Gaza: Cover for political play
By Dominic Moran for ISN
The fraught atmosphere of the Gaza crisis was used as cover for political moves that bode ill for the future role of Arab parties in the Israeli polity, with motions passed during the conflict to oust two of the three party blocs primarily supported by Arab voters.
On 12 January, the Knesset's Central Elections Committee (CEC) voted to disqualify the Balad and Ra'am-Ta'al lists from running candidates in the upcoming 10 February general election. The CEC said the parties refused to recognize the Jewish nature of the state, with Balad also accused of advocating armed conflict against it.
The CEC, which supervises Israeli national elections and campaigning, is comprised of all constituent parties within the Knesset, with representation decided on electoral performance. Under Article 7A of the Basic Law: The Knesset parties that negate the Jewish and democratic nature of the Israeli state may be disqualified from running for parliament.
In the motion to debar Balad, Labor voted for the first time in its history to oust an Arab list from the Knesset, a fact that emphasizes the deepening rift between the Zionist center-left and the Arab parties.
The CEC decision was overturned on appeal by Israel's Supreme Court on 21 January. This was expected in light of previous rulings in favor of Arab Members of Knesset (MKs) and lists. A day before the appeal, Attorney-General Menachem Mazuz said that the evidence to support the ouster of Ra'am-Ta'al was insubstantial and that evidence against Balad was too weak to comply with court standards.
"That committee [CEC] is composed mainly of politicians and they are doing this for political reasons, some of them, in order to get the support of the public," Ben Gurion University political scientist Dr Ahmed Sa'di told ISN Security Watch.
Referring to the parties that voted for disqualification, the secretary general of Maki Issam Makhoul went further, telling ISN Security Watch, "They knew that they are not going to disqualify them but they want to use this possibility in order to de-legitimize the Arab citizens of Israel" and to present them as a security problem.
Easy targets
Arab-Israeli parties have never played a role in government, being intentionally excluded in coalition formation by all past ruling parties.
Balad is a secular nationalist party that has garnered significant support in the past for its calls for full citizenship rights within "a state for all its citizens" and for quasi-autonomy for Arab-Israelis as a national minority.
Ra'am is dominated by the southern wing of Israel's Islamic Movement and is the only major slate that espouses both public Sharia observance and involvement in Knesset elections.
Ta'al is the vehicle for Ahmed Tibi, who was close to former Palestinian president Yasser Arafat and appears to maintain close ties to the Fatah old guard, currently in power in the West Bank.
Arab MKs were easy targets for popular and political opprobrium at the height of the Gaza crisis given their outspoken denunciation of the Israeli operation. Tibi's external pageaccusation that Israel was "murdering children" was not atypical.
Asked to explain the reasoning behind the CEC votes, Sa'di said: "Some Arab [MKs] visited Syria and Lebanon and [others] support the idea of resistance; resistance to occupation or the idea of resistance in general and therefore this puts them in the camp of the enemy."
In December 2008, Attorney-General Menachem Mazuz external pageannounced that he was considering indicting Balad lawmaker Said Naffa on charges of contacting an enemy agent, visiting an enemy state and abetting the visits of others in response to Naffa's 2007 visit to Syria. Investigations were dropped into the visits of a number of other MKs to Syria and Lebanon in recent years including Tibi and Balad head Jamal Zahalka. Naffa alleges political persecution.
Speaking to ISN Security Watch on the CEC decision, Kadima lawmaker Otniel Schneller said, "Every party is supposed to be part of Israeli democracy except for parties that [conduct] activities against the country."
Referring to Balad and Ra'am-Ta'al, Schneller - whose party supported both disqualification motions - said: "In my point of view their activity is illegal; parts of it," adding that he nevertheless fully accepted the court's ruling.
Motivations
It was clear from the start that the CEC motion and subsequent disqualification decision had a purely political purpose: for the genitors and supporting parties to be seen as punishing Arab-Israeli lists for their open opposition to the widely popular (among Jewish-Israelis) Gaza war.
Nevertheless, a long-term view was being taken by the hard-right movements that brought the motions. The ultimate aim here is to sever the limited ties that bind Jews and Arabs to the point that the idea of the transfer of the Arab-Israeli population beyond the borders of the state, championed by Yisrael Beiteinu, gains increasing legitimacy.
The CEC move was also an effort on the part of Yisrael Beiteinu to garner cross-over appeal that sees the party snaffle disenchanted voters from the Likud and veteran Israeli hard right, allowing it to expand beyond its initial Russian-Israeli base.
