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PDF FormatIn June of 2000, after Israel unilaterally withdrew its forces from Lebanon, a “Hezbollah Victory Festival” was held in the Arab city of Umm el-Fahm, in northern Israel. More than five hundred Arab citizens of Israel attended, most of them educated, secular supporters of the National Democratic Assembly party. Party leader Azmi Bishara, himself a Christian and a member of Israel’s parliament, praised the achievements of Hezbollah, a radical Shi’ite organization whose stated aims include violent struggle against the State of Israel. Standing next to Palestinian flags, Bishara addressed the crowd:
Hezbollah has won. For the first time since 1967, we have tasted victory. Hezbollah has every right to be proud of its achievement and to humiliate Israel…. Israel suffered defeat after defeat and was forced to leave southern Lebanon.… This is the truth…. Lebanon, the weakest of the Arab states, has presented a miniature model, and if we examine it closely we will be able to draw the conclusions necessary for success and victory.1
A year later, in June 2001, Bishara set forth another challenge, this time in front of hundreds of Arab leaders and dignitaries—including Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah and Iranian Vice President Hassan Habibi—who had gathered in the Syrian city of Kardaha for a memorial service for the deceased president of Syria, Hafez Assad. Bishara called on his listeners to renew and intensify the path of “resistance” against Israel, so that it would not be able to exploit the Arabs’ inability to wage an all-out conventional war in order to impose its terms on the Arab world.2
Bishara’s remarks triggered a wave of protest in Israel and led to his indictment on charges of supporting a terrorist organization.3 Yet they were only one example of a trend evident among Arab members of Knesset in recent years. A close look at their remarks over the past decade and a half reveals that a deep-seated hostility to the Jewish state has become the norm among Israeli Arab lawmakers—both those who served until recently and those in office today. And the situation is steadily getting worse.
This was not always the case. Before the outbreak of the Intifada in December 1987, the style of Arab members of Knesset was less radical and provocative. While they were no less proud of their identity as Arabs, concerned for their constituents, or critical of Israeli policies than are their counterparts today, the previous generation of Arab leaders in Israel generally stressed their loyalty to the state, and would sometimes even show understanding for the national needs of the Jewish majority. Communist Party MK Tawfik Tubi, for example, served in the Knesset for forty years and was known as an uncompromising champion of the rights of Arab citizens. Yet Tubi defined himself as an Israeli patriot and insisted that there was no contradiction between his Arab and Israeli identities. As late as the 1980s, he would recall that prior to the establishment of Israel, he had reached the conclusion that by rejecting the partition plan of November 1947 the Palestinian national movement would lead its people to a national calamity.4 Tubi’s approach reflected a view that was widely held by leaders of the Arab community in Israel for many years: That the future of the Arab minority depended on its accepting the basic ground rules inherent in living in a Jewish state.
In the last two decades, however, a new generation of Arab parliamentarians has emerged. While the first generation of the Arabs who remained in Israel after the War of Independence in 1948 had grown up under a military government and in the face of severe economic, social, and educational hardships, this new leadership, which entered political life during the 1970s, grew up in a very different Israel and adopted a very different approach from that of the previous generation. The attitudes demonstrated by prominent Arab figures such as Azmi Bishara, Ahmed Tibi, Muhammad Barakeh, and Abdulmalik Dehamshe reflect not only more self-confidence, but also the willingness to express radical positions and to risk a direct confrontation with the Jewish majority.
This approach is in no way exceptional among the Arab parliamentarians in Israel. On the contrary, it represents the views of most of the Arab MKs (with one notable exception, Nawaf Mazalha of the Labor Party). Although the ideological and social backgrounds of the Arab parties vary considerably, as do many of the specific policies they advocate, the new generation of Arab leaders has adopted a remarkably broad consensus with respect to the Jewish state. The two most prominent political movements on the Israeli Arab scene—the Islamic Movement, which ultimately strives for imposing Islamic law (sharia) and stripping the state of all aspects of its Jewish national identity, and the Arab-led communist movement, which has historically advocated the idea of “two states for two peoples”—both employ the terminology of liberal-democratic discourse as an instrument in the struggle against the Jewish state,5 even though both radical Islam and communism reject liberal democracy altogether and identify with Arab regimes that are the antithesis of a pluralistic political order.6
There are, of course, differences in style and emphasis in the way Arab MKs express themselves. But these do not fundamentally alter the overall picture which emerges from a careful consideration of their statements. The essence of their position is an all-out rejection of the basic tenets perceived by the Jewish majority in Israel as underlying the existential interests of the Jewish national collective. There are three components to this rejection, each of which is becoming more pronounced over time: (i) Denial of the political and moral justification for a Jewish state; (ii) open identification with Israel’s most implacable enemies; and (iii) sympathy for, and occasionally even advocacy of, acts of violence and terror against Jewish civilians in Israel. Under such circumstances, the challenge that the Arab leadership in the Knesset poses to the basic beliefs of the Jewish majority appears to have crossed the bounds of ordinary discourse in a democracy, which depends on the preservation of a consensus as to the basic rules of the democratic game. Moreover, it reflects a deterioration in relations between the Arab and Jewish populations to the point of a serious crisis, one that makes political dialogue exceedingly difficult and raises questions about the future of the partnership between the two communities.
II
Rejection of the Jewish state is a central premise from which the claims, reactions, and policy positions of today’s Arab MKs are derived. Their arguments tie into the wider history of the 120-year-old Arab-Israeli conflict, and specifically the attempt by the Palestinian national movement to alter the basic political realities that have prevailed since the creation of a Jewish state half a century ago. Given the failure of all-out military efforts on the part of the Arab world and the improbability of their success in the foreseeable future, Arab MKs have joined the ranks of those seeking other, “softer” methods of perpetuating the same struggle. In their public declarations, they have begun appealing to core elements of the democratic and liberal value system accepted by most of the Jewish majority, even though these values and the practices that accompany them frequently contradict the attitudes and behavior of most of the Arab population which they represent.
