elections 1999

The ODA Alternative

On February 13, in Nazareth, the Organization for Democratic Action (Da'am, in Arabic) held a special convention on the question of elections. The members of the ODA decided to run for the Knesset. The three top candidates in our list are: Samya Nasser, manager of the Baqa center in Majd al-Krum, Wehbe Badarneh, head of the Workers Advice Center (Ma'an in Arabic) in Nazareth, and Asma Agbarieh, manager of al-Baqa center in Jaffa. As for the post of prime minister, in the absence of a non-Zionist candidate, we call for a blank ballot. Following are our arguments, as well as the main points raised in our meeting in Nazareth.

THE Organization for Democratic Action (ODA) is running in Israel's parliamentary elections as an independent list. Since our first electoral experience in 1996, new realities have emerged. The stalemate between Likud and Labor remains unbroken on the surface, while underneath there is almost wall-to-wall consensus. The stalemate was deep in 1993, when Yitzhak Rabin went to Oslo in order to break it. He distinguished in his thinking between right-wing moderates, who wanted to keep the Occupied Territories for the sake of security, and right-wing extremists, with their dream of a "greater Israel". Oslo was supposed to provide security – a dependent Arafat, it was thought, would hold his people under control – while demolishing the possibility of a greater Israel. Rabin hoped thus to attract the moderates to Labor's side, while turning the extremists into dinosaurs. In the latter task he succeeded – few Israelis today would want to re-occupy Gaza or even the West Bank cities. But Oslo failed to provide security, and Rabin fell victim to a right-wing bullet.

In the elections of 1996, "greater Israel" was no longer an option. While the people remained divided between Likud and Labor, the issue was no longer whether to give up land for peace, but how much and how fast. Here Bibi Netanyahu made a nimble dancer. Seeing the ideological rug disappear, he stepped toward Oslo – wooing the emerging consensus – while letting the right-wing believe he was not really serious. He slipped into power on a razor-thin margin, touting "Peace with Security".
Netanyahu was able to remain in power, supported by right-wingers and moderates alike, as long as both read his intentions differently, each to its liking. Yet he knew he could not remain ambiguous. He wanted to be the one to make the final arrangement with the Palestinians. To ensure re-election, he would have to show progress on Oslo. When at last he moved in this direction, signing the Wye Memorandum, the right wing was disillusioned, and Bibi had to call new elections.

The last twenty-odd years of Israeli politics have been determined by the stalemate between Likud and Labor and by attempts on both sides to break it. That stalemate is still there. The society remains split down the middle. Yet curiously, it is no longer split on the question of what to do, rather – and with bitter ferocity – on the question of who should do it.
The Israeli arena: aiming for national unity The Wye Memorandum is the most significant political statement ever made by the moderate Right in Israel. Like the earlier redeployment in Hebron, it shows that Netanyahu was basically serious in proclaiming "Peace with Security". In deference to his electoral base, he dragged his feet. He sorely tried the patience of the US and the Palestinians. He knew, however, that by the end of his term he must lay the basis for the final agreement – else Labor would be elected to do so. It was not mere recalcitrance, then, that led to his setback. While he was still at Wye, Labor's Ehud Barak – who had promised him parliamentary support in matters of peace – began flirting with the National Religious Party (Mafdal) in an effort to undermine him. Why did Barak do this? It seems he had not believed that Netanyahu would go as far as Wye. He didn't want Bibi to be the one who reaped the harvest of peace.
Netanyahu saw his right-wing teeter. After returning from Wye, therefore, he slowed the implementation of the agreement. Barak used the delay as a pretext to end parliamentary support. Deserted by the hard Right on one side and by Barak on the other, there was nothing left for the PM to do but call new elections. If Labor had really given Netanyahu a safety net for the Wye Memorandum, he and Arafat might have been well into the final-status talks by now. Judging from Bibi's actions so far, there is no evidence for the horror stories, promulgated by the Israeli Left, that he aims to abolish Oslo.

