spreading
throughout Israel to symbolize a new or revived interest in civic
responsibility. In Kiryat Bialik and Rishon le-Zion the lists
were called L'maan Kiryat Bialik (For Kiryat Bialik) and L'maan
Rishon le-Zion (For Rishon le-Zion); this is a more prosaic name,
but one that also attempts to convey a sense of local concern.
In the latter case, the incumbent mayor broke away from his party
(Gahal-Likud) when the party's national headquarters attempted to
dictate to him the other candidates on his list, and won a
resounding victory.
Perhaps, least expected, were the triumphs of local lists in a
number of development towns. In those cases, personalities who
had already established themselves politically were the
motivating forces behind the local lists. The campaigns
themselves were based on the same "good government" orientation
that had become common nationwide. Again, the names of the lists
are significant. For example, in Kiryat Ono, the list was called
Hakiryah Shelanu (Our City); in Kiryat Shmona, Hatnua Lizechuyot
Haezrach (Movement for Civil Rights); and in Sederot, L'maan
Sederot (For Sederot).
The extent of these localistic tendencies is even greater than
the statistics reveal. In a number of local authorities, what
were actually local lists won under the banner of the national
parties. The local appeal of such lists is often revealed by the
difference between the vote they received and the local vote for
the Knesset. Where the local branches of the national parties
adapted to the new style of politics, they were successful even
in defeating local lists.
The trend toward personalization of local elections has continued
unabated since 1969. It intensified in 1978 after the
introduction of the direct election of mayors apart from their
party lists. Across the country, outstanding mayoral candidates
garner votes far in excess of those cast for their tickets. They
have been able to carry lists of virtual unknowns into office on
their coattails, while lists not headed by attractive
personalities (however defined) have suffered. In many respects,
personal elections for mayor came to Israel, de facto, in the
1960s and the formal change in the law merely ratified what had
already become the norm.
The Growing Localization of Political Action
The rise of personalities as a factor in local elections is also
a reflection of the growing localization of politics in Israel.
By the 1973 elections, local party branches were already acting
in an increasingly independent fashion. At their most extreme,
they rejected all efforts by the party centers to determine who
should appear on their local lists and what kind of campaign
should be conducted, a posture that would have failed in earlier
contests.
In fact, at least until the 1983 elections, there was a steady
decline in attempts by party centers to interfere in local
ticket-making or campaigning. The party leaders apparently
calculated that it did not pay to intervene in the case of the
smaller localities; in the larger ones, they no longer had as
much power to do so. Thus, in most cases, local branches could
make their wishes felt on local matters without resorting to
extreme measures. In those few cases where party leaders did
actively try, they were sharply challenged and lost.
After the elections, local branches have insisted on the right to
undertake their own coalition negotiations, rather than allowing
themselves to be pawns in statewide deals by the central party
leadership, as had generally been the case in the past. This has
led to a number of conflicts which became quite public, but these
conflicts have almost always been resolved in favor of local
autonomy. On the other hand, there are many cases where local
party branches may not have undertaken initiatives, not because
they were told not to do so, but because they expected the party
centers to be opposed and were unwilling to go against central
authority.
In the 1983 municipal elections, there was an atavistic trend
toward national party intervention in several localities. In
every case, strong local mayoral candidates succeeded in
repelling these efforts, although in some cases, the struggle
cost them and their parties the elections.
Increasing Local Differentiation
The wide variety of electoral and political responses in the Tel
Aviv metropolitan area is a very real indicator of the growing
localization of Israeli politics. The usual statistical measures
of socio-economic and demographic variables tend to portray the
region as being substantially homogeneous. Most of the
governmental reforms that have been proposed for the region have
been based on assumptions derived from that portrayal. In fact,
however, the region has relatively few suburbs in the currently
accepted sense of the term. The overwhelming majority of the
municipalities serve settlements founded independently, even
though they may have subsequently become engulfed by
suburbanization. Even the commuting patterns in the area are not
simply to Tel Aviv from peripheral dormitory settlements, but are
matrix-like -- cutting across the metropolitan region in a
variety of directions. This reflects the fact that the larger
cities in the region are independent magnets in their own right.
