Despite the high unemployment, the 300,000 Bedouin residents of the Negev have only one employment office in Berhat

“Even though unemployment in the Bedouin society is the highest in the State of Israel, today the 300,000 Bedouin residents in the Negev have only one employment office in Berhat, while in Mitzpe Ramon, there is an employment office for 5,000 residents,” said Acting Chairman of the Labor and Welfare Committee MK Walid Al – Hoashla (RAM). “It’s not even discrimination – it’s ignoring. Employment bureaus must be opened in the large Bedouin settlements with over 20,000 inhabitants. You need to invest in the Bedouins and it will pay off for everyone. to the Bedouin society, but also to the entire Negev and to the country.”

According to him, it is impossible to raise an alarm about the crime in the Bedouin society without trying to give the Bedouin society tools to solve problems. “It is forbidden to justify crime, but also not to bury your head in the sand. Where there is no employment there is crime, in the end people have to bring bread home.”

Huda Abu Ebeid, from the Forum for Coexistence in the Negev, stated that the forum submitted a petition to the High Court in cooperation with the Bedouin local authorities in the Negev. “Although the Employment Service itself determined in 2021 that there was justification for establishing five additional bureaus in Bedouin communities, Economy Minister Nir Barkat decided not to build them. And he replied to the High Court that the Ministry of Economy is working to digitize the bureaus, and therefore there is no need to establish new bureaus. This is despite the fact that in most of the villages, there are about 90,000 residents – there is no cellular reception or internet. In practice, digitization has not progressed and neither have the bureaus been established.” Abu Ebeid emphasized that it is also important that the service provided by the bureaus be appropriate to the nature of the local population and its challenges – cultural, linguistic, etc.

The Legal Advisor of the Employment Service, Adv. Oded Sandler, confirmed that the Authority did set criteria for opening five new bureaus in Bedouin society, but the authority to direct the construction of the bureaus rests with the Minister of Economy. Bedouin. Maybe an app for reporting remotely and not to drag the people to the office,” he said. “All these issues are at our doorstep and we are discussing them. Since then the war broke out and it’s kind of on hold because a lot of job seekers have arrived.”

Attorney Beki Keshet, from the Forum for the Fight against Poverty, emphasized that the absence of the bureaus affects not only the accessibility to employment, but also the exploitation of other social rights. “The Bedouin population in the south suffers from poverty and food insecurity in high percentages. During the work with the Bedouin society, we learned that there are quite a few women who are not entitled to food stamps, because they are not entitled to income support and are not recognized by the National Insurance – and this, because they were not registered with the labor office.”

“There is simply no way for them to get to the bureau every week. Leave children, walk 2 kilometers sometimes with a small child to the bus and then drive long distances. In Bedouin society, they often also require an escort to go to Be’er Sheva. People who do not have reasonable access to the bureau should be allowed to come only Once a month, as is currently allowed for older women.”

Attorney Sander said that he would submit this proposal for consideration, and noted that today there are a total of 12,200 registered job seekers from the Bedouin society in the Negev who, among other things, report to bureaus in Ofakim, Elad, Ashdod, Dimona, Yeruhem, Mitzpe Ramon, Kiryat Gat, Sderot and more. About half of them, according to him, switched to monthly reporting so as not to bother them, mainly based on criteria of age, health status, as well as people looking for employment with high professional qualifications.

“It is completely related to the lack of employment. “The decisions of the Minister of Economy are political. It’s a harsh word on the Bedouin population,” said Shai Menuhin, program director of Food – a Jewish response to hunger in Israel. “The story of this app is eye-catching. The majority of the Bedouin population in the Negev does not have working communication networks and certainly no possibilities of accessing the Internet to find a job. This is not the strong point of a Keshet Yom population. It cannot be that Beit Shemesh and Biruchem have a physical office regardless of digitization, but the Bedouins in the Negev do not. This is absolute inequality.” According to him, the field organizations estimate that a significant part of the Bedouins in the Negev suffer from food insecurity that is closely related to the employment situation.

The head of the Arara local council, Taleb Abu Arar, said that the government is responsible for the development of the settlements: “If we had industrial zones and places of employment, there would be no need for employment bureaus. Dimona, Be’er Sheva and Arad have all the services, but the Bedouin settlements do not. There is no employment bureau, no interior ministry, and neither Another office. The unemployment rate is high, people have to go out and sometimes walk long distances to get to the offices. It’s time for the government to recognize us as citizens of the country.”

The Mayor of Rahat Talal Al-Karinawi stated that the PA managed to drop from 43% unemployment to 13% unemployment following the establishment of the Idan Negev Industrial Zone shared with the Bnei Shimon Regional Council – with an emphasis on integrating women into the labor market. “This changed the Bedouin woman from one who sits at home to one who earns 7,000-8,000 NIS a month, and can invest more in the children’s education, and an increase of tens of percent in the collection of the local authority. The lack of employment, on the other hand, leads to deterioration into bad places and this is costly for the country and society as a whole.”

At the conclusion of the discussion, MK Al-Huashla demanded to receive within a month the reference of the employment service and the Ministry of Economy to the issues that came up in the discussion, including plans to open additional employment offices in the Negev, the issue of digitization that is not functioning due to the lack of reception in the Negev, as well as to conduct an examination of the possibility of reporting once a month for those who live Far from the bureaus. Al-Huashla also said that he will examine the proposal of Ran Melamed, the CEO of the turning point organization, to promote the construction of the bureaus through legislation that will define the tests for building an employment bureau in the settlement according to the size of the population.