Why is this fact important? It shows that both of Israel's political camps are united behind Oslo. The latter seems a fait accompli. The extreme right-wing is isolated, just as Rabin foresaw. Apart from it, all factions – from the Arab parties to Netanyahu – accept Oslo as the only possible mechanism for solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. If almost everyone agrees, however, why hold early elections?
The issue is power, power for its own sake, though the opposition parties varnish this by calls for a "credible leader". After the elections, a precondition for staying in power will be progress on the "peace front". The dynamics of the situation are such, however, that no prime minister will be able to move forward on Oslo – much less negotiate the final-status accord – except through a national-unity government. If Netanyahu wins, in the absence of the extreme Right, he will have to have Labor at his elbow. If Barak is the victor, he will not be able to market a finished Oslo to the Labor-hating part of the public, unless the Likud is beside him – otherwise, he will find himself hounded like Rabin. As for Yitzhak Mordechai, candidate of the new Center party: if he wins, for the reasons just given he will need to bring both major parties in with his own.
No matter who you vote for, you are voting for his rival too! There is going to be a national-unity government. The question is: who will lead it? Since the policy will be the same in any case, it is doubtful whether the answer really matters.

The Palestinian Loss of Initiative
In the elections of 1996, the Palestinian Authority (PA) put all its chips on its Oslo partner, Labor. This was short-sighted. When Netanyahu took office, panic ensued. The Palestinian leadership refused to deal with the Likud leader. Arafat sought refuge in the bosom of the Israeli opposition, as well as in that of Egypt's Husni Mubarak. The result was a freeze that the ailing Palestinian leader could hardly afford. Then, toward the winter of 1998, Arafat began to grasp how pointless it was to delay. Opinion polls did not bode well for Labor's Ehud Barak. Judging from his hawkish statements, it did not appear that the Palestinians would get a better deal from Labor. Why not then negotiate with the dread beast itself? After all, said those in the PA who wanted to get things moving, Netanyahu had a major advantage:
given his right-wing credentials, he could "market" the Oslo process better. Thus the PA decided to come to grips with Israel's arrogant leader. They negotiated and signed the Wye Memorandum. The second redeployment got underway. The PA's Abu Mazen and Israeli Foreign Secretary Ariel Sharon undertook serious, secret talks on the final-status agreement. The next elections will leave the Palestinians in an even weaker bargaining position. By consenting to finalize the Oslo surrender with the Likud, which offered a mere 42% of the West Bank, the PA has lowered the roof of potential Israeli concessions. Since Arafat has already agreed to this meager figure, why should another Israeli party offer him more? After two and a half years of bad government, corruption, police-state tactics, and economic stagnation, the PA remains utterly dependent on the US and Israel. It will be the major Israeli political blocs, and not the PA, that determine how much the Palestinians get.

The Arabs of Israel Back Labor
One out of every five Israelis is Arab. The Arabs helped bring Rabin to power in 1992 and then kept him there, supporting his government on crucial votes. The Arab support for Shimon Peres in 1996 could not push him over the top. Now Barak needs the Arabs again, although once he is in – and has formed his national-unity government – he will have no further use for them. Moreover, convinced he must shift to the right, Barak has been courting the settlers. In 1996 the Arab parties backed Peres as "the lesser evil". In relation to Barak the excuse is shallow. He is ostentatiously hawkish. He wants "separation" from the Palestinians for all the wrong reasons. He couldn't care less about anti-Arab discrimination. He outbibis Bibi. With nothing to look forward to, why do the Arabs consent to the role of Barak's invisible backers?
Yet they do. And strangely enough, with regard to the race for premier, the Arab parties themselves have opted for invisibility. In 1996 there were only two candidates, but this time there will be three, none of whom will win an absolute majority. The race will be determined, therefore, in a run-off. The Arab parties could have united behind a non-Zionist Arab candidate during the first round. Such a person could have articulated the needs of the Arab population and enunciated a program of real peace. In such a case, our party, the ODA would have called on its supporters to vote for the Arab candidate.