The most striking example is the use of the rhetoric of civil equality in casting doubt on the legitimacy of the Jewish state. In recent years, Arab MKs have promoted the idea of Israel as a “state of all its citizens,” a somewhat euphemistic term in Israeli parlance, meant to describe a nationally “neutral” democracy that could serve as an alternative to a Jewish or Zionist state. MK Ahmed Tibi, who used to serve as a close adviser to PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat and has remained an overt supporter even after Arafat established the Palestinian Authority (PA) as a dictatorial regime, frames this position as a democratic principle:
We maintain that the Jewish character of the State of Israel must be abolished. We do not accept the fact of exclusive Jewish hegemony in the state, completely disregarding 20 percent [of the population] who are not Jewish. We are not subletting here, and the definition of who we are has to be anchored in the definition of the state; therefore we absolutely support the idea of a “state of all its citizens”…. It is impossible to talk about a Jewish state and a democratic state in the same breath. It is either a democratic state or a Jewish state. It would be enough for me if it were a democratic state.7
Abdulwahab Darawshe, then the leader of the Arab Democratic Party, used similar rhetoric in a 1998 interview to explain why he would not celebrate Israel’s Independence Day: “No, I will not celebrate it as long as there is no just solution for the Palestinian people, and as long as Arabs are not given equal rights, and until it is decided that this is a state of all its citizens and not only the Jewish people’s state. This country is not democratic but imperialist, an occupier, a racist apartheid state that discriminates against a minority of 20 percent….”8
No 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.
Arab MKs’ statements concerning the nullification of the Jewish state are best understood in light of the political context in which they appear, since they have been articulated by people well-versed in the political realities of Israel and completely aware of the Jewish majority’s “red lines.” Under the banner of liberal notions of equality and fairness, they have united in taking aim at the very ideas and assumptions that most Jews view as the essential foundations of a Jewish state.
III
The Arab MKs’ active opposition to the Jewish state is not limited, however, to a legitimate political struggle over the state’s character. Instead, their remarks at times seem to reflect an identification with almost every group, movement, or country that has taken up arms against Israel. They may not support each of Israel’s enemies in equal measure (internal Arab politics also has an effect on statements about whom they back), but one can find declarations of sympathy—if not downright admiration and support—for almost every leader or organization currently at war with the Jewish state.
The most striking example, of course, is the support of Arab Knesset members for Yasser Arafat, who continued to wage a violent struggle against Israel even after the Oslo accords were signed in 1993. Ahmed Tibi, his former adviser, has continued to express full support of the Palestinian Authority chairman despite having sworn allegiance to Israel as a member of its parliament. Arafat is a “gentleman,” Tibi told The Washington Post this past April: “I am talking to Yasser Arafat every day.”25 Of course, such statements are mild compared with the extensive record Tibi built as Arafat’s Israeli mouthpiece in the years prior to his election. “I have been on close, personal terms with the chairman for twelve years,” he told the Israeli daily Ma’ariv in November 1996. “Everything I do is done on his directions. I believe he has faith in me and I hope I justify that faith.”26 Other MKs who do not enjoy Arafat’s patronage have still aligned themselves for many years with the struggle he leads. During a 1989 visit to Cairo, well before the 1993 Oslo accords and Arafat’s diplomatic rehabilitation, Abdulwahab Darawshe declared in an interview with the Saudi newspaper Al-Majalah that “Every step I take inside [Israel] is on the instructions of Yasser Arafat and some of the [Palestine Liberation] Organization’s leadership, and they know about them.”27 Criticism of the Palestinian leadership is heard occasionally, but mainly from those who believe, like Azmi Bishara or the leaders of the Islamic Movement, that Arafat is not aggressive enough in prosecuting the struggle against Israel.
Radical Islamic organizations also get their share of support from Arab leaders in Israel—despite their denial of Israel’s right to exist and their campaign of terror against its civilians. Abdulmalik Dehamshe, an attorney who is the leader of the United Arab List, has represented Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin in court, and proudly displays a photograph of him in his home. According to Dehamshe, Yassin is “a wonderful person,” “a great man and a man of peace.” Hamas, he explained, does not actually send suicide bombers because it is, at its essence, a political organization, and only military organizations “do such things.”28 Other Arab-Israeli leaders usually do not express open admiration for Hamas, and they sometimes condemn the terrorist activities of the Islamic organizations—although their reasoning often focuses more on Palestinian interests than moral considerations. Thus, for example, when Ahmed Tibi spoke out against an attack by Hamas on a bus carrying children from the Kfar Darom settlement in Gaza in 1998, he emphasized the political cost to the Palestinians: “The attempt to blow up the school bus from Kfar Darom is grave and dangerous beyond comparison. Whoever sent the perpetrators was in effect saying to [then Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu, ‘Do not pull out, do not implement the agreement,’ thereby causing damage to the most important Palestinian interest. Whoever did this betrayed the Palestinian people, even if he is a Palestinian.”29
The Iranian-backed Hezbollah likewise has a place in the pantheon of Arab MKs’ heroes. Its attacks against Israel, both in Lebanon and within Israel’s borders, are considered acceptable—at times applauded—even by figures whose ideology is far removed from Islamic radicalism. During a meeting with Arab students in Haifa in early 1999, MK Hashem Mahameed, of the communist Hadash party, called the Hezbollah “a national liberation movement of the first order” and praised its members as “freedom fighters.” He reported that “Lebanon has turned into a vast graveyard for the occupation soldiers.”30 In February 1999, at the opening of his party’s national convention, Azmi Bishara continued his consistent support for the Shi’ite organization by declaring that “Hezbollah is a courageous national force that has taught Israel a lesson. Despite being a fundamentalist party, it has become the vanguard of the Arab world, proudly carrying the nationalist banner and willing to make sacrifices to achieve this end.”31
