Colonial Paternalism under Israeli Military Rule (1967-1977): “Social Welfare” as a Tool of Control

المؤلفون

  • مؤلفون

  • Ashraf Othman Bader
  • Asem Khalil

الكلمات المفتاحية:

Colonial Paternalism، Military Rule، Occupied Palestinian Territories، Social Welfare، Settler Colonialism

الملخص

This study examines the system of colonial paternalism that Israel imposed during the first decade of its post-1967 military rule over the Occupied Palestinian Territories. It interrogates the system’s legal and financial frameworks and forms of Palestinian resistance to it. Drawing on newly released archival material from the minutes of Directors-General Committee of Israeli ministries, records of Israeli military orders, and interviews with Palestinians, the study illustrates how the Israeli “social welfare” system cemented policies of control, regulation, and exploitation of the Palestinian population. It forced Palestinians into accepting financial arrangements and purchasing “subsidized” goods from the Israeli market, while simultaneously framing Israel as a caring guardian of their interests. The study enriches the theoretical debate on settler colonialism and the logic of policies governing the Palestinian population.

المراجع

  1. This study focuses on the period between 1967 and 1977 as it coincides with a decade of mainly Labor Party rule, from the Six Day War until the Likud Party’s landslide election victory in 1977. Moreover, this was the period in which the foundations were laid for Israel’s dealings with the Palestinian population of the OPT. However, some policies put in place during this period saw no fundamental change under subsequent governments.
  2. Ashraf Othman Bader, “Munẓūmat al-Taḥakkum wa-l-Sayṭara lil-Ḥukm al-ʿAskarī al-Isrāʾīlī fī al-Manāṭiq al-Mustaʿmara ʿĀm 1967 fī al-Fatra mā Bayn 1967-1981: al-Byū-Sulṭa al-Zirāʿīyya ka-Madkhal,” PhD Thesis, Birzeit University, Ramallah, 2022.
  3. The Directors-General Committee on Civilian Matters in the Territories Administered by the Israel Defence Forces—or simply the “Directors- General Committee”—was formed shortly after the Six Day War by government decree. Made up of the heads of all Israel’s government ministries, its task was to lay out the general policies for Israeli military rule in the territories Israel now occupied.
  4. Christian von Soest, “What Neopatrimonialism Is - Six Questions to the Concept,” Background Paper for GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies, Hamburg, 23/8/2010, p. 4.
  5. John F. Murphy, “Legitimation and Paternalism: The Colonial State in Kenya,” African Studies Review , vol. 29, no. 3 (September 1986) p. 55-66.
  6. Peter Karibe Mendy, “Portugal’s Civilizing Mission in Colonial Guinea-Bissau: Rhetoric and Reality,” The International Journal of African Historical Studies , vol. 36, no. 1. Special Issue: Colonial Encounters between Africa and Portugal (2003), p. 49.
  7. Peter Gibbon, Benoit Daviron & Stephanie Barral, “Lineages of Paternalism: An Introduction,” Journal of Agrarian Change , vol. 14, no. 2 (April 2014), pp. 165-189.
  8. Anwar Badr, personal interview, Hebron, 29/10/2022.
  9. Julia Stephens, “A Bureaucracy of Rejection: Petitioning and the Impoverished Paternalism of the British-Indian Raj,” Modern Asian Studies , vol. 53, no. 1 (January 2019), pp. 177-202.
  10. Allen Isaacman, “Coercion, Paternalism and the Labour Process: The Mozambican Cotton Regime 1938-1961,” Journal of Southern African Studies , vol. 18, no. 3 (September 1992), pp. 487-526.