As a matter of fact, while Tel Aviv is the commercial and
cultural center of the region and the country as a whole, it
shares political and economic power with Jerusalem and Haifa in a
manner more characteristic of large federal systems than of small
unitary states.
Within the Tel Aviv region, Ramat Gan, Givatayim, and Bnei Brak
-- three adjoining cities -- serve as major commercial and
cultural foci with distinctive local characteristics. The first
is a bourgeois city par excellance and an alternative commercial
center to Tel Aviv. The second is a worker's town and the third
is the seat of ultra-Orthodoxy in Israel, rivaled only by
Jerusalem. Industry is scattered throughout the region; the
largest single employer, Israel Aircraft Industries, is located
at the region's eastern periphery near Ben Gurion Airport, and
draws employees from the eastern ring of towns in an arc from
north to south. Each municipality has developed a politics of
its own to go with its particular location, economic base and
demographic composition. The local election contests, on the
other hand, demonstrate the great diversity within the region; it
is now being expressed more clearly and forcefully through the
politics of the local authorities than at any time since the
establishment of the state.
What is true of the Tel Aviv region is true of the country as a
whole. Hence, even more striking than the localization of local
politics in Israel is the increasing differentiation in the
character (political and otherwise) of the various cities, towns
and regions within the country. The two phenomena are, of
course, closely linked. Indeed, a strong case can be made that
it is the growth of local differentiation that has encouraged
localization. Moreover, local differentiation has developed hand
in hand with increased statewide political integration.
This is not the place to examine this apparently paradoxical
phenomenon, but the paradox is more apparent than real. Evidence
accumulated in recent years suggests that under the conditions
that sustain pluralist democracy in its various forms, increasing
political integration can stimulate internal differentiation on
new planes. The overwhelming majority of Israel's cities, towns,
and villages emerged within the same two-generation period as did
the state, pioneered by the same elements under the same
conditions. Despite the potential for sameness that this
situation offered, they have acquired quite distinct
characteristics in the course of becoming rooted communities,
even as the state is becoming better integrated politically.
In part, this is a reflection of the fact that different
ideological, country-of-origin and occupational groups were
settled in different localities. These differences may be the
result of:
ideological choices on the part of the original settlers
themselves (particularly in the case of settlements
founded before the state);
the settlement of immigrant groups on the basis of when
they arrived in the country (particularly in the case of
those founded in the state's early years); or
conscious planning on the part of the authorities
(particularly in more recent years), or some combination
of the three. This process alone would have produced a
certain amount of differentiation, and it has.
Even where the same kinds of people were settled in different
places, the order of their arrival created its own patterns of
differentiation. Moreover, the kinds of occupations in which the
first arrivals were able to engage established status systems
which are, to some extent at least, specifically local in
character. In general, economic circumstances have contributed to
local differentiation. When combined with location, these
circumstances have played a major role in determining whether a
community would be relatively stable in its population, or one
with a great deal of population turnover. Migration, itself, is
another factor promoting differentiation. Either initially or
subsequent to their initial settlement, most individuals and
families have been free to make their own choices insofar as they
have the means to do so; thus, population shifts have taken place
to shape the character of local communities.
Finally, history -- even the brief history of communities in
Israel -- brings about its own differentiation. Precedents are
established; certain people acquire position and power and put
their own stamp on local affairs; traditions emerge; and a local
pattern of doing business is forged. Even institutions mandated
centrally for every settlement develop differentially on the
basis of local circumstances, thus solidifying certain patterns
and preventing the development of others. The result is the
emergence of separate "personalities" for each community. These
differential characteristics, in turn, influence future
developments, attracting or repelling both people from the
outside and those born locally.
For many years, the physical appearance of development towns was
one of bland sameness, differentiated only by the fact that in
different years the central authorities used different
architectural and town planning styles. Recently, however, these
towns have acquired increasingly differentiated characteristics.