Most telling, perhaps, is the attitude Arab MKs display toward the brutal dictatorships of the Middle East—which seems to see no contradiction between an insistence upon an uncompromising implementation of liberal-democratic principles and absolute equality in Israel and a tolerance for, or even admiration of, tyranny in Arab states. At most, they express timid reservations of the kind permissible even in totalitarian societies. In 1994, Darawshe organized the first delegation of Arab citizens of Israel to visit Syria in order to offer condolences to President Hafez Assad following the death of his son. While there, Darawshe took the opportunity to meet with three of the most notorious figures in the history of Palestinian terrorism—Ahmed Jibril, George Habash, and Naif Hawatmeh. During another visit, in 1997, Darawshe met President Assad and told him, “You are the greatest of them all, the most senior of all the world’s leaders.” In an interview with an Israeli reporter, Darawshe described his impressions of his visit to Syria:
Anyone who comes here and sees the reality, the longing for peace—real peace and not the peace of occupation and lies that Israel seeks—cannot but be impressed. Until now, we were prisoners of Israeli propaganda to the effect that Syria was a backward country. Come and see the progress here…. The villages have modern conditions, everything is in abundance, prices are low…. We are enchanted, not fawning.32
Darawshe expressed approval of Syria’s de facto military control of Lebanon as well. The moral illegitimacy of occupation does not apply to the massive Syrian military presence there, he argued, since the army is “there by agreement” and the Syrian soldiers in Lebanon “ensure calm, order, and discipline.… Syria and Lebanon are as one country… an alliance of blood brothers that cannot be disbanded.” Darawshe even recalled how he met “Lebanese who are content that the Syrian army is in Lebanon and say that it is a calming influence that brings internal peace and economic prosperity.”33
At the end of 1997, Azmi Bishara, a self-proclaimed “humanist” and champion of pluralism, democracy, and freedom, also enjoyed Assad’s hospitality during a week-long visit to Syria. The visit had an official air: Bishara was met at the airport by the government’s chief of protocol and taken by limousine to an exclusive hotel. He held discussions with Syrian leaders, including Vice President Abdul Halim Haddam and Foreign Minister Farouk Al-Shara. Bishara had no difficulty identifying with the Syrian government’s attitude towards Israel, as he later told the Tel Aviv weekly Ha’ir:
Haddam’s review of the Israel-Syria situation completely matched what I already thought before meeting him…. When I sit down with Haddam, I am no less an Arab than he is. I have a different background and perspective, and my own very intensive life within the Israeli experience, but I in no way represent the Israeli side when I am with him and have no interest in doing so. Perhaps I could try to explain that side, but I certainly could not represent it.34
When asked if the Syrians showed any understanding of Israel’s fears that if Syria were to return to the Golan Heights, the Galilee might be vulnerable to shelling as it was prior to 1967, Bishara answered: “It is a little hard for me to look for understanding on their part or to explain a fear which I personally do not share. I think that this fear is the product of a deliberate effort on the part of the [Israeli] Right to play on the ghettoization of Israel.” It is the Syrians who fear Israel, he explained, since it is their land that has been occupied. Israel is the nuclear power that “went over the heads” of the Syrians and entered into a strategic pact with Turkey. Bishara himself expressed belief in Syria’s peaceful intentions: The Syrians “are not looking for war,” and their views were presented to him “in a rational, logical, moderate way.”35
On his second visit to Syria, in the summer of 2001, Bishara was again accorded a state welcome, and even held a two-hour meeting with the new president, Bashar Assad. Bishara later reported that he and the Syrian leader were of one mind concerning the conditions necessary for agreement between the two countries. “He cannot give up one inch of the Golan Heights,” Bishara said, adding that “such a concession would be madness from the point of view of his moral and substantive legitimacy in Syrian society.”36
Bishara, moreover, feels no need to justify the apparent contradiction between his adamant calls for liberal reforms in Israel and his open sympathy for the Syrian regime. During his first visit to Syria, his only criticism of that government’s brutal practices was that “They are certainly not my cup of tea.”37 After meeting with Bashar Assad during his second visit, he explained that the new president of Syria was not “a liberal democrat in the Western mold…. Bashar does not believe that liberal democracy is an option for Syria at the present time…. [Democratization in the West] is a process that took several hundred years.”38 It is worth noting the contrast between Bishara’s lukewarm criticism of Syria and the concrete call for democratic reform that was published in 2001 by a number of Syrian intellectuals. In an interview on the Lebanese television channel LBC, Bishara mocked their efforts—triggering a sharp response from the reform-minded Syrians. One of them, Subhi Hadidi, described Bishara as “the Syrian information minister” and assailed him for supporting the oppression of Syrians while he benefits from the open society in Israel. “How, in the name of Allah, can he be patronizing to his Syrian brothers who are demanding the rights that he enjoys in Palestine, courtesy of his Zionist enemy?”39
Nor is Assad the only despot to enjoy the public admiration of Arab MKs. During and after the Gulf War, several of them showed sympathy for Saddam Hussein’s objectives, if not always full support for his actions. In an interview he gave to the Hadash party newspaper, Al Itihad, on the day after Iraqi Scud missiles hit Israeli cities in January 1991, Hashem Mahameed declared that by invading Kuwait, Hussein had restored the glory of the Muslim tradition to the Arab nation.40 Prior to the start of the Gulf War, Ahmed Tibi offered an explanation for this pro-Iraqi mood:
There is more sympathy among Israeli Arabs for Iraq than for other Gulf states. Saddam is seen as a courageous man who can stand up to the United States, which in our eyes was always the most consistently anti-Arab power and has granted approval and provided political, military, and economic backing for [Israel’s] occupation of the territories. Second, there is no love lost between Arabs in Israel and the corrupt oil princes. Third, even we, the Arabs of this country, would like to see a strong military force… with bargaining power against the U.S.-Israel axis.
