Vote or Veto? Options for the Palestinian Minority in Israel

By Awatef Sheikh

Israel’s February 2009 national election has resulted in a far-right government coalition. The Labor party was crushed and Yisrael Beiteinu, Avigdor Lieberman’s party, came in third, behind Kadima and Likud. The party’s election slogan was, “Only Lieberman understands Arabic”— hinting that the Moldovan immigrant is the only one who knows how to deal with Israel’s Arabic-speaking citizens, flagging the transfer card, threatening more dispossession, and conditioning citizenship on “loyalty” to the Jewishness of the State. What Lieberman may not realize is that his partners in current and previous governments, whether of the so-called Zionist left, center or right, “understood” Arabic too—certainly if actions speak louder than words—and there is doubt if he will be able to “understand” it better than they.

The Arab parties, representatives of the Palestinian minority in Israel, managed to increase their representation in the Knesset by two additional seats. This was quite an unexpected outcome, given the multiple backdrops to the election—a national Israeli spirit of war, a fierce election campaign by Lieberman’s party, and the various Zionist parties’ competition for credit for crushing Hamas and “disciplining” Israel’s Palestinian citizens. The three Arab parties together have 10 Arab Knesset members (MKs): Hadash has four, three of whom are Arab MKs; National Democratic Assembly (NDA) has three; and Ra’am-Ta’al, a coalition of three small parties, has four MKs.

Together, the Arab parties constitute the fifth largest political group in the current Knesset—but, unlike other political parties in Israel, they happily sit on the opposition bench. “We did not and do not seek to be part of a government coalition,” said MK Jamal Zahalka, elected this year for the third time on behalf of the NDA. “We don’t consider ourselves an opposition in the traditional sense of the word because we represent the indigenous people of this country, those who managed to remain in their homeland and are facing an official systematic discrimination policy in all spheres of life. We are basically third-class citizens.”

Third class citizenship might not adequately describe the socio-economic gap between the Palestinian minority and Jewish majority in Israel: the 2007 U.N. Human Development Index of 179 countries showed that the Palestinian minority in Israel ranks in 66th place—44 slots below the general ranking of the State of Israel, which comes in 22nd, according to the news Web site Ynet.

“We did not and do not seek to be part of a government coalition..”

The Palestinian minority constitutes 20 percent of Israel’s population, yet the 10 Arab MKs represent only about 8 percent of the Knesset’s 120 members. Despite this, this marks the highest rate of representation since 1949. The Arab parties benefited in this year’s election from the redirection of Arab votes that historically were cast for Zionist parties—dropping to less than 18 percent of the total Arab votes, compared to 25 percent and 30 percent, respectively, in the 2006 and 1996 elections.

This compensated for the low Palestinian turnout this year, which was only 54 percent, the lowest rate since 1949. (The general voter turnout in Israel was 65.2 percent.) This trend of declining voter turnout among Arab voters has two main sources: it started in 2001 as a protest to the killing by Israeli police of 13 Palestinian citizens in October 2000, at the beginning of the second intifada; and it is a reflection of the long-established boycott movement, which has been gaining momentum in the last decade, initiated by the Sons of the Country—an organization established in 1969 which calls for the creation of a single democratic secular state in Palestine—and the Islamic Movement-North Wing.

When it comes to issues concerning the Palestinian minority in Israel, many believe that the Knesset serves as little more than a platform for protest. Indeed, if one of the main roles of MKs in a parliament is legislative in nature, then the Arab MKs have few successes to parade. Usama Halabi, a human rights lawyer and political activist based in Jerusalem, argues that “within the existing political framework, in which the state is defined as Jewish by the constitution, it is impossible to achieve the basic demands of the Palestinian minority either as a national group or as equal citizens.”

The achievements of the Arab MKs have been and remain centered around what Halabi describes as “neutral” rights or demands. In other words, neutral to the Jewish nature of the State and pertaining only to minor civil concerns and demands.

Regardless of their numbers in the Knesset, the effect of the Arab MKs on government policies directed at their constituencies will hardly be effective. Hypothetically, even if the Arab parties managed to achieve 20 percent representation in the Knesset, this doesn’t mean they would achieve more, regardless of the nature of the ruling government, whether so-called left, center or right. As Ameer Makhoul, general director of Ittijah-Union of Arab Community Based Associations and the head of committee for the Popular Committee for the Defense of Freedoms, points out, “It’s not a matter of number, it’s rather about the context they work within.”

