From Challenge # 66   
March-April 2001

talking politics 

The Arabs in Israel Discover Their Electoral Clout

Samya Nasser

A THUNDERING silence. That is how we can describe the absence of 82% of eligible Arab voters from the polls on Election Day, February 6. Their protest came as an extension of their spontaneous outburst in early October, when they joined the al-Aksa Intifada. The election boycott, however, was not spontaneous. It started from below, but it was well thought-out and organized, and these attributes gave it power.

The leaders of the Arab parties have regularly frightened their people with Likud boogiemen. In 1996 and again in 1999, it was Benjamin Netanyahu, in 2001 Ariel Sharon. Until now people voted from fear. On this occasion, however - the first time since the Oslo Accords (1993) - the Arabs in Israel employed both guts and brains. From the guts, they wanted to punish Barak. From their brains, they took a calculated risk that Sharon would not be in a position to do them worse. Here was a chance to show the Labor Party once and for all that the Palestinians in Israel could be a powerful political force, indispensable but free - a force with which Labor, from now on, would have to reckon.

For the Labor Party, the Arab vote will no longer be an easy catch. In the elections of 1996 and 1999, four factors campaigned for Labor among the Arab masses: the Arab newspapers and political parties, the SMC (Supreme Monitoring Committee Of the Arab Population) and the PA (Palestinian Authority). This time the people didn't listen to any of them. How different from 1996, for example, when Netanyahu challenged Shimon Peres! The latter had fresh blood on his hands: his Lebanese adventure, "Grapes of Wrath", had just cost the lives of a hundred Arabs at a UN compound in Cana. Nevertheless, as Election Day approached, the Arab leaders spread fear, saying, as it were, "We must vote with our heads, not our feelings. For the sake of the peace process, the hour demands that we support Peres." The PA too called on the Arab masses to elect the leader of the Labor Party. The street obeyed, and Peres received more than 90% of the Arab vote. 

The Arab newspapers provided a forum for Labor

In the recent election, the Arab leadership failed to understand that the map had changed. Consider the newspapers. The three most popular in the Arab sector are A-Sunara, Kul al-Arab (both commercial) and al-Ittihad (mouth piece of the Communist Party - Hadash). All filled their pages with the dread of Sharon. On February 2, Kul al- Arab devoted three full pages to Laborite Yossi Beilin, who warned the Arab masses and their leaders that the day of Sharon's election will be a "black" one. The editor of A-Sunara, Lutfi Mash'ur, ran Barak's campaign in the Arab sector (after swearing he would never back him!). He provided a forum to Immigration Minister, Yuli Tamir, and to Avraham Burg, Chairperson of the Knesset. In Arabeh of Galilee, youngsters kept government minister Matan Vilna'i from entering the village, while al-Ittihad invited Minister Yossi Beilin to its offices and interviewed him. This was the very same Yossi Beilin who said, after the police killed thirteen Arab citizens, that the Labor Party need not fear any loss of support. After the massacre at Cana, he recalled, they had threatened to cast blank ballots but in the end had voted 'Peres'.

Why did these major Arab papers provide such a forum to Labor? Not out of fair-play: to Likud spokespersons they gave none. Apparently, these molders of public opinion preferred to let Labor's leaders say what they themselves did not have the courage to utter. 

The Arab parties: confusion and embarrassment

The demand of the Arab street to boycott the elections caught all the Arab parties, except Azmi Bishara's, off guard. These parties sat and explored the idea of running an Arab candidate for PM. The law requires support from ten Knesset members, however, and the Arabs, numbering ten themselves, could not agree on a candidate around whom to rally.

Hadash spoke with forked tongue. "In spite of everything," wrote Ahmad Sa'ad, editor of its newspaper, "better Barak than Sharon." As the public discussion continued to press for a boycott, however, Hadash grew cautious. The party's inclination was to vote 'Barak', but given the difficulty of saying this outright, it conditioned its support on his bringing home a peace accord. (Ahmad Tibi took a similar stance.) At last, when Hadash understood that Barak was going to lose anyhow, with or without the Arabs - and that many on the Jewish Left too were deserting him - it voiced its support for casting blank ballots. It had to do so, otherwise it would have lost the Arab street. According to Joseph Algazy in Ha'aretz (January 29), part of the Hadash leadership continued to support Barak, accusing the abstainers of taking an extreme and adventurous position. Among them were Binyamin Gonen (the party's senior representative in the Histadrut) and party General Secretary Muhammad Na'fa . 

The weakening of the SMC (Supreme Monitoring Committee)

The SMC was created in the eighties, when the Committee of the Heads of Arab Councils combined with the Arab Knesset members to form it. The purpose was to coordinate positions on issues of concern to the Arab population, such as budgets. It is the SMC that calls for general strikes in response to extraordinary events. It also organizes the main activities of Land Day. Many SMC members are affiliated with the Labor Party. During the ten years of its existence, in fact, the make-up of the SMC reflected a coalition between, on the one hand, local Arab leaders affiliated with the Labor Party and, on the other, the Arab parties.

