Social work in a conflict-ridden zone as an opportunity for professional development: Arab social workers' challenges in Israel overshadowed by the 7 October 2023 war

The article investigates Arab social workers' development of intervention practices to cope with Arab service-users' challenges in Israel, while the 7 October 2023 war ensued between Israel and the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. A qualitative study conducted semi-structured, in-depth interviews with fifteen Arab social workers working in Arab welfare bureaus in Israel. The research revealed that the professionals addressed the service-users' needs and problems by applying two complementary strategies: (1) A universal strategy: working by themselves to realize rights (that were altered during the war) to respond to needs that had worsened, or recruiting advocacy services to actively realize newly defined rights for their clients' needs stemming from side effects of the war. (2) An innovative/unique strategy: the revitalization of the traditional community-based support system on three levels: the micro-level, the natural support system such as the family; the meso-level, the informal support system in the form of the community; and the macro-level, the institutionalized support system including civil society institutions. Community-conscious intervention is a form of productive resistance to prolonged institutional deprivation. In other words, the conflict-ridden period offered an opportunity for the social workers' professional development. The article supplements previous literature on social work in conflict-ridden zones, which focuses on challenges for all professionals involved in social work during and after crisis periods. This case study offers to broaden horizons by examining how challenges of the war's side effects can offer opportunities for professional development. It relates to the professional experiences of social workers belonging to the minoritized Arab population in Israel, overshadowed by the 7 October 2023 war between Israel and the Palestinians in the Gaza strip. It demonstrates how these workers overcame institutional deprivation in terms of the quantity and quality of the service provided, by relying on themselves to respond to needs and problems, with the help of revitalization of traditional community-based interventions based on cultural-religious resources that had been largely overlooked as a social resource in recent years.