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PDF FormatNo less eager to erase Israel’s Jewish identity is Hadash, the predominantly Arab communist party that officially supports the idea of “two states for two peoples.” In an October 2000 interview, the party’s leader, MK Muhammad Barakeh, said that he continues to advocate the idea of a two-state solution. However, he did not contest the interviewer’s assumption that as far as the Arab MKs are concerned, it is not a Jewish state that will exist alongside a Palestinian one: “Clearly, the existing situation will change, and the peace agreement, when it is concluded, is not the end of the story.” According to Barakeh, “The fact that Israel has a somewhat democratic character is due in no small part to the struggle for full democracy that Israeli Arabs are engaged in, and will continue to be engaged in, until Israel becomes a state of all its citizens.”9 The new Palestinian national state, in other words, is to live alongside an Israel stripped of its Jewish national identity.
Further evidence that this is what the Arab MKs have in mind is found in the proposals some of them have advanced to turn the vision of a “state of all its citizens” into reality—prescriptions which invariably include renouncing the political, legal, and cultural elements that give Israel its distinct Jewish character. Foremost among these is the Law of Return, granting automatic citizenship to Jewish immigrants; but also targeted are the national symbols that represent the special status of Israel as the Jewish state, such as the Star of David on Israel’s flag and the national anthem, “Hatikva.” As Tibi argues:
The State of Israel must initiate the repeal of the Law of Return…. As long as there is a Law of Return, as long as Israeli Jewish society does not renounce it, it is a clear sign that this community is not interested in full democracy. The Jewish community still wants its Jewish symbols—the Law of Return, the national anthem, the flag…. Strategically, I seek the abolition of the Law of Return, the flag, and the national anthem.10
It is not clear whether all Arab MKs who speak of a “state of all its citizens” are fully aware of the broader historical and political implications the term carries, or of the fact that it essentially requires the abdication of the national and cultural—and sometimes even linguistic—uniqueness of the minority as well as that of the majority. This kind of integration is clearly incompatible with their own ideas of Arab identity in Israel. One finds, for example, an antagonism toward the very term “Israeli Arab,” and vocal opposition to anything that smacks of “Israelification” of the Arab minority. “The term ‘Arab Israeli’ is completely unacceptable in my opinion,” said Darawshe, who prefers to describe himself as “a Palestinian Arab, citizen of the State of Israel.”11 Azmi Bishara considers the Arab-Israeli label to be “a twisted creature that created a twisted structure,”12 and he favors the description “the Arabs in [the part of] Palestine that was occupied in 1948.”13 Hadash’s Muhammad Barakeh prefers to describe the Arabs in Israel as “members of the Palestinian people in the Galilee, the Triangle [region], and the Negev.”14
Similarly, those Israeli Arabs who choose to integrate into Israeli society and contribute to its defense are often subjected to harsh criticism. MK Taleb El-Sana (United Arab List) has accused those of his Bedouin kinsmen who serve in the IDF of being part of the Israeli “genocide machine” directed against the Palestinians, and urged them to return to their natural place among their people.15 Abdulwahab Darawshe declared that every Arab in the IDF was committing a “despicable crime against society”16 and told Jordanian university students that one of his party’s successes was in persuading Bedouin serving in the IDF to discard their uniforms and join “the ranks of their people.”17 In an interview for Egyptian television in May 1998, Azmi Bishara described the mindset at the core of this approach: “We are opposed to the process of ‘Israelification’ of the Arabs in Israel. There are Arabs who say to them, ‘You are Israelis,’ and push them into becoming Israelis. We should pay attention to this, and we are waging an important campaign to preserve the Arab nature of the homeland, the Arab identity, and the democratization of identity. Israelification, the abandonment of national identity, leads to factionalism and on the other hand to a resurgence of the intracommunal problem [among Arabs in Israel].”18