Netivot, Ofakim and Sederot are three development towns founded
at approximately the same time along the road between Ashkelon
and Beersheba, a few kilometers from one another. In Netivot, a
progressive group attained power in 1973 through control of the
local NRP (National Religious Party) branch, in a manner
particularly appropriate to a town whose population is
overwhelmingly religious. They held on for a decade and brought
considerable new development to their town until ruptured by a
split in the NRP. In Sederot, which voted overwhelmingly for the
Labor Alignment in Knesset and local elections until 1973, the
same kind of local progressive movement achieved power through an
independent local list but was unable to move the town forward to
any great degree. Ofakim did not undergo the kind of political
change that could make a difference in the quality of life until
the introduction of Project Renewal from the outside after 1977.
It remains the least politically advanced of the three towns.
The differences among the three can be traced to differences in
the composition of their respective populations, the economic
situation created by local and statewide considerations, and the
quality of their leadership. What is significant here is that
such real differences have emerged in so short a period of time.
Territorial Democracy: The Minorities
Two more aspects of territorial democracy in Israel need to be
considered, both of which are lineal descendents of the old
millet system. While that system no longer exists in a formal
way in Israel, the government has made some effort to accommodate
the legitimate demands of non-Jewish minorities for local
autonomy by applying its principles in the local government
sphere. Thus most Arabs, Muslim or Christian; Druze, and
Circassians have a substantial amount of cultural autonomy
maintained through their own local councils which serve to
concretize the rights secured them in Israeli basic law and also
provide a basis for implementing services provided by the state
through the appropriate departments in the Ministries of
Religious Affairs and Education and Culture.
In 1948, there was one Arab local council in Israel and only 27
percent of all Arabs were located within municipal governments of
any kind. During the years following the attainment of
statehood, the Israeli authorities made a conscious and
concentrated effort to give Arab and Druze villages municipal
status and thereby provide them with the political basis for a
substantial amount of local self-determination, particularly in
the cultural and religious spheres. By 1968, there were 42 Arab
and Druze local councils, one regional council composed
exclusively of Druze villages and 18 villages within mixed
regional councils so that some three-fourths of the non-Jewish
population had its own local government.33
Take, for example, the Druze village of Hurfeish in the upper
Galilee (present population approximately 2,200). Originally a
Jewish settlement until the fourth century, after a 600 year
hiatus it was resettled during the Crusades and its Druze
residents claim residence from that time. From then until 1967,
it was governed by traditional institutions. In 1967, the Israeli
Ministry of Interior convinced the local mukhtars to accept
formal municipal status.
Since the traditional Arab leadership resisted municipalization
for fear that it would interfere with their traditional
dominance, it came about only when a more educated generation
emerged.
The first important local public service to reach the village was
its connection to the state water network in 1957, freeing its
residents from reliance on local wells. The first paved roads
came in 1962. In 1975 the rest of the village's streets were
paved and in some cases widened. The city was linked to the
statewide electrical grid in 1969 and street lights were
installed a year later, both as a result of the introduction of
municipal government.
For the Arab and Druze, the introduction of formal local
government institutions became the means for attaining an
increasing amount of control over their own immediate destinies.
While they are not required to do so, most Israeli Arabs and
Druze remain residents of their villages even when they commute
to work in Jewish cities, so that they remain members of the
socio-cultural system which their village local government
protects and sustains. Israeli policy in this regard has been
conscious and deliberate. This is evidenced by the establishment
of separate Jewish cities adjacent to principle Arab cities and
villages wherever the Israeli government felt the need to do for
security reasons. With two exceptions, no effort was made to
create mixed municipalities. Thus Upper Nazareth was created
from scratch for Jews along side of Arab Nazareth and new towns
for Jews were established in the middle of western Galilee in
areas with many Arab villages. In all of these cases, the
municipal institutions were kept separate so that each group
could preserve its local autonomy through judicious use of the
first face of territorial democracy.34 It should be noted that
this strict division is now breaking down as members of the
minority groups attain higher educational standards and greater
prosperity.