Tibi went on to say that “in no way does this mean we would call on Saddam to launch missiles with chemical warheads at Tel Aviv.” But this reservation, he explained, was not due to any fear that Arabs might be hurt alongside Jews, but because no “serious person” in the Arab world considers the destruction of Israel to be a practical option: “There are also Arabs who do not want to destroy Israel, not because it is illegal or inhuman, but because it is unrealistic.”41
Occasionally, the solidarity with Israel’s enemies shown by Arab members of Knesset goes so far as to include encouragement for continuing the armed struggle against the Jewish state. In a response to Hezbollah attacks after the IDF pullout from Lebanon in late May 2000, Israel bombed a Syrian radar installation, killing three Syrian soldiers. United Arab List leader Abdulmalik Dehamshe lost no time in sending a telegram offering condolences to the Syrian president on the “martyrdom” of three “sons of Syria… during a criminal attack by Israel’s fascist government… that is bent on war and refuses to take the road to peace.” The attack, he wrote, “shows the need for Arabs to close ranks and put an end to Israel’s extreme actions.” He even referred to the place from which the telegram was sent as “Nazareth, Palestine 1948” and signed it “in the name of our people, ‘the inside Arabs’ of 1948.” Dehamshe also sent a telegram to the king of Jordan asking him to cancel the proposed visit of the Jordanian foreign minister to Israel as a means of protesting the attack on Syria.42
Again, it is important to emphasize that the solidarity shown by Arab MKs for groups and regimes engaged in armed struggle against Israel is not limited to a rejection of the 1967 “occupation” or of Israel’s presence in Lebanon. Hezbollah maintains its commitment to its struggle against Israel even though Israel withdrew from Lebanon; the leaders of most Palestinian terror organizations, Islamic as well as secular—including Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine—openly advocate armed opposition to Israel regardless of any concessions the Jewish state might make regarding the West Bank or Gaza; likewise, at no time has Saddam Hussein distinguished between the “Zionist occupation” of 1948 and that of 1967. Arab MKs’ identification with the PLO dates back to well before that organization officially recognized Israel in 1993, to a time when the PLO’s stated aim was the destruction of Israel, and it has not wavered even since the Palestinians launched the current war in September 2000 and rejected Israel’s offers at Camp David and Taba to satisfy almost all of their territorial demands. Moreover, the fact that Arab MKs regularly support individuals and organizations whose ideology is far removed from their own strengthens the conclusion that at the root of this solidarity stands no common ideological or political vision other than their commitment to undermine the foundations of the Jewish state. To this end, even Christians, Marxists, and Islamic radicals are prepared to work hand-in-hand; even self-proclaimed liberals and humanists are willing to ally themselves with tyranny.
IV
The support Arab members of Knesset have shown for the struggle against Israel has often included expressions of understanding for, or even identification with, violent acts committed against Israel, including those that are unmistakably terrorist in nature. Arab MKs have repeatedly encouraged Palestinian violence against Israel through veiled statements of support or even explicit calls to carry out terrorist acts. In a speech delivered in Gaza during a visit of Israeli Arab representatives in 1992, Hashem Mahameed called upon the Palestinian people “to use all means in the fight against oppression and occupation—stones are not enough, Intifada is not enough.”43 A month after the Palestinians launched the current campaign of violence in September 2000, Hadash leader Muhammad Barakeh told students at Bir Zeit University that “we welcome and applaud this Intifada and believe it is the right response at the right time.…”44
Abdulmalik Dehamshe has been particularly consistent in his glorification of violent struggle against Israel. During a 1997 visit to Syria, he announced that “the Arab nation will win by the sword on its way to the honor that it longs for and to victory, and we will return to our homeland with our head held high. The victory will come thanks to the Arab nation’s jihad.”45 In July 2000, when he visited the Al Aksa mosque on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem at the invitation of the PA-appointed Mufti of Jerusalem, Dehamshe declared that he was ready to be “leading the martyrs in the defense of Al Aksa.”46 Two weeks before the outbreak of rioting by Arab citizens of Israel in October 2000, he attended a meeting of the Supreme Monitoring Committee of the Israeli Arab leadership and openly advocated violence against police officers carrying out their duties: “We will break the arms and legs of any policeman who destroys an Arab house. The Arab public is going through a difficult period. We are on the verge of a new, massive, and popular Intifada of Israeli Arabs.”47
In an interview he gave after the Palestinian Authority’s violent campaign began in September 2000, Dehamshe described the new reality created by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s visit to the Temple Mount, which Palestinians cite as the trigger for the current violence. “This is a war that every Muslim will take part in. There is no Green Line at Al Aksa; it will be continued throughout the entire State of Israel.”48 About a year later, he again spoke of his willingness to be a martyr: “I am prepared to be a martyr in the defense of the Al Aksa mosque and the sanctuaries of Islam against anyone who tries to harm them.”49 Next to the Sarafand mosque near Caesarea, which according to Palestinians was destroyed by Jews, he promised that the structure would be rebuilt “even if blood is spilled.” Similarly, he is quoted as contending that the only way to deal with the expropriation of land from Arabs is through sacrifice and bloodshed: “Only martyrs will stop this process. The time has come to fight with all our might, and if this means blood will be spilled, so be it…. Only through combat can we stop the expropriations.”50
While Arab MKs normally avoid explicit support for violence against Israelis, preferring instead transparent innuendoes well-understood by their constituents (primarily in order to avoid Knesset censure or possible criminal charges), unambiguous support for terrorist activities is not entirely absent. Consider, for example, a statement by Taleb El-Sana in an August 2001 interview for Abu Dhabi television, concerning a shooting attack in the center of Tel Aviv:
This is a case of an act of special quality, in the sense that it was targeted not against civilians but against soldiers in the heart of the State of Israel. Israelis have to understand that if there is no security for Palestinians, there will be no security for Israelis either. Just as they [i.e., the IDF] reach Nablus, so the Palestinians reach Tel Aviv.