  11. Uma Narayan, “Colonialism and Its Others: Considerations on Rights and Care Discourses,” Hypatia , vol. 10, no. 2 (Spring 1995), pp. 133-140.
  12. Michael Barbett, “International Paternalism and Humanitarian Governance,” Global Constitutionalism , vol. 1, no. 3 (November 2012), pp. 485-521.
  13. Yehouda Shenhav & Yael Berda, “The Colonial Foundations of the State of Exception: Juxtaposing the Israeli Occupation of the Palestinian Territories with Colonial Bureaucratic History,” in: Adi Ophir, Michal Givoni & Sari Hanafi (eds.), The Power of Inclusive Exclusion: Anatomy of Israeli Rule in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (New York: Zone Books, 2009), pp. 337-376.
  14. Geoffrey Aronson, “Israel’s Policy of Military Occupation,” Journal of Palestine Studies , vol. 28 (1978), pp. 79-98.
  15. Shabtai Teveth, The cursed blessing: the story of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank (Jerusalem/Tel Aviv: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1969).
  16. Shlomo Gazit, Trapped Fools: Thirty Years of Israeli Policy in the Territories (London: Routledge, 2003).
  17. Neve Gordon, Israel’s Occupation (London: University of California Press, 2008), p. 19.
  18. Directors-General Committee minutes, Session 5, Item 5, 25/6/1967, p. 29.
  19. Directors-General Committee minutes, Session 10, Item 6, 6/7/1967, p. 56.
  20. This amounted to 40% of the wage for a family of five people. The method for calculating the level of assistance for each person in a family was as follows: If the mean average assistance per person in a family of five members was taken to be 100%, the first child would receive the equivalent of 178%, the second 97%, the child 85%, the fourth 72%, the fifth 66%, and each additional childbirth up to 10 children 66%: Directors-General Committee minutes, Session 159, Item 5, 14/10/1971, p. 727.
  21. Directors-General Committee minutes, Session 176, Article 11, 1/2/1973, p. 887.
  22. Annexture fore Directors-General Committee minutes, Session 81, Article 5.A., 2/9/1968, p. 410.
  23. Directors-General Committee minutes, Session 49, Article 4, 22/1/1968, p. 276.
  24. Directors-General Committee minutes, Session 35, Article 2, 13/11/1967, p. 219.
  25. Directors-General Committee minutes, Session 38, Article 3, 4/12/1967, p. 233.
  26. Ibrahim Shahin, a resident of Absan in the Gaza Strip, personal interview conducted by Ghassan Abu Hatab, 13/10/2022.
  27. Directors-General Committee minutes, Session 166, Article 3, 23/3/1972, p. 801. The number of subsidized bakeries in the West Bank gradually grew to 60, which received subsidies worth ILP 450 per ton of wheat, up to 1,100 tons. In 1975, the committee decided to increase the amount of subsidized wheat provided to bakeries by 200 tons, making a total of 1,300 tons. Directors-General Committee minutes, Session 198, Article 4, 6/11/1975, p. 1084.
  28. Directors-General Committee minutes, Session 83, Article 5, 16/9/1968, p. 417.
  29. Annexture for Directors-General Committee minutes, Session 91, Article 4, 18/11/1968, p. 458.
  30. Directors-General Committee minutes, Session 81, Item 5, 2/9/1968, p. 407.
  31. Not slaughtered under supervision of a Rabbi.
  32. Directors-General Committee minutes, Session 81, Item 5.A, 2/9/1968, p. 410.
  33. Directors-General Committee minutes, Session 60, Item 6, 8/4/1968, p. 322.
  34. Directors-General Committee minutes, Session 169, Item 5, 22/6/1972, p. 830.
  35. Directors-General Committee minutes, Session 169, Item 5.B., 22/6/1972, p. 833.