A Context of Inequality

And rightly so: like all previous Knessets, today’s, with its nine Zionist parties, will manage to overcome their differences and unite in one bloc against any initiative from the Arab parties demanding full equality for all citizens of the State—meaning the end of exclusive rights for Jewish citizens. Indeed, any Jew in the diaspora who chooses to move to Israel—such as Avigdor Lieberman—enjoys more legal rights than its Palestinian citizens.

“When it comes to basic rights for Palestinian citizens, there is a wall that the Arab MKs won’t be able to infiltrate,” states Halabi. Zahalka is equally pessimistic: “Even if we have 20 MKs, we won’t be able to create radical changes in basic issues like the government’s discriminatory budget allocations, or discriminatory urban planning, not even in tax reductions for poor towns.” Indeed, 90 percent of Israel’s Palestinian citizens live in towns ranked in the bottom three clusters of local councils, as compared to only seven percent of Jews. Notes Zahalka: “Against basic logic, the successive governments refuse to support poor local councils, while they do support Jewish towns in higher clusters.”

Despite the formation of the new far-right government with Lieberman’s party at its center, for Arab MKs this Knesset will not be much different. Lieberman’s platform advocates ethnic transfer to secure a “Jewish state for the Jewish people for eternity.” Yet Lieberman’s views hardly mark a shift in agenda or attitude, as far as Palestinian citizens in Israel are concerned. As MK Zahalka says: “In reality, Lieberman’s unmasked racist discourse has for decades been the practice of the State’s institutions towards the Palestinian minority inside Israel.”

“Lieberman will not go far from the practice of the existing institutions,” argues Makhoul, who warns that “portraying Lieberman as radical is dangerous because it misrepresents Tzipi Livni and Ehud Barak as ‘moderate,’ which they are not.”

Indeed, both Barak and Livni launched the aggressive war on Gaza last December, while calling for the need for peace. Livni herself suggested “transfer” when she argued last December that a Palestinian state would provide “a national solution” for what she called Israel’s Arabs. Defense Minister Ehud Barak was the prime minister when 13 Palestinian citizens were killed by Israeli police in 2000, and no one has yet been brought to trial. The list goes on.

A Familiar Voice

Moreover, Lieberman is not a new voice raising the alarm about a “demographic threat.” He joins other Israeli MKs, officials and a leading historian, in addition to General Security Services Chief Yuval Diskin, who consider Israel’s Palestinian citizens to be its second major strategic threat after Iran. Diskin has stressed that he feels “duty-bound to thwart subversive activity of those who wish to harm the Jewish and democratic nature of Israel, even if these activities take place via democratic tools.” His sentiments came in response to three political and legal documents presented by Arab NGOs and academics in Israel in early 2007 concerning a future vision of the Palestinian minority and the State of Israel.

With their hands tied in the Knesset, Arab MKs have to deal with the growing calls for boycotting the Israeli legislative body, and calls for organizing and working from without. According to Halabi, “The Knesset is a tool and not a goal in itself. But at the moment the Palestinian minority is not organized enough to manage its struggle for equality and recognition of their rights as a national minority from outside the Knesset.”

Leaving the Knesset at this stage would create what Halabi describes as a “political recession” for the Palestinian minority. Makhoul disagrees, arguing that the Palestinian minority is more prepared and more organized than ever before to act outside the Knesset. He cites as one example the Popular Committee for the Defense of Freedoms, whose concerns are liberties of the Palestinian minority in Israel and the racist and political persecution by state institutions.

Makhoul, Halabi and MK Zahalka emphasize the need to work on a variety of fronts, from inside and without the Knesset alike, as well as with international movements and initiatives. While the Knesset remains an important domain, for Palestinian citizens it is not their main arena for action. “In the end,”Makhoul stresses, “what governs the relationship between the Palestinian citizen and the state, starting with appointing a teacher at a school to reaching planning policies, is not the Knesset, it is the State’s security institution.”

The Knesset constitutes only one domain in which to work on this relationship.

Awatef Sheikh, a former parliamentary aide to an Arab MK, is a free-lance consultant and journalist.