A different kind of neo-milletization has been developed for
those members of the old Jewish Yishuv and the immigrants who
have joined with them to preserve an ultra orthodox way of life
outside of the Israeli mainstream. Their territorial base tends
to be confined to neighborhoods or quarters of major cities,
though in at least one case they have developed municipal
institutions to support their way of life. By and large, they
maintain their separatism through separate government-recognized
institutions, primarily schools and rabbinical courts, which
receive government subsidies and are given a great deal of
autonomy. These, of course, function within the "neighborhood"
territories which these groups have staked out for themselves.
Territorial Democracy and Civil Community
The sum and substance of the foregoing is a strengthening of
territorial democracy. Localities are increasingly finding ways
to express territorially-rooted interests through political
means. This is a matter of great necessity in a civil society
dominated by politics, where even the economic sphere is
subordinated to political concerns at almost every turn. In this
respect, Israel is following a trend towards decentralization
which seems to be worldwide.
The course of this pattern in Israel runs roughly as follows.
From 1948 until the early 1960s, the trend was predominantly one
of centralization. The state, animated by David Ben Gurion's
"statist" philosophy, absorbed functions which in the pre-state
Yishuv had been in the hands of local, voluntary or party bodies.
At the same time, the need for local administration even in a
small centralized state, combined with the democratic values of
Israel's leadership, led to the quiet spread of local
self-government for both Jews and Arabs. Local government law was
regularized and new settlements acquired local governmental
authority. From the mid-1960s onward, a trend toward
decentralization has taken on greater intensity through the
growth of local political power. Much of this is not visible in
formal legislation, or even in the administrative orders upon
which so much of the government of Israel is based. In
characteristically Israeli fashion, there remains a wide gap
between the formal framework, which is still pyramid-like in
almost every respect, and the actual matrix of power
relationships within the country.
Obviously, in neither case have all forces and factors led in the
same direction. Contradictory developments abound, but overall,
the pattern seems to be reasonably clear. In the earlier period
of centralization, a basis was laid for local self-government.
In the present period of increasing local power, new plateaus of
statewide political integration are being attained.
The trend towards decentralization has been aided by two
locally-linked phenomena. First, the sheer growth in size of the
individual municipalities has strengthened the ability of local
authorities to accept serious responsibility and make decisions
with greater independence. There are approximately 20 cities of
over 30,000 population in the state today, and another five are
approaching that figure; these have attained sufficient critical
mass to undertake the responsibilities entrusted to them by the
state or by their citizens. This, in itself, makes a big
difference.
Beyond that, there is an emergent local leadership able to
undertake the tasks that need to be undertaken, and eager to do
so, if only as a result of natural ambitions. Thus, Israel's
shift from the peak of centralization into a period of greater
decentralization has been assisted by the new-style politics
emerging in locality after locality across the country. By 1977,
a few of these new leaders began to move into the Knesset, given
new opportunities by the Likud victory. They soon demonstrated
their competence in the state arena. The 1981 Knesset elections
brought more of them to the fore in state politics. Some gave up
their local posts while others sought to combine state and local
office. After 1981, 20 Knesset members also held local office,
most as mayors of smaller cities. The localities may well be
generating the most dynamic political leadership in Israel today.
The question remains: will all this lead to structural and
institutional changes that will close the gap between the formal
and the informal distribution of power in the state?
A significant part of the answer to that question will have to
come from the state authorities that dominate government in all
areas but another part will have to come from the localities
themselves. It has been suggested in this chapter that the
formal local authority is not the sum total of local government
in a particular jurisdiction. It certainly is not the sum total
of local political or civic authority.