  36. Directors-General Committee minutes, Session 76, Item 3, 1/8/1968, p. 382.
  37. Directors-General Committee minutes, Session 197, Item 11, 18/9/1975, p. 1057.
  38. Directors-General Committee minutes, Session 2, Item 8, 16/6/1967, p. 9.
  39. Directors-General Committee minutes, Session 170, Item 10, 27/7/1972, p. 841.
  40. Directors-General Committee minutes, Session 16, Item 5, 31/7/1967, p. 95.
  41. Directors-General Committee minutes, Session 44, Item 1, 21/12/1967, p. 259.
  42. Directors-General Committee minutes, Session 44, Item 2, 21/12/1967, p. 260.
  43. Directors-General Committee minutes, Session 65, Item 3.B., 13/5/1968, p. 335.
  44. Directors-General Committee minutes, Session 67, Item 2.B., 27/5/1968, p. 344.
  45. Directors-General Committee minutes, Session 210, Item 2, 28/7/1977, p. 1255.
  46. Directors-General Committee minutes, Session 44, Item 2, 21/12/1967, p.260.
  47. Directors-General Committee minutes, Session 55, Item 3, 4/3/1968, p. 301.
  48. Directors-General Committee minutes, Session 25, Item 7, 18/9/1967, p. 173.
  49. Directors-General Committee minutes, Session 44, Item 2, 21/12/1967, p. 260.
  50. Directors-General Committee minutes, Session 66, Item 5, 23/5/1968, p. 242.
  51. The Directors-General Committee repeatedly discussed the importance of using raising living standards as a means to maintain calm in the OPT. The solutions put forward included providing jobs guaranteeing an appropriate level of income for the population to prevent the outbreak of protests (Session 20), maintaining economic prosperity (Session 208), and addressing hikes in prices of basic materials in the Gaza Strip (Session 208), because inflation “destabilized the calm”. This suggests that inflation had indeed sparked demonstrations.
  52. Khader Sinqrat, retired teacher at Al-Aroub Agricultural College, Hebron Governorate, personal interview, 30/4/2020.
  53. Directors-General Committee minutes, Session 3, Item 10, 19/6/1967, p. 14.
  54. Directors-General Committee minutes, Session 19, Item 6, 14/8/1967, p.116.
  55. Directors-General Committee minutes, Session 21, Item 5, 28/8/1967, p. 133.
  56. Directors-General Committee minutes, Session 22, Item 9, 4/9/1967, p. 141.
  57. Directors-General Committee minutes, Session 73, Item 1.B., 8/7/1968, p. 382.
  58. Directors-General Committee minutes, Session 84, Item 2.B., 30/9/1968, p. 420.
  59. Directors-General Committee minutes, Session 85, Item 1, 3/10/1968, p. 425.
  60. Directors-General Committee minutes, Session 57, Item 2.B., 18/3/1968, p. 305.
  61. Directors-General Committee minutes, Session 58, Item 2.C., 25/3/1968, p. 311.
  62. Directors-General Committee minutes, Session 96, Item 1.B., 13/1/1969, p. 479.
  63. Directors-General Committee minutes, Session 99, Item 5, 10/2/1969, p. 492.
  64. Directors-General Committee minutes, Session 122, Item 5, 16/10/1969, p. 570.
  65. Directors-General Committee minutes, Session 103, Item 3.1., 10/3/1969, p. 505.
  66. Directors-General Committee minutes, Session 111, Item 5.A., 2/6/1969, p. 534.
  67. The salary scale for the West Bank was “legalized” by Military Order 477, Booklet 30, 16/8/1972, p. 1158.
  68. Directors-General Committee minutes, Session 143, Item 3, 10/12/1970, p. 663.
  69. Directors-General Committee minutes, Session 144, Item 6, 24/12/1970, p. 669.
  70. Directors-General Committee minutes, Session 153, Item 2, 24/6/1971, p. 702.
  71. Directors-General Committee minutes, Session 160, Item 4, 11/11/1971, p. 740.