The parties - including the Islamic movement, Hadash and Azmi Bishara's National Democratic Alliance (Tajamu) - have taken pains, in recent years, to coordinate actions with the heads of the SMC. The latter, because of its Labor connections, tends to rein the parties in. Thus the latter can put on a show of high principles for their constituents, without having to follow through. The result is paralysis. This explains why, in recent years, we have seen an increase of activities emerging spontaneously from the street - for example, the three days of clashes over the Roha lands beside Um al-Fahem. (Challenge # 52.)

In the recent elections, the SMC refrained from taking a position. When the Committee of the Martyrs' Families (see box) issued a call to boycott the polls, the SMC came out, saying, "With all due respect, the Committee of the Families cannot dictate to the people whom to vote for and how." Yet the SMC itself did not manage to establish a position, preferring to leave the matter for each separate party to determine. On the other hand, at the last minute - when Barak was desperate - it did attempt to mediate between his office and the mothers of the Arab victims, so that the latter would accept a condolence call from Navah Barak, the PM's wife. The families rejected the proposal. The patent irrelevance of the SMC in these elections will have ramifications for its political future on the Arab street.

The PA loses its authority

Until the PLO leadership entered the Occupied Territories in 1994, re-constituted as the PA, it had very little influence on Arab politics in Israel. Once the PA was in place, however, with the support of Israel's Labor Party, every leader from the Arab population had to take Yasser Arafat into account and receive his blessing.

The relationship was mutual. Each side used the other for its purposes. On the one hand, heads of local councils and party chiefs all made pilgrimage to Gaza in order to get a headline. Every Arab politician hung a big framed photo in his office, showing himself with the "ra'is". In 1996 and 1999, the visits gained in frequency as Election Day approached. On the other hand, during its negotiations with Israel, the PA used the potential Arab vote as its personal dowry, which it could deliver or not as it chose . In 1996 and 1999, it called on the Arabs to throw their support to the Labor Party. Then came the al-Aksa Intifada, putting the PA to a test. Would it stay loyal to its own people in the Territories, who were waging war against Israel with Barak at its head? Or would it finally cave in, revealing its tough stand as mere play-acting?

The Israeli election campaign began, and the PA at first remained silent. As the day loomed near, however, its true face came to light. Despite everything - despite the closure, despite the sealing off of all its cities, towns and villages, despite the tanks and the helicopter gunships and the missiles, despite the hundreds of dead and thousands of wounded - Barak was its favorite. PA minister and chief negotiator Yasser Abed Rabbo came out publicly: Sharon, he said, would be a catastrophe. After him came opposition leader Na'if Hawatmeh, who called on Israelis to vote 'Barak'. (Interview with Gideon Levi, Ha'aretz, January 26) Arafat himself supported Barak in an interview with the Daily Telegraph (January 22). According to this British newspaper, he instructed his representatives at Taba to soften their positions, so that Barak might win. The Palestinians carried on intensive and friendly negotiations leading up to Election Day, as a way of showing Arab voters that Barak was the PA's preference.

All these efforts came to naught. The Arabs in Israel could no longer stomach Barak. It was clear, moreover, that he was going to lose - with or without them. Hadash, the Arab Democratic Party of Abdulwahab Darawshe, Ahmad Tibi and the heads of local councils (such as SMC chief Muhammad Zeidan), all had considered declaring for 'Barak', but in the light of his certain defeat, why risk political suicide? Thus it came about that no official Arab body supported Barak. In ignoring the call of the PA, the Palestinians in Israel found themselves at one with their kin in the Territories, who see Sharon and Barak as two sides of a single, unacceptable Zionist coin. 

A new agenda

Although the election boycott aimed specifically to punish Barak, it has created a new paradigm of relationships between the people, on the one hand, and, on the other, a trio consisting of the Labor Party, the SMC and the PA. These three had found common ground in Oslo, which they saw as the only strategic choice available to the Arabs - whether those in Israel, in the Territories or in the wider region.

The Labor Party served as the Israeli partner in this agreement, which was meant to benefit the Arab elites. Only when we regard the matter in this light, can we understand why the Arab leaders stayed mute through the Oslo period, watching Israel brutalize the Palestinian people and the PA trample on their rights. 

The al-Aksa Intifada, however, has put an end to the Oslo Accords. It has overthrown the foundations on which the Arabs in Israel have done politics for the last seven years. The Arab leadership is in crisis. It was leading the people across a bridge, and the bridge has collapsed.
On the other hand, the Arabs themselves have at last come to see what electoral power they have.
We have, then, a new situation, and it demands new thinking. During seven years of misplaced faith, the social and economic problems of the Arab population have gone untreated. The elite grew richer, the street grew poorer. New leaders must arise with a new agenda based on struggle - not on a phony partnership with a Zionist party. 

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