elections 1999 - the arab vote

Seats - Ten, Credibility - Zero

It was clear from the outset that Ehud Barak did not intend to invite the Arab parties into his government. That would have violated a Zionist taboo, according to which the Arabs in Israel form a potential fifth column. At election time, however, the Arab voter is wooed like a battered wife from whom a favor is needed. The husband apologizes for beating her all year round and begs for forgiveness. Why should the wife agree, knowing nothing will change? Why do the Arabs always agree?
On May 17, seventy-five percent of the eligible Arabs voted. Of these, over ninety percent chose Ehud Barak, known for his staunch anti-Arab positions. How can we explain this? Why should people whose ballots never got them anything, election after election, participate so heavily? Some pundits answer that the Arabs were simply fed up with Netanyahu, and indeed they were. But they also mistrusted Barak, whose campaign centered on the glorification of his military past. Why then?
The answer is manifold. The Arabs voted because it is almost the only democratic right they enjoy. They also voted for fear of the consequences of failing to vote. Finally, many of those listed as having voted may not have voted at all. Fear is a traditional motive. Since the Arabs in Israel don't enjoy any kind of recognition, they depend on having the right connections in order to get on in their daily lives. If you need a permit to build a house, or to get a job as a teacher or clerk, or if you merely don't want to be harassed, you must show your loyalty to the state. One of the ways to show loyalty is by showing up at the polls, especially if you vote for the right party.
Yet fear is eroding. After so many years of discrimination in all spheres of life (e.g., housing, education, land, and jobs), there is growing despair with the political system. In this year's race for the prime ministry, the Labor Party feared that fear might not suffice. Knowing it faced a solid bloc of opposition from the Jewish ultraorthodox, Labor made a special effort to bag the Arab vote.
A few months before the elections, a non-governmental organization called "Shatil" appeared in the Arab localities. It took out big, expensive ads in the Arab media and plastered posters all over the villages, highlighting the slogan, "Let your vote decide." Decide what? The slogan did not say. It was heart-warming to see an organization go to such exorbitant expense, urging people to exercise their democratic right - and not even telling them what to do with it. Such a phenomenon fills one with civic pride. One wonders, however, why Shatil aimed its campaign exclusively at the Arab sector. There is also a well-known NGO called Shatil which operates in the Jewish sector, but it did not make a similar effort. Perhaps it did not have as much money as its Arab namesake. Or perhaps it felt that there was nothing to be done about the Jews, whereas the Arabs are capable of improvement.

The task of bringing Arabs to the ballot box was performed, above all, by the Arab parties themselves. Nor did they always have to go to the trouble of transporting actual people. We encountered several instances of what we believe to be a widespread practice: party activists simply brought people's identity cards - or even just their identity numbers - and did them the favor of voting in their stead. This proved more efficient. Nor did the party-appointed poll watchers let blank or invalid ballots go to waste. According to reports we've received, they distributed them "fair and square" among the parties represented at the station. We have reports, too, that in the count of votes for Prime Minister, blank or invalid ballots went to Barak. This method might conceivably have something to do with the high rate of voter participation. (For cases, see page 10)
Why do the Arab parties go to such trouble, knowing in advance that they have no chance of joining the coalition? They want seats in the Knesset. After the 1992 elections, there were two Arab parties with five seats. In 1996, the system changed: you voted not only for a party, as before, but also, directly, for the Prime Minister. Accordingly, the smaller parties grew - among them the two Arab parties, which won nine seats. In the recent elections, three Arab parties took ten seats. The maximum potential of the present eligible Arab population amounts to twelve.
The number of Arab seats has increased in part because of the change in the system, but also because of a "gentlemen's agreement" with Labor. In 1996, and now again three years later, Labor agreed not to campaign in Arab towns against the Arab parties, provided that the latter bring out the vote for its prime ministerial candidate. One saw, therefore, no posters for Labor on Arab streets, but Barak's face was everywhere. His Arabic slogan, "The state for everyone," stood in sharp contrast to his slogans in Jewish cities, where the posters showed him as Mr. Hero, bedecked with all his medals.

Hadash (which declined this year from five seats to three) waged an aggressive campaign against Netanyahu. Bringing Bibi down, it said in a noble gesture of self-sacrifice, "is even more important than increasing our own constituency." The top priority on Barak's agenda, Hadash proclaimed, is peace with the Arabs. It did not explain what Barakian peace would mean for the Arab side.
Once the election results became public, all that remained was frustration. Except for the Arabs and the Likud, everybody is happy. Most of Netanyahu's coalition partners can continue to warm their chairs in Barak's new government. Even Ariel Sharon can celebrate: Barak's victory helped paved his way to the leadership of the Likud, enabling him to run for Prime Minister in the next elections. Yet Barak's most solid bloc of support must remain outside, picking up crumbs.
Israel is gearing up for a renewal of the Oslo drama. Barak might reach an agreement with Syria and with Arafat, but for the Arab population in Israel, nothing will change. And when nothing changes things change for the worse. The Arab population in Israel is losing whatever faith it had in its own political parties. The politics of crumbs is not producing results. For the past year and a half we have seen people taking matters into their own hands, leaving the so-called leaders behind. Here are some of the warning signs:

• April 1998: The clash over house demolitions in Um al-Sahali (Challenge # 49);
  
• September 1998: The massive clashes in Um al-Fahem over the confiscation of land in Roha (Challenge # 52);
  
• May 15: The chasing of collaborators from Baqa al-Gharbieh;
  
• June 21: Clashes between the population and the police in Lod over the demolition of an unlicensed house. (Six hundred such houses have been built in this mixed city, after people understood that the regime, as a matter of policy, was not going to grant them licenses.) Metal bullets wrapped in rubber were shot at the demonstrators. MK Azmi Bishara was wounded in the shoulder by one of them.
  These events show a new readiness on the part of the people to take to the streets in assertion of their democratic rights. They want to achieve what their leaders have not during a decade of collaboration in the Knesset, where the possession of a seat has substituted for a strategy of action. We must not forget that the Arabs in Israel became a political factor only on March 30, 1976, when they stood up against the Zionist appetite for land. Now, once again, the Arabs may be rising to their feet, but this mass frustration has yet to be translated into a political strategy.

  [ Home | This Issue | Contents | Archive | Subscribe | Hanitzotz News ]