Such misgivings have spurred Ahmed Tibi to distance himself from the idea of a “state of all its citizens,” which he had once embraced, and to adopt demands consistent with the creation of a binational, Arab-Jewish state. For if the state’s Jewish character were annulled based on the principle of equal citizenship, then Israeli Arabs would be required to contribute to the state in the same ways that Jews do, including military service. To avoid this, Tibi has sought a formula that would allow Arabs in Israel to gain greater control over land use and to enhance their political power in order to further develop their separate national identity, without having to make any significant contribution in return. In Tibi’s words:
I am fighting under the banner of securing national and civil rights for the Arab population, and this is different from the slogan of a “state of all its citizens”… which is the very embodiment of Israelification. Any group in the Arab sector that says it is against Israelification contradicts itself by demanding a state of all its citizens. For on the day after Israel announces it is no longer a state of the Jews, but rather a state of all its citizens, it will have to draft all its youth, Jew and Arab, and I am opposed in principle to the recruitment of Arabs by the IDF—even if it is in a state of all its citizens. Such a state would seek to obscure or erase my unique Arab national identity…. I prefer the slogan of securing national and civil rights for the Arab population as a national minority within the State of Israel to that of a state of all its citizens. A state of all its citizens is a flawed and defective utopia. If it happens tomorrow, I will not object, but as I said, I would prefer a different formula.19
The formula Tibi supports also means giving the Arab minority “equal rights to the national lands”—that is, those lands within Israel that were purchased by Jews over generations for the express purpose of Jewish settlement—since “anyway these lands were once Arab lands.”20 Muhammad Barakeh voiced a similar determination to turn back the clock, demanding redress for the Arabs’ calls for increased land allocations through permitting Arab citizens to return and rebuild the villages destroyed in 1948.21
Nor does the program of the Arab MKs for the dejudaization of Israel stop with the renunciation of the state’s Jewish character or the repeal of the Law of Return. The next step would be to impose the so-called “right of return” of Palestinian refugees on the state, inevitably transforming the country from a “state of all its citizens,” or a Tibi-style binational state, into a state with a decisive Arab majority. According to Tibi, the implementation of the “right of return” is an essential precondition for any historic reconciliation between Jews and Arabs in the region. Only a small portion of the millions of refugees would actually exercise this right, he claims, but the choice must be theirs;22 Bishara stresses that this is an absolute claim, which even the Palestinian leadership has no right to relinquish:
I do not say that every Palestinian must return to his village or to the house in which he once lived… but they must be given the right. It is anchored in innumerable UN resolutions, and it concerns the personal human rights of each and every refugee. It cannot, therefore, be given up…. Neither Arafat nor Abu Mazen has any power to abandon it in the name of an elderly person from Safed now living in the Yarmuk [refugee] camp—not even in return for any political compensation that might be granted the Palestinian Authority.23
Bishara is possibly the most radical of the Arab MKs.24 His colleagues usually express themselves in a more restrained and ambiguous manner, and their pronouncements vary widely in emphasis and nuance. What remains true, however, is that there exists a broad consensus on every matter concerning the denial of legitimacy to the Jewish state.
It must be emphasized, moreover, that this attitude is not a product of the 1967 “occupation,” against which the Arab MKs have long worked together with significant elements of the Zionist Left in Israel. Rather, it constitutes no less than a total rejection of the Jewish character of the State of Israel—a rejection that would remain in place even if Israel were to meet Palestinian demands for a return to the 1967 borders and the creation of a Palestinian state. For years, concern for Israel’s character and a desire to preserve the Jewish features and purposes of the state have driven many Israelis to call for a pullout from the territories. Today, it has become a commonplace of mainstream Jewish public opinion in Israel that in order to maintain and strengthen the Jewish character of the state, Israel will eventually have to withdraw from the majority of the territory in the West Bank and Gaza, to allow the establishment of a viable Palestinian entity there, and to dismantle some number of Jewish settlements. The leadership of the Israeli Arab community, on the other hand, sees a complete withdrawal, the uprooting of all settlements, and the establishment of a Palestinian state as only the first steps of a more ambitious program to negate the Jewish character of Israel.