  72. Directors-General Committee minutes, Session 156, Item 3, 2/9/1971, p. 712.
  73. Annexure for Directors-General Committee minutes, Session 156, Item 3.A., 2/9/1971, p. 714.
  74. Directors-General Committee minutes, Session 165, Item 6, 24/2/1972, p. 798.
  75. Directors-General Committee minutes, Session 170, Item 9, 27/7/1972, p. 840.
  76. Directors-General Committee minutes, Session 175, Item 2, 4/1/1973, p. 869.
  77. Directors-General Committee minutes, Session 178, Item 4.B, 22/3/1973, p. 900.
  78. Directors-General Committee minutes, Session 190, Item 2, 10/10/1974, p. 961.
  79. Directors-General Committee minutes, Session 200, Item 2, 5/2/1976, p. 1099.
  80. Directors-General Committee minutes, Session 206, Item 7, 13/1/1977, p. 1196.
  81. Directors-General Committee minutes, Session 21, Item 5, 28/8/1967, p. 133.
  82. Directors-General Committee minutes, Session 30, Item 2, 12/10/1967, p. 200.
  83. Annexure for Directors-General Committee minutes, Session 22, Item 9, 4/9/1967, p. 141.
  84. Directors-General Committee minutes, Session 37, Item 1, 30/11/1967, p. 231.
  85. Directors-General Committee minutes, Session 76, Item 4, 1/8/1968, p. 383.
  86. Annexture for Directors-General Committee minutes, Session 65, Item 3.H., 13/5/1968, p. 338.
  87. Directors-General Committee minutes, Session 137, Item 2, 20/8/1970, p. 631.
  88. Directors-General Committee minutes, Session 18, Item 8, 7/8/1967, p. 104.
  89. Annexture for Directors-General Committee minutes, Session 65, Item 3.H., 13/5/1968, p. 338.
  90. Directors-General Committee minutes, Session 91, Item 2.B., 18/11/1968, p. 454.
  91. Annexture for Directors-General Committee minutes, Session 91, Item 2.B., 18/11/1968, p. 457.
  92. Booklet 22, Military Order 31, 5/1/1970, p. 777.
  93. Booklet 27, Military Order 420, 23/3/1971, p. 1003.
  94. Booklet 18, Military Order 324, 8/12/1969, p. 1289.
  95. Yahya Al-Adhami, personal interview, Hebron, 27/10/2022.
  96. Directors-General Committee minutes, Session 71, Item 2.C., 24/6/1968, p. 359.
  97. Directors-General Committee minutes, Session 73 Item 3.A., 8/7/1968, p. 289.
  98. Directors-General Committee minutes, Session 193, Item 1.B., 27/2/1975, p. 988.
  99. Directors-General Committee minutes, Session 177, Item 3, 1/3/1973, p. 890.
  100. Directors-General Committee minutes, Session 189, Item 7, 5/9/1974, p. 957.
  101. Directors-General Committee minutes, Session 196, Item 18, 24/7/1975, p. 1050.
  102. Ghazi Sourani, writer and researcher, personal interview conducted by Ghassan Abu Hatab, Gaza, 13/10/2022; Youssef Moussa, UNRWA Operations Manager in Rafah, personal interview conducted by Ghassan Abu Hatab, Gaza, 13/10/2022; Mohammed Abu Hatab, a prominent resident of Shaboura camp in Rafah, personal interview conducted by Ghassan Abu Hatab, Gaza, 13/10/2022.
  103. Directors-General Committee minutes, Session 190, Item 3, 10/10/1974, p. 961.
  104. The use of this concept can be attributed to French Army general and colonial administrator Hubert Lyautey, who used it to fight an uprising in Vietnam in 1895. He also applied it in Morocco, although he drew it from British colonial policy in India. The doctrine assumes that colonized populations will work for their own interests—which may in turn be defined by the colonial authorities. See: Douglas Porch, “Bugeaud, Gallieni, Lyautey: The Development of French Colonial Warfare,” in: Peter Paret (ed.), Makers of Modern Strategy: From Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), p. 393.
