ISRAEL: Will Arab parties take part in February elections?

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Last week, the Central Elections Committee ruled in favor of disqualifying the United Arab List from participating in next month’s general elections on grounds that it does not recognize the Jewish state and advocated armed struggle against it. Atty. Gen. Menachem Mazuz has since said the decision was based on flimsy legal evidence.

The ruling caused an outrage among Israeli Arab lawmakers that was aggravated by the operation in the Gaza Strip. ‘You drink Palestinian blood,’ charged Jamal Zahalka, a member of parliament.

‘Every vote for Kadima is a bullet in a Palestinian child’s chest,’ said his colleague Ahmed Tibi, head of the disqualified party, making the connection between the ruling, the elections and the Gaza operation.

Avigdor Lieberman, chairman of Yisrael Beiteinu (Israel Our Home), one of the three Jewish parties that sought the disqualification, was satisfied that a ‘terrorist organization’ was barred from running for the Knesset, Israel’s parliament.

The next battle, he said, was outlawing them entirely.

Lieberman wields very tough positions on Israeli Arabs and is advocating legislation that will make full citizenship conditional on signing a loyalty commitment and military or national service.

‘It’s not racism. The test is loyalty, not religion,’ he says. The latest polls predict he could land as many as 15 seats out of 120 in the Knesset. The Russian-born legislator is often portrayed on political satires as an old-school Soviet, dripping bullet chains, wearing a fur hat and multiple medals, and is derided by Arab legislators as a Johnny-come-lately.

Arabs have been serving in the Knesset since the country’s first elections in 1949. In the early decades they represented the mainstream Zionist parties and later formed separate lists. The Knesset has nine Arab members who represent two exclusively Arab parties and a Jewish-Arab one. A few more represent the large mainstream parties.

The Arab parliament members are admittedly contrarian. Many Israelis regard them as in-your-face and ‘more Palestinian than Palestinian.’

‘It’s no secret that there’s harsh criticism of the Arab MKs that they care more about the Palestinian problem than things directly related to Israeli Arabs,’ says Wadi abu Nassar, a political analyst, referring to the members of the Knesset.

‘The Arab MKs seem to be engaged in a competition over who can be more extreme and don’t use their power as legislators to advance bills to advance the public they represent, much less the general public,’ says longtime parliamentary reporter Gideon Alon. Tibi is an exception, and it is perhaps this combination of good parliamentary work and harsh criticism of Israel’s policies (in that excellent Hebrew of his, by far superior to that of most of his critics) that bugs people even more.

In 2007, worsening relations between Jews and Arabs both in parliament and society reached a new low when lawmaker Azmi Bishara was charged with collaboration with the enemy at wartime, essentially a treason charge. Bishara left the country, leaving legislators behind to table a bill to revoke his right to the pension enjoyed by former legislators.

A similar ruling a few years ago was overturned by the Supreme Court. The current ruling is being challenged by Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel. At the initial court meeting today, Lieberman exchanged harsh words with MK Taleb Asana, who called Lieberman an ‘enemy of the state’.

‘You’re a buffoon,’ Lieberman answered. ‘You are a terrorist.... We will treat you like we treated Hamas.’

Last week, MK Tibi told Israel Radio that it’s the policy he opposes, not the state. ‘In the atmosphere of war, anything against Arabs becomes the consensus,’ he said, hoping that the Supreme Court would reverse the decision so that people could confront his opinions.

-- Batsheva Sobelman in Jerusalem

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