For one thing, power is far more diffused locally than it may
appear at first glance. In addition to the municipal council and
administrative departments, every locality has at least two local
bodies that are essentially independent of the local council.35
One is the religious council, a governing body appointed through
a formula which involves both local and state organs and
responsible for the provision of local religious services.36 The
other is the labor council which, as the local agency of the
Histadrut, actually functions as the equivalent of a local
chamber of commerce in the United States, a quasi-governmental
body which plays a major political role locally.37 In addition,
many of the small local councils elect an agricultural committee
under the terms of a state law which provides for such an elected
body when a sufficient percentage of the local population is
engaged in agriculture. Finally, in the large cities there are
neighborhood committees, one of which, in Kiryat Haim (Haifa), is
formally elected by the local residents as a kind of borough
council.38
All of these bodies, taken together, widen the scope of local
political participation considerably. More than that, they also
alter the shape of Israel's republican institutions and the
quality of its democratic life. On one hand, the development of
a multiplicity of local decision-making bodies clearly alters the
structure of bargaining in the local arena, and perhaps beyond
it as well, expanding the arena in which negotiation is both
necessary and possible. More than that, the dispersal of
bargaining power substantially weakens the strong tendency toward
centralization or monolithic control in the country, acting to
diffuse power among citizens or spokesmen for groups of citizens.
At the same time, the necessary interaction among these power
nodes within the local community expands the role of local
government by transforming localities into "civil communities"
that is to say, communities organized primarily for civic or
political purposes, able to utilize a wide variety of mechanisms
to shape actions affecting them as localities so as to better
serve their local value system. A civil community consists of
six kinds of elements:
The local governments that give the civil community its
basic shape (the local council, the religious council).
The agencies of the state or the offices of the national
institutions located in the community which function to
serve local as well as supralocal ends (e.g., the labor
exchange, the police detachment, the local office of the
Jewish Agency).
The public nongovernmental institutions which function in
the locality to supplement the governmental ones (e.g.,
the labor council, the various public welfare
institutions, the local schools sponsored by overseas
Jewish groups).
The political parties or factions which compete within the
locality to organize political power.
The local interest groups (or powerful individuals) which
effect decision-making in the community.
The local value system as crystallized in the
constitutional documents and traditions of the various
local governments within the community.
When the institutions representing these elements work together,
they provide a powerful means for widespread citizen involvement,
for the sharing of decisions, and for bargaining and negotiation
to set policy, In addition, they offer the local community
greater leverage over decisions that affect it which are made
outside its boundaries.39
The range and level of civic activity required to transform a
municipality into a civil community are just now beginning to
emerge in Israel as the population settles in, develops roots,
and generates the economic base necessary for an active civic
life. Since voluntary effort is required to sustain so many of
the components of a civil community, one can only flourish under
such circumstances. Moreover, even when the objective conditions
are present, civil communities are fostered only in the
appropriate cultural settings. Israel's latent Jewish political
culture happens to be an appropriate one, but it confronts two
others -- statist and subject -- that are far less so, if not
actually inappropriate in many ways. Thus the transformation of
simple municipalities into civil communities (a trend still in
its early stages in Israel) represents a major change in the
political character of the country, one that is likely to have
great repercussions for the country as a whole in terms of
increasing its stability (since more people will have a stake in
that stability), expanding the range of political recruitment,
and changing the bargaining process through which statewide
decisions are made.
Notes
1. Weiss (1972); Freudenheim (1967), Chap. 9; Kalchheim (1976);
Don-Yehiya (1987); Lazin (1979); Elazar (1977) and 1973).
2. Unfortunately, the literature on territorial democracy is
very limited. Orestes Brownson was apparently the first person
to use the term "territorial democracy" in The American Republic
(1866). Kirk expanded upon it as a concept. This writer has
commented on its role in American politics, see Elazar (1968).
Certain aspects of the problem of the territorial organization of
power have been well treated in Maas (ed.) (1959).
3. The articles of agreement of a number of the early colonies
are preserved in their archives and displayed on appropriate
occasions. Petah Tikva maintains its original covenant on
year-round display in its municipal museum. See also
Municipality of Petah Tikva (1964).
4. Buber (1950) makes a strong case for this claim; see in
particular his Epilogue.
5. For a description of the development of Jerusalem in this
pattern, see Vilnai (1960).
6. Cohen (1970) examines the problem of the city from the
perspective of the Zionist founders and surveys the actual state
of urban development in the country in those first generations.
Cohen suggests that the shift away from concern with urban as
well as rural settlement is also a product of the Third Aliyah
revolution with its strong ideological dimensions. All told, he
provides necessary corrective to the romantic view of rural
Israel.