"They want people to pledge loyalty to the state, to pledge loyalty to the anthem, to the flag - and these are all I think fascist political manifestations," Sa'di said of Yisrael Beiteinu.
The CEC decision contributed to a surge in support for Yisrael Beiteinu. If this holds up in the fortnight ahead of polling, the party will emerge as the fourth largest in Knesset, fulfilling another long-held desire to eclipse the ultra-Orthodox Sephardi Shas party as the second party of choice in coalition building.
To Makhoul, Yisrael Beiteinu leader Avigdor Lieberman "is only the expression of the problem. He is not the real problem." This lies in "the main political thought that dominates Israel in the last decade that depends on the idea of the Arabs as a demographic danger."
Yisrael Beiteinu spokespersons had yet to respond to interview requests at the time of publication.
Looking right
With their decision to support the CEC disqualification measures both Kadima and Labor effectively consigned the always slim prospects for a post-election coalition involving Ra'am-Ta'al, Balad and Hadash to the dustbin.
This is a poor decision if looked at purely on the polls, which currently show the combined center-left (counting Kadima) emerging with around 55 of 120 Knesset seats. However, in reality, both Kadima and Labor will again be looking rightward in coalition formation to Yisrael Beiteinu, Shas and United Torah Judaism before considering left-liberal Meretz should Kadima outweigh the Likud.
Asked why he thought Labor and Kadima had leant their support to the CEC disqualification motion, Makhoul said: "Because they think that it is the most marketable thing for Israeli public opinion."
Disillusion threatens dissolution
While other parties (such as Labor, Meretz and Hadash) could stand to gain slightly by Balad's demise it is clear that the loss of the party would weigh heavily on efforts to encourage Arab-Israeli engagement in the national political process.
"Non-voting is becoming a major issue because many people [Arab-Israelis] are seeing that through the ballot box they are not going to change anything," Sa'di said, relating to prospects for Balad crossing the voter threshold (2 percent) for Knesset representation next month.
"The second reason that might affect Balad is the fact that its charismatic leader, Azmi Bishara, is not in the country," he added. Bishara resigned from the Knesset in 2007, and is currently in self-imposed exile, vehemently denying reported police and Shin Bet external pageallegations of collusion with Hizbollah in the 2006 Lebanon war. His resignation has cast a pall over the party's electoral prospects.
"If Balad disappears a lot of its supporters might join the non-voting campaign," Sa'di predicted.
Long-term efforts to oust Ra'am are also likely to have profound consequences. The more radical northern wing of the Islamic Movement, led by Sheikh Raed Salah, opposes involvement in the central government and has successfully stood candidates in local elections, controlling the large Galilee city of Um al-Fahm for many years.
Salah's movement would stand to gain significantly through future moves to effectively disenfranchise Arab-Israeli voters at the national level.
Israeli police and the Shin Bet have already acted against the movement in its northern stronghold. Officers and agents raided affiliated offices in Um al-Fahm in August 2008 in an ostensible bid to find information tying the group to Hamas, though disruption of the movement's Jerusalem campaign appeared a more likely objective.
Jewish and democratic
Exacerbated by the ongoing Israeli-Arab conflict and deepening political instability, a tendency has developed among significant sectors of the Jewish-Israeli public toward a hard-line particularistic understanding of the Jewish character of the state. This has led to political attacks on important civil rights reforms of the early 1990s and the expanded guardianship role of the same assumed by the Supreme Court.
"Above 90 percent [of Jewish-Israelis] believe that fundamental decisions regarding the country should be taken by a Jewish majority," Sa'di said, referring to a past debate on public referenda on territorial withdraws.
To Makhoul: "Any [designation] of Israel should take into account that this is not only a Jewish state. It is a state with a Jewish majority and a big, active and influential Arab national minority. Anything that does not express this fact is not democratic."
In light of the 2000 killings and Acre riots of Yom Kippur 2008, the growing politicization of diametrically opposed ethnic identities now appears a real danger to fragile democratic norms. It also puts at risk laudable, fragmentary government moves to promote Arab public sector employment and land rights and other efforts at the community level to promote co-existence.
Israeli race relations remain in a dangerous transitional period.
Ultimately, the speed with which the Jewish majority resolves the ideational contest between ethno-religious particularism and a threatened, partial democratic tradition will go a long way to deciding whether, if dialogue is eventually sought, there will be a national address among Arab-Israelis for engagement.