He added that “there is no cause here for guilt feelings; we shall not apologize for it. This is a legitimate struggle of the first order for the Palestinians, and it was carried out against soldiers and not against women and children.”51
Indeed, the idea that certain types of Israelis—settlers or soldiers—are fair game for terrorist groups is frequently advanced by Arab MKs. When Saleh Saleem (Hadash) was asked in 1998 about his attitude towards the Hamas squads that kill Israeli soldiers in ambushes, he answered: “Every person has the right to act in occupied territory against soldiers who are abusing the population. The Palestinian people has suffered greatly. Every occupied people has acted in the same way.” Nor does Saleem have any particular sympathy for the loss of life among the Jewish families living across the Green Line; in his view, the Jews in Hebron “are neither citizens nor soldiers; they are mosquitoes.”52 In an interview, Hashem Mahameed explained why he would not protest if Palestinians attacked a settlers’ bus in the occupied areas, even if there were children aboard: “If a child rides a settlers’ bus or [a bus] with armed occupation soldiers, do you really expect them not to be attacked because of one child who might be sitting with them and who might be hurt?”53
Even when MKs are pressured into denouncing an attack on Israelis, their criticism is frequently forced or accompanied by explanations that place the real onus on Israel by ascribing to it acts of terror of a more extensive and severe nature. In an interview in 1999, Dehamshe said the Palestinian suicide bombers “were compelled to blow themselves up” because the settlers were killing Palestinians.54 Referring to Hezbollah attacks in northern Israel, Hashem Mahameed said he had no wish to see Jewish civilians killed by bombs launched by the Shi’ite organization, but added immediately that Israel bears responsibility for the casualties since Hezbollah’s attacks are a result of Israeli policies, because those attacks would not have occurred if there were peace.55 Similarly, Ahmed Tibi blamed Israel for the kidnapping of three Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah in September 2000 since, he said, Israel invented the practice of abduction in the first place. “The Lebanese resistance was forced to abduct the soldiers,” he told the Kul al-Arab newspaper in May 2001, “in light of the mindset of the Israeli leadership and its stupidity.”56 Muhammad Barakeh offered a similar opinion in an interview in the Jerusalem weekly Kol Ha’ir in October of last year:
I think that Hassan Nasrallah and Lebanese nationalism—that is, the Hezbollah and others—did what they were entitled to do and had to do: To take action to drive out the Israeli occupiers…. To resist the occupation, they were forced to kidnap three soldiers after the Israelis kidnapped several Hezbollah leaders…. Israel kidnapped [Mustafa] Dirani and [Sheikh Abd al-Karim] Obeid and thereby behaved like the Mafia and not like a state…. The behavior of the Israeli establishment was what led to the kidnapping of the soldiers.57
However, the Arab MKs save the brunt of their contempt for those Arabs who choose to assist Israel—Israeli Arabs serving in the IDF, Palestinians providing Israel with information on terrorist groups in the territories, soldiers in the South Lebanese Army, Arabs who sell land to Jews, and others. These they label as traitors to their people, who may be legitimately killed. During a tour of the Old City of Jerusalem by the Knesset Internal Affairs Committee in August 1998, Saleh Saleem, then Hadash faction chairman and deputy speaker of the Knesset, expressed his opinion about Arabs who sell land to Jews. “I am surprised at the Palestinians for putting an end to their policy of assassinating Arab land dealers who betray their people,” he said. “They should be ‘taken out,’ turned into hamburger meat.” In an interview with an Israeli Arab newspaper, he added that these “traitors” belong in the trash dump at Ramat Hovav.58 Similarly, Muhammad Barakeh told Kol Ha’ir in October 2001 that he was certainly “against the death penalty anywhere,” but then added that “there is no doubt that the collaborators are one of the worst infected abscesses of Palestinian society…. [The Palestinian people] cannot tolerate subhuman creatures in their midst, who are in the service of those who starve, oppress, and occupy.”59 Hashem Mahameed recalled his reaction to a murder committed in Umm el-Fahm while he served as the city’s mayor:
I saw a man lying dead on the floor and asked what happened. They told me: It is a collaborator. I will be frank with you—I felt nothing for him. His blood is worthless…. I sat down and drank coffee…. If somebody else had been killed, I might have fasted for a whole day, because I cannot eat when someone has died. But this simply did not move me. These men worked against the interests of their own people.60
In general, Arab members of Knesset do not view as legitimate any assistance given to the Israeli authorities by Arab citizens, even when that assistance is required to prevent acts of terror against civilians in Israeli population centers. The charge of treason they level at any Arab who works against those fighting Israel is as uncompromising as their support for this struggle is enthusiastic.
V
The prevailing consensus among the current generation of Arab political leaders in Israel negates the Jewish state and accords broad legitimacy to the struggle against it. A number of reasons may be cited to explain the change that came to pass in the last two decades: The improvement in economic and educational standards for Israeli Arabs gradually reduced their sense of helplessness vis-a-vis the Jewish majority; the freedom of movement across what had been an international border prior to the Six Day War helped foster a sense of fraternity with the Palestinians in the territories and rekindled powerful national sentiments; and the setbacks Israel suffered from time to time in its ongoing conflict with its enemies provided encouragement that the Jewish state was not invincible. Ahmed Tibi’s description of his response to the news that the Egyptian army had crossed the Suez Canal in 1973 offers a telling example:
To hear that any Arab has succeeded in breaking out of the bubble of defeat, and that an Arab flag was flying over liberated Arab land, was a source of pride…. I have no doubt that this was the overall feeling of the Arabs in Israel. Anyone who says otherwise is being misleading and not telling the truth…. I am certain that at least some Arabs… hoped to humble the Israeli arrogance…. When you hope the Egyptians will conquer Sinai and the Syrians the Golan, it is clear what the results will be.61
The sense of pride Tibi describes has grown whenever Israel has been put on the defensive: During the Yom Kippur War and its aftermath; the energy crisis and Israel’s international isolation during the 1970s; the internal crisis that developed in the wake of Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982; the frustration caused by Israel’s inability to deal with the Intifada when it first broke out in late 1987; and culminating in the revolutionary change of Israeli policies in the 1993 Oslo accords, the creation of the Palestinian Authority, and the dependence of the Rabin government on Arab MKs to sustain its parliamentary majority. These events played a considerable role in shaping the attitudes of the new generation of Arab leaders in Israel, and in creating the model of a political leader who would truly represent them: An MK whose self-confidence (and parliamentary immunity) enabled him to challenge the foundations upon which the country had been established.