7. Tel Aviv has not been very well studied to date. For data on
its development, it is necessary to go to the general histories
of modern Israel. See, for example Robert Shereshevsky, et. al.
(1968).
8. Central Bureau of Statistics (1983). In a significant number
of cities and towns, territorial neutrality has led to the
development of country-of-origin neighborhoods which, however,
are unable to obtain direct local representation under the
present electoral system. Perhaps as a result, ethnic ticket
balancing is even more pronounced in the local arena than in
Knesset elections.
9. Guttman (1963) and (1958); Av-Razi (1962); Adler and Hecht
(1970); and Adler (1960).
10. Gevirtz (1962a). Ben-Aryeh (1965) describes one of these
"small republics."
11. Weiss (1972); Guttman (1963); Elazar (1977); and Eisenstadt
(1967).
12. Alderfer (1964); Bernstein (1957); Hoven and Van der Elshout
(1963); and Samuel (1957).
13. Cohen (1970); Aronoff (1973b) in Curtis and Chertoff (eds.)
(1973); Spiegel (1966); and Aronoff (1973a).
14. Adler (1956); Dror and Guttman (eds.) (1961); Kalchheim
(1976); Samuel (1953); and Weiss (1973).
15. Weiss (1972); Guttman (1963); Bernstein (1957); Elston
(1963); and Kraines (1961).
16. Baker (1968), pp. 153-159; Gat (1976); Meljon (1966); and
Rosen (1962).
17. Torgovnik and Weiss (1972).
18. Martins and Hoffman (1981) (Hebrew).
19. Amiaz (1971) and Meljon (1962).
20. Aronoff (1973a).
21. Criden and Gelb (1976) and Lanir (1978).
22. Baldwin (1972) and Brown (1974).
23. Gevirtz (1962b); Katz et al. (1982); Rosen (1973) and Sharon
(1968).
24. Kramer (1970) and Rosenbloom (1979).
25. King and Hacohen (1986).
26. Elazar et al. (1980); Elazar et al. (1983). This evaluation
was commissioned by the International Evaluation Committee for
Project Renewal on behalf of the Jewish Agency for Israel and the
Government of Israel. Carmon and Hill (eds.) (1979); Katzav
(1983) and Walsh (1982).
27. Israel Institute for Urban Research and Information (1973);
State Commission on Local Government (1981) and Rosen (1973).
28. Elazar (1983) and Kalchheim (1976).
29. Elazar et al. (1979).
30. Arian (1972); Elazar (1975) in Arian (1975) and Lantzman
(1983).
31. Weiss (1972), Chapter 10. It should be noted that the
recruitment and advancement of Sephardic and Oriental Jews is not
spread evenly throughout the system of local government. The
older and larger cities have disproportionately fewer while the
new towns with their mainly "new immigrant" populations have
disproportionately more.
32. Deshen (1970) and Weingrod (1966).
33. A good summary of the development of local self-government in
the Arab towns is available in Stendel (1967). The best sources
of specific data are the reports of the State Comptroller for
specific towns. See also Stock (1968).
34. See Spiegel (1966). The two exceptions are Tel Aviv-Jaffa and
Maalot-Tarshiha. The first was created immediately after the
establishment of the state partly for security reasons and before
a clear urbanization policy was established. The second
represents a merger of two very weak local councils in an effort
to create one viable one. In addition, Acre, Lod, Ramle and
Haifa have mixed populations dating from before 1948 and
Jerusalem has been a mixed city since June 1967. More recently,
these "twin" communities have begun to develop cooperative
activities on a variety of fronts, recognizing the regional links
that bring them together even as they seek to preserve their
respective ethnic identities.
35. Ibid.; Cohen (1962); Elazar (1977); and Torgovnik and Weiss
(1972).
36. Don-Yehiya (1987) and Silverstone (1973).
37. Aronoff (1973a); Bilicky (1981) and Wilner (1969).
38. Kramer (1970) and Rosenbloom (1979).
39. For an elaboration of the civil community concept, see
Elazar (1970).
