This is long and gets into the weeds on Israeli internal politcs, so only read it if you have an interest in Israeli politcs.
Basically, what it says is after Netanyahu, Israel may move back to the left somewhat and make the Arabs living in Israel equal citizens with the Jews. It was posted by someone who lives in Israel and New Mexico.
--Kim
Anonymous I hope this works. It would be a game changer. If the Arab parties were as “kosher” politically as the ultra-Orthodox, Israel would be run very differently, for the benefit of all.
A rare sighting in Israel: Hope
A big step was made this week toward 1) bringing down the Netanyahu government in the October 27 election, and 2) ending Jewish Israelis’ post-October-7 paranoia toward Arab Israelis. (They are the Arabs who live in Israel “proper,” making up 21% of the nation’s citizenry – not the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.) Between this latest move and the rise of Gadi Eisenkot, the sane, sympathetic “anti-Netanyahu” who’s leading the race for prime minister, things haven’t looked so promising around here since Ariel Sharon got us out of Gaza 21 years ago. (Before Hamas pulled us back in and Netanyahu kept us there, at least for the time being.)
Maariv reported that Mansour Abbas, chairman of Ra’am (United Arab List), the country’s Islamist yet most moderate Arab party, signed an agreement in principle with a Jewish Knesset member to put him second to Abbas on the party’s election slate. Yoav Segalovitz, a former police official who made his name fighting the wildly homicidal, Arab-on-Arab criminal gangs, has conditioned his joining Ra’am on the party’s recognition of Israel as a Jewish, democratic state (which Abbas has done publicly and repeatedly), and its endorsement of civilian national service for young Arabs (Abbas has gone a long way toward that position). Whatever obstacles to a final agreement between Ra’am and Segalovitz may remain, it’s hard to believe they won’t be removed; the stakes involved are too great.
The experiment
Ra’am served in the 2021-2022 “government of change” led by Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid – the first time an Arab party had ever sat in an Israeli government – and it went swimmingly. Ra’am used its power strictly to gain funding for Arab Israelis’ crying practical needs. It didn’t chant “death to the Jews,” didn’t blow up the Knesset, didn’t do anything but help its constituents – and normalize the idea that Arabs could sit in an Israeli government, could have a say in national policy, and nothing bad had to happen.
Then came October 7. There was story after story of Arab Israelis murdered by Hamas terrorists that day while trying to save Jewish lives. Arab Israelis were taken hostage; some died in captivity. Israeli Bedouin soldiers served in the Gaza War; some were killed in battle.
But all this went by the larger part of the Jewish public, whose fear and distrust of all Arabs – high enough before October 7 – just went through the roof. Confirmation of this came in April, when Bennett and Lapid, launching their “Together” party, said they would only take Zionist parties into their government – excluding not only ultra-Orthodox parties, which wouldn’t join them anyway, but Arab ones too. This was senseless, considering that a Bennett-Lapid government had already successfully taken in Ra’am before. But it was probably the politically wise thing to do, because the public mood they were responding to was correspondingly senseless.
At the neighborhood grocery store about a month ago, I ran into an ex-neighbor, a good guy, thoroughly anti-Bibi, a traditional Labor Party supporter, and he was worried because the polls showed that Eisenkot wouldn’t have enough support – meaning enough support from Jewish parties – to form a coalition government. I said he would have enough support if he took in Ra’am. “They were in the government before, why not now?” I said. “Yeah, but it didn’t work,” my ex-neighbor said. “Why didn’t it work, what went wrong?” I said. He had no answer, and changed the subject.
Genius stroke
Eisenkot, for his part, hasn’t said he’d bring in an Arab party and hasn’t said he wouldn’t; instead, he says he won’t need one because he’ll have the support of enough Zionist parties, representing at least 61 of the Knesset’s 120 members, to take power. For now, the polls don’t bear that out.
And that is the genius of the emerging pact between Ra’am and Segalovitz: If a Jewish, Zionist MK becomes the No. 2 in an Arab party, and that party recognizes Israel as a Jewish, democratic state (with “democratic” meaning equal rights for Arab Israelis), while endorsing national civilian service for young Arabs, Eisenkot would be able to tap Ra’am – which, according to every poll in recent weeks, would put him over the top – as a Zionist, or at least pro-Zionist, party. Most Jewish Israelis, I believe, would find it hard to object to that, and would even see it as an achievement – a landmark "Israelization" of Arab citizens. This may be overly optimistic – or it may not be. Centrist Israelis accepted Ra’am in the government a few years ago when it had no Jewish MKs; now, with Segalovitz, a career Israeli cop, so high on the ticket, it might bring them back to their senses.
What Arab Israelis want
In May, an authoritative Tel Aviv University poll found that three out of four Arab Israelis favor voluntary civilian national service. A slightly higher proportion want to see an Arab party in the government, with 43.3% wanting one in any government, even a right-wing one. More than 70% cited the fight against the Arab gangs as the most urgent priority for them, with only 8% citing the Palestinian issue. Meanwhile, nearly 70% said their economic situation was good.
Over half of the Arab Israelis polled said they feel “a strong sense of belonging to the State of Israel.” Asked which element of their identity was most important to them, 33.3% said their Arab identity, 27.7% said their Israeli citizenship, 24.5% said their religious affiliation, and 13.5% said their Palestinian identity.
It can be said that the poll found that Arab Israelis are not bigtime Zionists, but they’re not anti-Zionists, either. And in Israel, they largely feel at home. As a journalist I traveled around Arab cities and towns talking to people for a good couple of decades, and the most vivid impression I had was that they see their future in Israel, not in any Palestine that might come to be. With very, very few exceptions, they are loyal citizens. It has been my equally vivid impression that the great majority of Jewish Israelis don’t know this. Polls have found that most are afraid to so much as drive into an Arab town.
The hope
I would like to see a Palestinian state come into being, but I don’t see it happening, and even if were to happen, I would want Israel’s future to be separate from the Palestinians, on the opposite side of a hard border. We are not countrymen, and I wouldn’t want us to try to be. That is not my hope for Israel.
My hope, rather, is for the Jews and Arabs of Israel to become equal, to become integrated, to become neighbors, for our kids to go to school together, for Jewish kids to learn Arabic as a second language like Arab kids learn Hebrew. For us to start living like the countrymen we are.
The 2 million Arab citizens here are far more ready for it than the 8 million Jews. At best, a realization of that hope is a very, very long way off. But a government led by Gadi Eisenkot that included Ra’am, especially with a Jewish deputy leader and an expressly Zionist-friendly, civic-minded direction, could be a crucial first step. After the horrors of the Netanyahu epoch, it could be the start of a whole new national life.
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