The Bureaucratic Logic of the Ethnonational and Gendered Israeli Welfare State

The Israeli welfare state has linked its welfare policies to its Zionist goals, creating different levels of access to public resources for different social groups. While most research has focused on specific groups, benefits, or periods, this paper provides a more comprehensive look by examining the connection between the Israeli welfare state inequalities and the prolonged Israel-Palestinian conflict. Using an intersectional lens, I evaluate how the conflict interacts with other oppressive forces, such as sexism, ethno-racism, and nationalism, to affect Israeli civil lives in non-military but no less disruptive ways. The paper introduces the concept of the bureaucratic logic, which refers to how the welfare state exercises power over its beneficiaries, reinscribing the most marginalized groups in Israeli society—Mizrahi Jewish mothers, Ethiopian Jewish mothers, and Palestinian-Israeli mothers—into lives of poverty. The bureaucratic logic is shaped by the overarching binary of “Jews versus Arabs,” which works to exclude Palestinians, preserve Jewish supremacy, and bracket Jewish ethno-racial inequalities. The analysis demonstrates that the Israeli welfare state uses its power to define and reproduce the gendered, ethno-racial, and ethnonational boundaries of Israeli society, ensuring the preservation of the existing power structure rather than the welfare of its most marginalized residents.