By Miri -
The past few years have
seen the ascent of the most right wing governments in Israel's
history. While there seems to be a widespread sense of political
apathy and electoral participation in Israel is declining in general,
critics often suggest that the relative powerlessness of the
Palestinian community in Israel stems from their refusal to take part
in the elections.
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"Who are you leaving it to?" - Billboard errected by Palestinian party depicting the most right wing Knesset members |
Who Can Vote?
All Palestinians with
Israeli citizenship aged 18 and above can participate in elections on
all levels. Those Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem who refused
in 1967 to take on Israeli citizenship, were given “permanent
residence” which limits their electoral rights to municipal
elections.
Throughout recent years
the electoral participation of Palestinians has been steadily
declining. While in the 1999 parliamentary elections still 75% of the
eligible Palestinians cast their vote, ten years later, in 2009, only
53% showed up at the ballots. Finally during the last elections only
50% of Palestinians with Israeli citizenship decided to participate.
Who Can They Vote for?
More than 20 years ago, a
significant number of Palestinians with Israeli citizenship still
voted for Jewish parties, but the strengthening of the right-wing
obviously brought a sharp decrease in those numbers and very few
Jewish Israeli politicians bother to win those votes back. Most
Palestinians therefore vote one out of the following three
Palestinian or Palestinian-dominated parties:
Al-Tajammu'/Balad, the
National Democratic Assembly, which is usually associated with a
nationalist, secular ideology. Balad's main slogan is about
transforming Israel into “a democracy for all its
citizens” and suports the idea of a binational state. The party was
founded in 1995 by the Palestinian intellectual Azmi Bishara, who was
charged with “aiding and passing information to the enemy during
wartime, contacts with a foreign agent, and receiving large sums of
money transferred from abroad“, all of which Bishara denied, and
left the country to live in exile.
Balad
currently holds three seats in the Israeli parliament.
United Arab List, founded
in 1996 as an alliance between Ra'am and Ta'al, both of which are
usually identified with Islamic movements, and which currently holds
two seats in the Knesset.
Hadash/Jabha, an acronym
for the Democratic Front for Peace and Equality, a communist
Arab-Jewish party founded in 1977, which describes itself as
anti-nationalist and therefore as non-Zionist. Hadash/Jabha currently
holds four seats in the parliament.
Why Vote?
![]() |
Al Tajammu/Balad Billboard in Nazareth |
None of the above named
parties was ever invited to join in a governmental coalition and
there is also no quota system which would ensure an appropriate
representation of Palestinian citizens of Israel in the parliament.
To the contrary, more and more right-wing politicians call for an
“Arab-free” Knesset and Arab parties are being accused
of “acting as a Trojan horse”, meaning the undermining of Israel
as a Jewish state on behalf of the leaderships in the West Bank and
Gaza.
Since 2003, right-wing Knesset members have been trying to
disqualify whole Palestinian party lists and individual Palestinian
candidates by filing so called disqualification motions to the
Central Elections Committee (CEC), a body made up of representatives
of the parties of the Knesset. Balad's principle slogan of "a
state for all its citizens" is seen by right-wingers as proof
for the party's refusal to recognise Israel as a Jewish democratic
state, and Balad representative Haneen Zoabi's bold move to join the
notorious Freedom Flotilla to Gaza in 2010, was seen as proof for her
supporting terrorism.
While the CEC voted in all
cases in support of the banning of those parties or individual
candidates, the decisions so far could be reversed through Israel's
High Court.
As a consequence the
Palestinian population in Israel is quite divided over whether they
should continue fighting for their parliamentary representation, or
whether the just mentioned events simply proof the lack of fairness
and effectiveness of the parliamentary presence of Palestinian
representatives.
Slogans, such as “not voting is
self-marginalisation” do hardly hold in a climate where exclusion
is packaged as inclusion.
Some Palestinian civil
society movements, such as “Ibna al-Balad” call for a general
boycott of the elections in order to not give legitimacy to what
they perceive as an exclusive democracy for Jews only. Others have
campaigned for the complete abandonment of the Knesset and the
foundation of an autonomous Arab parliament with direct elections in
its place. However according to statistics, more significant than
those calls, is an increase in the assumption that voting is
pointless. According to a survey conducted among Palestinian citizens of Israel by Haifa University in
2012, 79% had little or no faith in state institutions and 67% lacked
confidence in the Arab parties
.
Again according to surveys
the most effective way for the parties to gain more votes and more
influence, would be to present a joint list to the Knesset, yet such
attempts were so far blocked by the communist faction, which feared
to lose its Jewish support.
Whatever the reasons
for the decline of the Palestinian votes, it should not be forgotten
that elections do not constitute the main arena for political action,
and that the parties represented in the Knesset are not the only
political actors. Neither boycott, nor participation in the elections
alone will determine the fate of the Palestinian citizens of Israel, and neither one should be seen as an end in itself, but rather as part of a wider context of extra-parliamentary movements and modes of political
action.
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