All Arab politics today depends on representation in the Knesset. The Knesset Plenum (Photo: Miriam Elster / Flash 90)
According to all the latest polls, Ra’am and Hadash-Ta’al receive four mandates, that is, a little above the blocking percentage, while Balad is a long way below this threshold. In other words, a slight downward swing may lead to the fact that in the next Knesset there will be no list representing the Arab-Palestinian public.
While quite a few on the Arab street say that this will not happen and that the various parties are using this threat to convince voters to go to the polls, the three researchers we spoke with say that this is a real possibility. “This is a very realistic scenario,” says Prof. Thabat Abu Ras, co-director of the Abraham Initiatives. A scenario that both Abu Ras, and the other two interviewees – Dr. Hunaidah Khanam and Dr. Muhammad Khalaila – think is destructive to Arab society in every respect.
First to the numbers. According to some polls at the moment, the voter turnout is at 40 percent. This means that the number of Arab voters will reach 400,000. If we subtract from this number the voters for the Zionist parties – about 20 percent of the voters, that is about 80,000 votes – there will remain about 320,000 votes for all the Arab parties together. Surveyor Yosef Makalada estimated today (Thursday) that the turnout is climbing and will reach 46 percent, which will add another 60,000 votes to the Arab parties.
However, even in the more optimistic scenario of a turnout of 46 percent, it is quite clear that the numbers will not allow three lists to cross the blocking percentage, which is currently estimated at about 150,000 votes. If Balad gets two percent, that is, about 80,000 votes (according to pollster Yosef Makalada, it is approaching 100,000 votes today), it is quite possible that one of the other two lists – Hadash-Ta’al or Ra’am – will not make it either. to ref If the turnout is 40 percent, both may be left out.
This situation brings various voices to demand that Balad resign in order not to waste votes, but Balad says that the polls do not reflect the true strength of the party, as has also happened in the past. This claim is inaccurate, as most polls in 2013 and 2009, the last times Balad ran independently, predicted that she would get three mandates, as she eventually did. In any case, there is currently no sign that Balad will quit anytime soon the last one.
A turnout of 40 percent may not stop any party. Voting at the ballot box in Taiba. April 9, 2019 (photographer: Oren Ziv)
On social media you can find voices saying that this option – zero representation for the Arab parties in the Knesset – is not so terrible. After all, between now and then, racism against Arabs will increase, murder is rampant in the streets, and there is no horizon for a solution to the Palestinian issue. Here, say these voices, the right-wing government has fallen, a “government of change” has been established, and everything is getting worse.
“There is no other alternative”
But that’s not how the researchers we spoke to think. “Only a crazy minority will give up a platform to improve their conditions,” says Prof. Abu Ras. “If there had been other platforms, if there had been an agreement in advance to go to a popular struggle, if the follow-up committee (for the affairs of the Arab minority, 27) had offered some real alternative, the matter would have been less bad. But it’s not like that, so we’re talking about a very dangerous scenario.”
According to Abu Ras, if the three lists do not pass the blocking percentage, this means that they have “lost their legitimacy”. The parties themselves are to blame for this, according to him, because they led to the dissolution of the joint list, and even when they acted together in the joint framework, “they did not engage in true unity and did not build joint local lists and showed that their struggle is about seats and money.”
But not all the blame falls on them, says Abu Ras. Five election campaigns in three years is exhausting, what’s more is that “the Arab citizen does not feel the results of the parliamentary action like the Jewish citizen. The Arabs feel that the Jews have become more cruel towards them: Netanyahu even describes RAM, with which he coordinated positions only a year ago, as an anti-Semitic party, And Likud leaders threaten a second Nakba. There are those who were waiting for Lapid and Gantz to say something else, (saying) that the Arab citizens are accomplices and we reject the incitement against them, but they did nothing.”
Whoever claims that a victory by Netanyahu and Ben Gvir is an empty threat, says Abu Ras, is wrong. “When Kahane entered the Knesset in the eighties of the last century, Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir left the plenum so as not to hear him,” he recalls. “Today Kahana’s followers may receive 15 mandates and the government will depend on them. Israel has moved towards fascism, and in the face of this terrifying scene we cannot stand by and wait.”
A real threat. MK Itamar Ben Gabir at Belich High School, on September 6, 2022 (Photo: Tomer Neuberg / Flash90)
If the Arab parties stay out, says Abu Ras, their ten mandates will be divided among the other parties, the right will become stronger, will be able to establish a stable government “and realize all its ideological plans and ideas. Our current situation is hell, but even in hell there is no neutrality. We must not allow the right Fascist to take over the reins of power. Although the other side is not good, the rise of the right is a real danger, and it is very close.”