But this will not happen. The two main Arab blocs, Hadash and the Islamic movement, have chosen to remain appendages of Labor. Having given up the national progressive line, they lack an alternative program. Their aim is to secure their Knesset seats through a deal like the one they had in 1996. In those elections they drummed up support for Peres; Labor, in turn, refrained from campaigning in their sector, leaving the parliamentary turf to them. (See Challenge, # 53) Except for the ODA, all the Arab parties support the Oslo process and the PA. There is no significant difference between them on any topic. In place of mass struggle, all have substituted wheeling and dealing. While the Arabs continue to suffer from problems of land, housing, unemployment, education, and development, these parties have left them with no plan of action and no political recourse.

The ODA
If everyone bows to the enormous consensus on Oslo, the Palestinians will never secure their rights. That is why we, the ODA, are running in the elections. Oslo appeared on the scene at a specific historical moment. For all its importance, however, the moment was just that. The accord did not stop the clock. Pre-Oslo Arafat was not the same as post-Oslo Arafat. Indeed, knowing that this would be the case, Israel and the US fitted him out with a large police-army.
We persisted through the years in our assessment of Oslo, despite its claim to be "the only game in town", because we knew that the current reality had within it the dynamics of change. A few years earlier, the collapse of the Soviet Union had come as a major blow to numerous leftist political movements, Palestinian groups as well. Many drew the mistaken conclusion that "history had ended" and that the US, unchallenged, would rule for ever. They did not see the dialectical character of events. They were blind to the contradictions inherent in American policy. Afraid to be cut off from the centers of power, they lost revolutionary perspective. But cracks have now appeared in the American colossus. The capitalist heaven is falling, from Southeast Asia to Russia to Brazil. In its new assaults against Iraq, the US finds itself almost alone.

Most Israeli political parties see the US as a positive force exerting leverage on a recalcitrant Israel. We see it, rather, as a power with its own strategic interests in the region. These will lead Washington to preserve Israel's dominance at the cost of a viable, truly independent Palestinian state. We claim that no mysterious "force of reality" has dictated the Palestinian surrender – that this was rather a conscious choice on the part of a bourgeois leadership that was looking for a place in the new world order, without regard to its people's historical rights. The Oslo accord, we conclude, amounts to betrayal. A revolutionary Palestinian leadership would never have agreed to cooperate with the Shin Beth and the CIA in oppressing its own people. The price of refusing Oslo would have been high, to be sure, but such a leadership would have given its people a firm basis on which to build up strength, as global and regional relations continue to shift.

Oslo is not the first step on the way to Palestinian independence. It is a nail in the coffin of the national movement. The PA, Oslo's creature, cannot be reformed. Viewing the accord as an expression of Israeli bourgeois interests (and not, as some would have had it, as a flash of moral insight that suddenly struck Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres), we have consistently claimed that all major forces, the Likud included, would carry out the agreement, accepting Arafat as their partner. When the bourgeois parties, Labor, Center and Likud, unite around the Oslo concept in order to rob Palestinians of their rights, is it not time for the victims to organize in order to gain those rights back?
The ODA is a growing party that works among the Arab masses in Israel. Our members are found in unemployment bureaus; among women who wish to improve their education; among people who are evicted from their homes. We defy plans of land confiscation and any other form of discrimination. Our journalists cover all violations of human rights, whether Israeli or Palestinian. We bring to light what hurts the poor and underprivileged. Where other parties have ceased to struggle, we know how to lead a fight.

We call on those in Israel who support our principles to vote for us on the parliamentary level. As for the premiership, in the absence of an Arab, non-Zionist candidate, we call on our supporters to cast a blank ballot. If any other left-wing or Arab political party were swimming against the Oslo current, we would gladly close ranks with it. Yet all are going the other way. If we wish to vote in the coming elections, we ourselves must swim.