Paradoxically, the greatest shift in the attitudes of Arab leaders in Israel happened in the 1990s, at a time when the Arab population was making its most significant advances towards integration into Israeli society, on both the symbolic and substantive levels: It was during this time, for example, that government child allowances, originally reserved for families of IDF veterans (and subsequently extended, in other ways, to the haredi population that does not serve in the army) were extended to the Arab sector; the Arab population benefited substantially from the National Health Law, which extended health-care benefits to all citizens while placing the principal burden—billions of shekels’ worth—on Jewish taxpayers; and the High Court issued its landmark ruling regarding the community of Katzir, which for the first time undermined the legitimacy of establishing exclusively Jewish communities.62 These changes, and others like them, clearly did not presume to resolve all Arab grievances, to eliminate the economic disparity between Arabs and Jews, or to undo the preferential status accorded to the Jewish collective. But they reflected an unprecedented willingness on the part of the Israeli authorities to recognize the needs and sensitivities of the Arab community, to the extent of challenging some of the basic elements in the character of the state. Just when the Arabs’ struggle for equality was beginning to bear real fruit, the change of course by their political leadership has made it clear to the Jewish majority that the national struggle, rather than civic equality, is their main priority. Indeed, no one aspiring to leadership of the Arab community in Israel can hope to win public support without placing the struggle against the Jewish state at the forefront of his agenda.
Yet there is at least one outstanding counterexample, offering an alternative model of leadership for the Arab community. Nawaf Mazalha of the Labor Party, a former deputy speaker of the Knesset, deputy health minister (in the Rabin government), and deputy foreign minister (in the government of Ehud Barak), has dedicated his parliamentary career to the struggle for the protection of the Arab minority’s rights. Despite holding political views that differ greatly from those acceptable to the Jewish majority,63 Mazalha has refrained from denying the legitimacy of the Jewish state and has offered a more balanced picture of the situation of Arab citizens.While he works to end the discrimination faced by Arabs in Israel, he does not advocate forcing the Jewish majority to make radical changes in the basic nature of the country. “I know exactly how to make headlines that will make me a hero,” he said in an August 1999 interview, “but that does not interest me. I really do believe in compromise.”64 Even though he has mixed feelings about Israeli policies, Mazalha refuses to identify with those Arab MKs who support Israel’s enemies:
I am totally against appearing as if we prefer to identify with the Hezbollah, or even with the PLO, more than with our own Israeliness…. They [the Arabs] are my peoples, and I love them, but I do not want to tie our fate to that of Syria or anyone else. I will not hate the Syrians, and when [Attorney General] Elyakim Rubinstein calls Syria an “enemy state,” I have to laugh. Nasrallah is an enemy of the State of Israel, but not my enemy. On the other hand, [while] I can support Syria’s claims in the Golan, I cannot identify with someone who is an enemy of the state, even though he is not my enemy.65
Mazalha’s position is indeed exceptional among the political leaders of the Arab minority in Israel. Many observers may nonetheless perceive this position as better serving the “true needs” of the Arab community—immeasurably better than the threats most Arab MKs represent to the vital interests of the Jewish majority. Up to this point, one can accept or reject this approach. It becomes problematic, however, when one assumes that these “true needs” also exclusively determine the “real positions” of the Arab population, which are presumably not reflected in the radical policies promoted by their elected representatives. Supporters of the “true needs” theory point to the dependence of the Israeli Arab population on good (or at least tolerable) economic relations with the Jewish majority, and conclude that it is inconceivable that this community would continue over time to support the radical agenda of the Arab MKs. According to this approach, the inflammatory statements of the Arab leadership are merely an unfortunate byproduct of the fierce competition that exists today for the attention of the Arab constituency (as well as the Jewish public), and a provocative means of gaining the widest possible media coverage.
This argument, however, rests on two highly questionable assumptions. One is that there is no substantive link between the positions held by elected representatives and those of their voters, even in a democracy like Israel. Second, it assumes that the position adopted by every community invariably reflects its “true needs” in the long run. Such a concept, of course, is hard to reconcile with a great many instances in history in which individuals and collectives adopted policies that led down a long road to disaster. There is no need to look far for a pertinent example: From the earliest days of the Palestinian national movement in the opening decades of the twentieth century, its leadership adopted a political strategy that led to a long chain of calamities, eventually culminating in the “Catastrophe” (al-nakba) of 1948, in which hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were displaced. At that time, there was no shortage of Palestinian observers who read the political map correctly and foresaw the ruin that their leaders’ strategy—an uncompromising march toward radical goals coupled with a systematic disregard for the balance of power—was likely to bring about. Nonetheless, the knowledge of what was to come, which reached even the upper ranks of the Palestinians’ political leadership, did not elevate to positions of power leaders who were willing to challenge the Palestinian strategy and to confront the public with a compelling argument concerning realistic limits on their national objectives. Nor did the leadership’s miscalculations stem only from the lack of a democratic tradition that might have made leaders more accountable to the people; other undemocratic regimes in the Arab world had the sense to adopt a realistic strategy from the outset (the Hashemite regime in Jordan, for example), or to abandon a radical strategy that led to a dead end (as did Anwar Sadat after succeeding Nasser as president of Egypt).