What is now required of the Arab political leadership, claims Abu Ras, is to “appear publicly together and apologize to the people.” Another action that is required, according to him, is to hold a “general conference” for the Arab public, especially if the parties do not enter the Knesset, and raise the main challenges such as crime, the nationality law, and the threat of transfer. “We are a strong and successful minority individually and we have great achievements, but collectively we are weak and scattered,” says Abu Ras. “We do not have a strategic plan. Ask the Arab leaders where they see our society in 25 years, and you will see that they have no answer.”
The snowball is rolling
Dr. Honeida Hanam, director of Madar, the Palestinian Center for Israel Studies, agrees that this is a very problematic moment. The non-entry of the Arab parties into the Knesset “will be a great scandal, because it (the non-entry of the parties, 27) does not stem from a racist decision not to allow the Arabs to enter the Knesset, nor because of a decision by the Arab masses to organize outside the Knesset, but because of the failure of these parties to convince their audience to vote,” A’anem says. “This is very bad, and reflects the state of political fragmentation of the Palestinians within the Green Line.”
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The beginning of the deterioration, Hanam claims, was when Netanyahu intervened in what happened within the joint list, coordinated with Ra’am, and ultimately led to the split of the joint. Narrow and small. This thwarted the Arab representation in the Knesset, after the joint reached 15 mandates. Then the snowball rolled, and the ability to absorb the differences between the parties diminished. What happened is a result of the first split.”
In Ha’anem’s opinion, “there is a real fear” that the Arab parties will not cross the threshold, and in her eyes this is a real danger. “There will be a majority for the right, which has not happened in recent years. The fascist right is ready to take things as far as possible, and without the presence of Arab parties it will be easier for him to do it.”
Hanam says that the current government was indeed bad, and did more serious things than its predecessors, “but the idea of the rise of the fascist right to power and the damage it will cause to our lives within the Green Line, and to the Palestinian people in general, cannot be taken lightly. The danger does not lie only in Ben Gabir, in his statements and screams, But also in others like Smotrich and his racist plan. They may be the decision makers in the next right-wing government.”
The joint disintegration led to disaster. The members of the joint list are on their way to the president’s house, to recommend a candidate to form the government, after the 2019 elections (Photo: Yonatan Zindel / Flash90)
Negative atmosphere in the public
Dr. Mohammed Khalaila, a lecturer at the School of Political Science at the University of Haifa, closely follows what is happening on Arab Street also as part of his role in the “Coalition to Encourage Voting”. Although he estimates that the turnout for Zionist parties will decrease to 15 percent this time, the number of voters The Arabs will not be enough for three lists to cross the blocking percentage, and it is quite possible that none of them will cross the threshold.
According to Halaila, it is not only about polls, which currently predict a turnout of 40 percent as mentioned. “Even on the ground, we see that the reactions of people on the street and on social media are very negative. Up until this moment, there has been no significant improvement, and the scenario that no Arab party will enter the Knesset is very realistic.”
In Khalaila’s eyes, this is nothing less than a new historical stage, a turning point. “I’m not talking about big issues like the stance against the occupation. I’m talking about everyday matters like family reunification, students, health and daily services. The absence of Arab parties will leave Arab society without an address. A Jewish Knesset member does not have the abilities, the means or the desire to do the These things”.
A vote rate of 40 percent, even if it eventually allows two lists to enter the Knesset, is “shameful and shows weakness,” says Khalaila. “When the joint party had 15 mandates and represented 67 percent of Arab society, its influence was strong, it could speak loudly in front of the authorities,” he adds.
The remaining of the Arab parties outside the Knesset, says Halaila, will not only affect the members of the Knesset who will remain without a salary. It will be fatal to all political activity in Arab society. “The presence on the territory of the parties, student cells in universities, party clubs – all these things will end,” explains Khalaila. “The Arab parties depend on funding from the Knesset, and without this funding they will not be able to operate. Despite all the anger at the parties, without them society will return to tribal and sectarian divisions.”
According to him, if the parties remain outside the Knesset, they will have to recalculate their course and there may be a positive thing in that, but there is also a chance that some of the parties will simply disappear. This happened to the Mada, the Arab Democratic Party led by Abd al-Waheb Darousha, and it also happened to the Arab National Party of Muhammad Hassan Kanaan. “The fall of the parties now will make it difficult to re-establish them, not to mention the entry of the Zionist parties into influence in Arab society,” he estimates.