Content area
Full text
Arab Industrialization in Israel, by Izhak Schnell, Michael Sofer, and Israel Drori. Westport, CT and London: Praeger Publishers, 1995. xiv + 189 pages. Bibl. to p. 198. Index to p. 204. $55.
Reviewed by Ephraim Kleiman Recent years have witnessed the emergence of Arab businesses as an increasingly important sector in the Israeli economy. In particular, while most Arab manufacturing firms in Israel are small, family-run businesses, a growing number have managed to overcome the severe handicaps posed by discriminatory governmental policies and by consumer resistance. A few of them have even become public corporations traded on the Tel Aviv stock exchange. The study under review tries to identify the characteristics of successful entrepreneurship in the Arab-Israeli industrial sector, as well as the obstacles to its further growth.
The development of Arab manufacturing industries conforms to the general pattern observed both in developing economies and among minority groups in developed economies. This conformity involves a reliance on personal and family savings for investment funds, low skill requirements and family management, and a concentration in the food processing, apparel and light building materials industries. The authors indicate that the main obstacles to the development of Arab industry in Israel are: difficulties in access to bank credits, discrimination in the provision of government aid, lack of quality control, and lack of the infrastructure provided elsewhere in Israel by industrial parks. They cite sub-contracting for large Jewish firms as an opportunity "to establish higher levels of entrepreneurship" (p. 83). Their data also show that Christian and Druze entrepreneurs scored somewhat better than Muslim ones, apparently because the first group had greater access to education while the second group had better access to government aid and to the...