A New Voice for Israel’s Arab Citizens

Benjamin Netanyahu will stay on as Israel’s prime minister. He won because of his racism, not despite it. And it looks like in his fourth term, Netanyahu will pursue policies as vitriolic and pugnacious as ever before in a country that has oppressed Palestinians for 65 years.

The election was remarkable, however, in one regard: A group of non-Zionists, calling themselves the Joint List, emerged as the third-largest political party in the Knesset.

The Joint List is not a new party but rather a combination of four parties representing Palestinian citizens of Israel that have traditionally run for the Knesset on separate slates. The parties reflected the broad spectrum of Palestinian political positions, from left-wing secular nationalists to Islamists. But they have historically failed to garner more than a few seats in each election, even though Palestinian citizens of Israel represent about 20 percent of the population.

Then in March 2014, the Knesset passed a law raising the electoral threshold from 2 percent to 3.25 percent. The new law, known as the “governability law,” was designed to serve as a deathblow to small political parties, particularly Arab parties. The non-Zionist parties were virtually guaranteed to be erased from the political landscape.

Recognizing that their political survival was at stake, the parties united, forming the Joint List under the leadership of Ayman Odeh, a Palestinian lawyer from Haifa from the left-wing Hadash party. The Joint List secured 14 seats in this election, and according to the list’s leadership, Palestinian voter turnout rose dramatically to 64 percent.

I am under no illusion that the Joint List will be able to make major political gains, even as the third-largest political party in the Knesset. Palestinian parties have served in Israel’s legislature since the first Knesset. That has never stopped the tide of racist, discriminatory legislation aimed at Palestinians in Israel. Today, more than 50 laws in Israel discriminate against Palestinians in housing, employment, and benefits. Palestinian communities and schools receive less funding than their Israeli counterparts, and more than half of Palestinian families in Israel live below the poverty line. These are policies put into place by the entire Knesset, including the so-called centrists and self-proclaimed leftists.

Often, the hatred toward Palestinians in Israel is expressed not just through policy but also in violent rhetoric, even from the highest levels of political power. Take, for example, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, who recently called for chopping off the heads of Palestinian citizens he deems disloyal to the state. None of the main Israeli political parties voiced any opposition to his statements or attempted to distance themselves from him.

If anything, Netanyahu seemed in line with Lieberman on election day. His campaign released a demagogic video on social media declaring, “Right-wing rule is in danger. Arab voters are streaming in huge quantities to the polling stations.” In the United States, such calls by an American politician would be compared to Gov. George Wallace standing in the schoolhouse door inveighing in favor of his inaugural commitment to “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.” In Israel, it helped push Netanyahu into first place. It’s doubtful that this rhetoric will cost him anything with a largely adoring U.S. Congress either.

For all their success in the election, the united Palestinian parties will not be able to stop the continued and increasing racism in Israel. They will not be able to halt the assaults against the Gaza Strip, such as the 50-day assault last year in which Israel killed more than 2,000 Palestinians, including nearly 500 children, and caused $5 billion in damage to homes and infrastructure. They will not be able to stop the continuing colonization of the West Bank. Indeed, even a win by Netanyahu’s opponents wouldn’t have done that. Labor Party leader Isaac Herzog, now the head of the opposition, said recently that he would never undo large West Bank settlements.

A Herzog victory might have been smarter Israeli politics because it would have done less to alienate the West. But it would have been equally disastrous for Palestinians: European and American politicians would have applauded Herzog as magnanimous even as he continued to destroy Palestinian aspirations for a viable and independent state.

With Netanyahu back in charge, it will at least be clearer to the West that a “two-state solution” is not in the offing. Just a day ahead of his re-election, the prime minister declared triumphantly that there would never be a Palestinian state under his watch. That was a play to his right-wing base — one that seemed to work — but it was also a frank statement of his coming government’s priorities.

Of course, few Palestinians had any hope of Netanyahu — or even Herzog — addressing the lack of equal rights. As Joint List Knesset member Ahmad Tibi said on Tuesday, March 17: “We will fight racism, we will fight fascism, we will defend our rights, regardless of the government. We are the indigenous people of this land, and we look to the future with the optimism and realism.”

The strong showing by the Joint List is a bit like placing the American civil rights movement’s leadership in Congress in 1963 to challenge both Jim Crow and the war in Vietnam.

But the significance is not necessarily just about symbolism. President Reuven Rivlin is attempting to force a national unity government between Likud and the Knesset’s second-largest party, the Zionist Union. If that occurs and Netanyahu moves toward the center rather than the right, the Joint List will emerge as the official opposition, giving it an even greater platform. And, even if the Joint List doesn’t take the role of the official opposition, it will still be better placed with 14 Knesset members, Jewish and Palestinian Arab alike, to work vigorously against the discriminatory policies of Israel’s right-wing parties and what will be an extremely conservative coalition government.

AHMAD GHARABLI/AFP/Getty Images