In my city, Tira, an Arab community in central Israel, people talked about the elections last week, while many residents decided to vote at the last minute. In the final weeks of the campaign, the families have seen Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu make fierce statements about the threat of an "Arab leftist government." He told his followers that the Arabs "wanted to eliminate us all," and that they were "stealing" the elections through massive fraud. His attempts to put surveillance cameras at Arab polling stations failed to pass through the Knesset.
The residents of al-Tira were not surprised by the long racial incitement of the prime minister, but for many people the sudden escalation brought a response from Arab voters. If they can't stop him from winning, they think they will try to make his job as difficult as possible, at least.
They have succeeded so far. About 60% of the eligible Palestinian citizens of Israel, who make up one fifth of the population, cast their ballots last week, a jump from 49% in the April elections, a vote that failed to form a government coalition. The Joint List, an alliance of four Arab-led political parties, regained its place as the third largest Knesset list with 13 seats, thanks to its massive campaign to regain popular support. Opposition Jewish parties also received small shares of Palestinian votes.
As usual, Arab parties rejected the nomination of an Israeli prime minister; the last recommendation was Yitzhak Rabin in 1992, who signed the Oslo Accords with Yasser Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization. But in a historic and controversial move last week, the chairman of the joint list, Ayman Odeh, sent an official recommendation to President Reuven Rivlin to appoint center-right leader Benny Gantz to form the next government, but Rivlin commissioned Netanyahu.
These abrupt developments have been hailed as key steps toward "integrating" Palestinian citizens into politics and reviving opposition to the increasingly right-wing rule. But such allegations are seriously flawed. As in the past decade, the Palestinian vote has focused almost exclusively on one issue: Netanyahu's overthrow. There has been little focus in Israel or abroad on the broader political concerns of Palestinian society, including stopping house demolitions and land grabbing, eliminating armed violence in Arab cities, repealing dozens of discriminatory laws and ending the occupation of Palestinian territories. However, in the words of Palestinian writer and feminist activist Samah Salem, the Israeli center-left now believes that it is the Palestinians' responsibility to "overthrow Netanyahu not as second-class citizens, but as first-class voters."
This narrower narrative, to which the Common List mostly resorts, turns Palestinian citizens into pawns in competition between Jewish political elites, whose differences are more about personal matters than politics. Not only does White Blue reflect the vision of his Likud opponent in almost everything: Gantz and his partner Yair Lapid have repeatedly mocked the leaders of the Joint List as extremists who do not represent their constituents, and Gantz has rejected the terms put forward by Odeh for his candidacy. The conditions relate to the recognition of dozens of Bedouin villages in the Negev, and the repeal of the Jewish nation-state law, reflecting the basic needs and rights of Palestinian citizens. Zionist parties in the center-left, such as the Democratic Union and Labor, have shifted to the right in many of their positions toward a two-state solution, which has long been the main pillar of the center-left agenda and is no longer a priority.
Given this division, Arab parties usually prefer to stay away from the battles of the Jewish majority. But with competing blocs presently, with Palestinian national politics severely fragmented and Palestinian citizens demanding results from their internal leadership, the joint list has found itself between the hammer and the anvil.
The removal of Netanyahu, and the disruption of the decade-long right to power, could provide many strategic benefits to Palestinian citizens, a proposition that appears to have been supported by most segments of society, who feel the worsening damage to government policies. But to do so, they must support Gantz, the former army commander who boasted of bombing Gaza and bringing it "back to the Stone Age," and announced that he would only sit with coalition partners, "Jews and Zionists," following a racist policy of the same rival he is trying to topple, Netanyahu. The Palestinians will lose a lot if the "shared list" withdraws and allow Netanyahu to return. They will be worse off if they step in to pave Gantz a path to power.
By choosing the latter, the list has taken a gamble that is already attracting Palestinian opinion, a move that could backfire if a unity government is formed. Whatever happens, Netanyahu's fate must become the biggest problem at the heart of Israeli politics. Despite differing ideologies, Palestinian citizens remain united around a fundamental political consensus: full equality and social justice for all, and an end to military occupation.
These constants, which are fundamental values in any other part of the world, are still considered by most Israeli Jewish parties and voters to be uncomfortable, at best, and an existential threat, at worst. This makes the joint list, despite its many flaws, the only real progressive party in Israel.
But as long as "democracy" in Israel is based on accepting the principle of racial superiority, and depriving millions of people of voting rights, it will not matter how many parliamentary seats the list can reap, and its voters will remain second-class citizens.
- "Democracy" in Israel is based on
Accept the principle of racial superiority, and deny
Millions of people have voting rights.
Amjad Iraqi is a writer for The Guardian and a political analyst