AFFIRMATIVE ACTION AT THE MINISTRY OF THE ENVIRONMENT

There was perhaps no clearer case of institutional neglect and discrimi-nation against Israel's Arab minority than the central government's investment in local environmental protection. While a few dozen Jewish municipalities and “Unions of Cities” enjoyed funding to support local environmental workers, before the 1990s, Arab communities, which needed help the most, were somehow overlooked.

When he took over as Minister of the Environment in 1992, Yossi Sarid brought his passion for social justice to the position, making the Arab sector a priority. Calling the present dynamic “a disgrace and a certificate of poverty for previous governments of Israel and for Israeli society in general,” he pre-scribed a policy of affirmative action. Sarid called for establishing a dispro-portionately high percentage of local units among Israel's Arab sector to com-pensate for what he perceived to be systematic, historical discrimination.^[120]

Sarid was as good as his word. He charged Dror Amir, a veteran Ministry administrator in the international realm, with the task, and nine environmental

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units began operating in Arab population centers.^[121] Their staffs are small and frequently limited to a director, educational coordinator, and field technician. Yet the unit provides an important catalyst. For instance, in Sakhnin, Husain Tarabiah, a charismatic young engineer, took over as head of the unit. He began to pressure polluting tradesmen to clean up their act. He initiated construction of the first regional wastewater treatment and reuse facility for the city's wastes, converting it into an ecological education center for Arabs and Jews. Tarabiah even started a local nongovernmental organization—Naga Environmental Protection Society—to serve as a watchdog and bark at his own government unit—and perhaps expand en-vironmental fund-raising opportunities.^[122] Eventually senior Ministry of the Environment officials stopped referring to the Sakhnin program as the most effective local regulatory unit in Israel's Arab sector and began calling it the best in the entire country.

Arab environmentalists appreciated the new units that fostered educa-tion and generated more fastidious licensing procedures and new advo-cates for the issue within the system.^[123] The success of each unit, however, was largely dependent on the degree of cooperation with the affiliated mayors, and here responsiveness is by no means uniform.^[124] Much de-pended on the capabilities and resourcefulness of the unit director. Tarabiah, for example, succeeded in expanding his unit into a regional “union of cities.” Yet, even though institutionally Arab municipalities have begun to catch up, it will take much longer for the environmental gap to close in the field. Solving pollution problems takes money, and Israeli Arabs have less to work with than their fellow Jewish countrymen. The units hover in perennial danger of closing due to the lack of matching mu-nicipal funding. In the meantime, however, Israel's Arab sector no longer lacks local agencies for addressing its many environmental woes.