  105. Directors-General Committee minutes, Session 75, Item 2, 22/7/1968, p.376.
  106. Directors-General Committee minutes, Session 79, Item 3, 19/8/1968, p. 394.
  107. Annexture for Directors-General Committee minutes, Session 79, Item 3.B., 19/8/1968, p. 400.
  108. Directors-General Committee minutes, Session 113, Item 3, 30/6/1969, p. 541.
  109. Hosni al-Samari, priest of the Samaritan community, personal interview, Mount Jerazim, Nablus, 26/10/2022.
  110. According to Al-Samari, the Samaritan community has the oldest version of the Torah, speaks the original Hebrew language, and is made up of the direct descendants of the tribes of Israel, in contrast to Zionist Jews.
  111. Mutaz Qafisheh, Associate Professor of International Law and former dean, Hebron University, Email correspondence, 4/10/2022.
  112. “Law No. 1 of 1962: Customs and Excise Law,” Al-Muqtafi , accessed on 7/3/2024, at: https://bit.ly/3fb3Ffc
  113. Booklet 2, Military Order 31, 27/6/1968, p. 66.
  114. Annexture for Directors-General Committee minutes, Session 65, Item 3.H., 13/5/1968, p. 338.
  115. Booklet 27, Military Order 420, 23/3/1971, p. 1003.
  116. Booklet 29, Military Order 445, 3/9/1971, p. 1085.
  117. Booklet 38, Military Order 662, 22/6/1976, p. 196.
  118. This was allocated as follows: Vocational training: ILP 1.7 million; building schools: ILP 1.5 million, health: ILP 500,000; social affairs, ILP 400,000; electricity network development: ILP 2 million.
  119. Liaison Unit for Activities in the Territories, Three years of military rule: Data on civilian activities in Judea, Samaria, the Gaza Strip, and North Sinai 1967-1970 [Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Israeli Ministry of Defence, June 1970), p. 78.
  120. This was allocated as follows: vocational training: 1 million; health: 600,000; schools: 400,000; electricity network development: 1.8 million.
  121. Liaison Unit for Activities in the Territories, p. 130.
  122. Directors-General Committee minutes, Session 186, Item 6, 27/3/1974, p. 941.
  123. Mordechai Nisan, Israel and the Territories: A Study in Control 1967-1977 (Ramat Gan: Turtledove Publishing, 1978), p. 41.
  124. Directors-General Committee minutes, Session 85, Item 1, 3/10/1968, p. 425.
  125. Directors-General Committee minutes, Session 147, Item 5, 18/2/1971, p. 680.
  126. Directors-General Committee minutes, Session 177 Item 11, 1/3/1973, p. 892.
  127. Directors-General Committee minutes, Session 168, Item 4, 25/5/1972, p. 825.
  128. Directors-General Committee minutes, Session 170, Item 1, 27/7/1972, p. 839.
  129. Directors-General Committee minutes, Session 207, Item 3, 24/3/1977, p. 1212.
  130. Directors-General Committee minutes, Session 177, Item 11, 1/3/1973, p. 892.
  131. Directors-General Committee minutes, Session 185, Item 1.D., 28/2/1974, p. 934.
  132. Salah Al-Zaroo, al-Taʿlīm Taḥt al-Iḥtilāl 1967-1987 (Hebron: University Graduates Union, Research Centre, 1988), pp. 265-275.
  133. Directors-General Committee minutes, Session 147, Item 6, 18/2/1971, p. 680.
  134. On the shift from the logic of elimination to that of control and domination, see: Ashraf Othman Bader, “al-Istiʿmār al-Istiyṭānī fī Filasṭīn Bayn al-Bunyā wa-l-Ṣayrūra: Maḥū wa-Izāla Am Taḥakkum wa-Sayṭara,” Omran , vol. 10, no. 39 (Winter 2022), pp. 11-38; Ashraf Othman Bader & Asem Khalil, “al-Istiʿmār al-Istyṭānī fī al-Siyāq al-Filasṭīnī: Baradāym am Mafhūm?,” Omran , vol. 9, no. 35 (Winter 2021), pp. 7-30.
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