Likewise, the growing radicalism in the attitudes and rhetoric of the Arab members of Knesset cannot be dismissed as a public relations exercise. It seems more plausible that the leadership is to a significant degree responding to the aspirations of the public it seeks to represent and lead. The political radicalization of the Arab MKs reflects, in all likelihood, changes that have taken place in the Arab-Israeli community over the last several years, particularly among its more educated members. The younger generation has adopted a militant Palestinian national identity and does not shrink from direct confrontation with the Jewish public—as was clearly illustrated by the angry demonstrations by Arab students in the spring of 2000. In an interview appearing in Ma’ariv a few weeks later, three Arab student leaders, all young women in their early twenties, displayed their outright hostility towards Israel, identification with its enemies, and understanding for the terror waged against it. They expressed a complete lack of faith in the institutions of Israeli society, including the universities, the health-care system, and the media, and rejected out of hand any suggestion of community service as an alternative to serving in the army. Most important, however, was their attitude toward the national standing of Jews and Arabs in Israel. Khulood Badawi, head of the Haifa University Arab students’ committee and a local Hadash activist, “informed” the founder of Zionism, Theodor Herzl, that “You do not have, nor did you ever have, a place here. This is my country. It was and it still is. It will never belong to anyone else.” Her deputy on the committee, Adin Hamoud, announced that “As far as I am concerned, Israel is the occupied Palestinian state.” Badawi succinctly summed up the long-term role she sees for the Arab citizens of Israel willing to reject the status quo: “We are a time bomb.”66 These words are part of a new reality in Israeli Arab discourse, in which the all-out rejection of the idea of a state of the Jewish people—which until two decades ago was articulated publicly by only a small group of marginal figures—has become an article of faith among student activists, and a premise that can be gainsaid only at the greatest cost by anyone in a leadership position in the Arab-Israeli community.
One should not underestimate the impact that this escalating radicalization of the Arab leadership has on the Jewish majority’s perception of the Arab minority. For the Jews who constitute this majority, it is hard to tell to what degree the statements of Arab elected officials accurately reflect the “real” views of every individual Arab constituent. Israeli Jews are exposed to a constant flow of increasingly hostile statements by Arab MKs, including the rejection of everything that is dear and vital to the Jewish collective, declarations of support for the enemies of Israel, and sympathy for terror attacks. When combined with other manifestations of Arab radicalization, such as the invective of activist Arab students in the universities, the riots by Arab citizens of Israel in October 2000, and the growing involvement of Israeli Arabs in acts of terror (albeit in small numbers), it becomes difficult to avoid the conclusion that these sentiments are not limited to the elected leadership, but instead reflect a genuine change in attitude on the part of the Arabs of Israel. Public opinion polls give further evidence of the effect this has had, with mistrust of the Arab minority by Israeli Jews reaching record levels.67
Arab MKs, who possess firsthand knowledge of the discourse of the Jewish majority, are aware of the effect their radical statements are having on the country. Yet they persist, even at the cost of widening the social and political chasm dividing Arab and Jew. The Arab public, and particularly the younger elites who will soon assume the mantle of leadership, support this trend and continuously carry it further. Under such circumstances, it is hard to offer an optimistic perspective on Jewish-Arab relations in Israel—regardless of whether the state offers viable solutions for the problems of civic and economic inequality. These issues no longer hold the attention of Arab politicians and their voters; instead, the Arabs of Israel have taken up a set of radical, nationalist demands which the Jewish majority cannot possibly satisfy. Given the ongoing challenges facing the Jewish state, from within and without, the signs are not encouraging for a compromise in the near future.
Dan Schueftan is a Senior Fellow at The Shalem Center and at the National Security Research Center at Haifa University. His most recent book is Disengagement: Israel and the Palestinian Entity (University of Haifa and Zemora Bitan, 1999).
Notes
1. Ma’ariv, June 6, 2000; Ha’aretz,November 13, 2001.
2. Uriya Shavit and Jalal Bana, “Let’s See You Judge Me,” Ha’aretz supplement, July 13, 2001, pp. 18-24. On his return to Israel, Bishara played innocent, saying that his speech called for “the war option to be foiled, not encouraged.” “Resistance,” he said, is not war—but immediately added that he “made no secret of my sympathy for the Intifada.” When asked about his relationships with the Arab dignitaries who had gathered at Kardaha, he replied, “I criticized them for not giving enough support to the Intifada.” Bishara said this in the summer of 2001, when what was called the “Al Aksa Intifada” no longer showed any signs of being a popular revolt, but had already become a broad-based campaign of terror against civilians coupled with guerilla warfare against soldiers, all instigated or encouraged by the Palestinian Authority. Bishara sought to legitimize the struggle against Israel (including its violent methods) by describing the Intifada as a case of “the struggle of the people in the third-world colonies that were liberated from occupation by resistance.” Ma’ariv, June 22, 2001.
3. Ha’aretz,November 13, 2001.
4. Tom Segev, “My Father Didn’t Teach Me to Be a Communist,” Koteret Rashit, December 4, 1985, pp. 23-26, 34.
5. The partnership in the struggle against the Jewish state also explains the swift and easy transition of a person like Abdulmalik Dehamshe, who formed his national views in the communist movement, and went on to become the leader of a radical Islamic movement. The same common denominator also facilitates partnership in the Knesset between the Islamic movement and the communists, to the point that some of their members have merged into a single party.
6. One is reminded of Bernard Lewis’s criticism of the insistence of radical Islamic movements on strict democratic procedures in order to facilitate their political rise to power in Arab states. Lewis argued that this position should come under the banner of “one man, one vote, once.” In the event that such parties gain power, they inevitably prevent every challenger from using the same democratic procedures in an attempt to remove them from office.
7. Polly Kovadla, “I Am the Salt of the Earth,” Al Hasharon, April 9, 1999, pp. 57-59.
8. Amnon Shomron, “Israel Is a Racist Country,” Makor Rishon, weekly journal supplement, April 3, 1998, pp. 12-14.
9. Hadera, September 29, 2000.
10. Shayke Ben-Porat, Conversations With Ahmed Tibi (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1999), p. 136. [Hebrew] Tibi admitted that the demand to replace the national anthem and the flag immediately was a tactical error. See also Kovadla, “I Am the Salt of the Earth,” pp. 57-59.
11. Gidi Weitz, “I’m Not a Politician, I’m a Revolutionary,” Kol Ha’ir, October 5, 2001, pp. 17-21.
12. Michal Kapra, “Why Are You Surprised? I Have Never Concealed My Sympathy for the Intifada,” Ma’ariv,Weekend supplement, June 22, 2001, pp. 12-14.
