Resettlement of the Mizrahi Jews in Israel. The roots of social backwardness

Abstract

This article aims to present on the one hand the challenges the new-born State of Israel faced in 1948 (creating sustainable structures for housing, various social services, education, employment, food-security, healthcare, etc.) in addition to the absorption of Jewish refugees, including Holocaust survivors and tens of thousands of Jews from Muslim countries who had to leave their homes because anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic incidents became regular there, and on the other, to emphasise the social and territorial disparities which were not decreased, not even stabilised despite the comprehensive resettlement and economic programmes during the 1950s and 1960s launched by consecutive governments, as well as to point out the complex efforts for social integration.

The first part of the article presents the enormous immigration waves just after the establishment of the state in detailed numbers, during the Independence War (1948–49) and in the early fifties, when, in fact, the population of Israel had doubled. After the illustration of the basic demographic changes, the next part deals with the above mentioned challenges and with the social conflicts which emerged between the mainly Ashkenazi community (of European and American descent) – deeply Zionist-motivated, wealthier, better educated, socially more integrated, more influential in a political context – and the new-comer Sephardi (Mizrahi) immigrants from North Africa and the Middle East, much of them without any perspective and hopeless, at least disappointed.

Although the national institutions, their rights and powers, exact functions were undefined or non-existent at the time, just as the whole structure of public services and the central government had no financial resources available mainly because of having to defend the new-born state against the Arab invasions, it was clear that those serious difficulties needed comprehensive, state-organised solutions. The first actions of the central government were mostly stop-gap, ill prepared measures with chaotic practical implications. However, in the early fifties, well-planned, but lastly unsustainable regional and economic development programmes, as well as resettlement projects became typical which might – at most – have been suitable for a short transitional phase.

The second part of the article analyses the social and territorial consequences of these complex state-controlled interventions, the reasons behind the non-decreasing disparities, the negative impact of marginalisation on the Sephardic (Mizrahi) community, the problems created by the imbalanced industrialisation of Northern and Southern Israel, the challenges of uprooting and resettlement, as well as the drawbacks of the centralised spatial development, planning and governance structures.