13. Al Safir, November 21, 2000.
14. Yedi’ot Aharonot Internet site, November 4, 2000. The “Triangle region” refers to the heavily Arab-populated area of north-central Israel, marked by the Arab cities of Tira, Taibe, and Umm el-Fahm.
15. Ma’ariv, June 1, 1999; Ma’ariv, December 17, 2000.
16. From an interview Darawshe gave to a newspaper sponsored by the Palestinian Authority, Al-Hayat al-Jadida, July 16, 1998. Quoted in Avraham Rotem, “Your Own Poor Come First,” Hatzofeh, July 22, 1998, p. 7.
17. From a speech Darawshe gave in 1998 to students at Al-Asra University in Amman. Yedi’ot Aharonot, April 3, 1998.
18. Uzi Benziman, “The Israeli Mind Is Coming Up With Some Bright Ideas,” Ha’aretz, June 12, 1998, p. B3.
19. Ben-Porat, Conversations, p. 137.
20. Ran Adelist, “Ahmed TV,” Ma’ariv, Weekend supplement, April 30, 1999, pp. 52-58, 80; see also Ben-Porat, Conversations, p. 137.
21. Weitz, “I’m Not a Politician.”
22. Ben-Porat, Conversations, pp. 129, 131-133. See also p. 140.
23. Ari Shavit, “Citizen Azmi,” Ha’aretz supplement, May 29, 1998, pp. 18-24.
24. In an interview with Ha’aretz in 1998, Bishara even declared that the basis of Zionism—the Jewish people’s right to self-determination—is invalid, since “I do not recognize the existence of one Jewish people throughout the world. I think that Judaism is a religion and not a nationality, and that the Jewish collective of the world has no national status whatsoever. I do not believe that this collective has the right of self-determination.” Even so, Bishara went on to acknowledge that once an Israeli nationality appeared, it earned the right to self-determination, just like every people: “I have to recognize the fact that Zionism has succeeded in creating a Jewish-Israeli community here, and it now has the right of self-determination. Thus, if Israel did not have the right to exist fifty years ago—and in my opinion it did not—it now has a certain legitimacy that comes from the fact that a Jewish-Israeli nationality was created here based on the Hebrew language.” Shavit, “Citizen Azmi.”
25. The Washington Post, April 26, 2002.
26. Ben Caspit, “Tibi Is Bibi,” Ma’ariv, Friday supplement, November 29, 1996, pp. 2-3.
27. Al-Majalah, September 12, 1989, as quoted in Ha’olam Hazeh, October 4, 1989; Ha’aretz, September 24, 1989.
28. Gal Sharon, “The Arab Population Has Not Become Extremist; It Has Reached the Limits of Its Endurance,” Ha’aretz, October 3, 2000, p. B3.
29. Ben-Porat, Conversations, p. 21.
30. Kalman Libeskind, “He Has Confidence,” Makor Rishon, July 23, 1999, pp. 8-11; Yossi Klein Halevi, “Mr. Security,” The Jerusalem Report, August 16, 1999, pp. 18-20.
31. Ma’ariv, February 21, 1999.
32. Shalom Yerushalmi, “Darawshe’s Back in the Headlines,” Ma’ariv, Friday supplement, August 15, 1997, pp. 8-9.
33. Shomron, “Israel Is a Racist Country.”
34. Aviv Lavi, “Azmi Bishara’s Six Days,” Ha’ir, December 26, 1997, pp. 43-46.
35. Lavi, “Azmi Bishara’s Six Days.”
36. Shavit and Bana, “Let’s See You Judge Me.”
37. Lavi, “Azmi Bishara’s Six Days,” Ha’ir, December 26, 1997.
38. Shavit and Bana, “Let’s See You Judge Me.”
39. Another leader of the movement for liberalization in Syria, Michel Kilo, said that Bishara had “adopted the rhetoric of the Syrian government” when he chose not to criticize the looting, the corruption, or the collapse of social services, education, and law in the country. And a well-known columnist of the Al-Hayat newspaper charged that Bishara was engaged in propaganda, that his ideology was selective, and that his readiness to set the Syrian regime above all criticism made him “more Bashar than Bishara.” The program Bishara took part in was Hiwar al-Umr, which was broadcast on the LBC channel on July 22, 2001. The reaction came in Al Nahar (Lebanon), July 26, 2001.
40. Yerah Tal, “For Western Ears,” Ha’aretz, December 30, 1992, p. B2; Danny Hayman, “Hashem Always,” Kol Ha’emek Vehagalil, January 15, 1993, pp. 10-12.
41. Shalom Yerushalmi, “Looking Both Ways,” Kol Ha’ir, November 23, 1990, pp. 34-35.
42. Aryeh Bender, “In These Words,” Ma’ariv, Today, April 17, 2001, p. 1.
43. Ma’ariv, December 25, 1992.
44. Yedi’ot Aharonot Internet site, November 4, 2000; Yedi’ot Aharonot, November 6, 2000; Ha’aretz, November 5, 2000; Al Itihad, November 6, 2000; November 7, 2000.
45. Sharon, “The Arab Population.”
46. Al Sinara, July 14, 2000.
47. Ma’ariv, September 14, 2000. A few days later, during the demolition of illegally built houses near Carmiel, Dehamshe said: “Before the policeman who comes to demolish my house, threaten my life, uproot me from my land, breaks my arms and legs, I’ll break his arms and legs.” Ha’aretz, September 27, 2000.
48. Sharon, “The Arab Population.”
49. Ma’ariv, September 11, 2001.
50. Ma’ariv, January 11, 2001.
51. Ha’aretz, August 6, 2001.
52. Hatzofeh, November 3, 1998.
53. Kalman Libeskind, “I’m Not Part of a Flock of Sheep,” Makor Rishon, weekly journal supplement, September 24, 1999, pp. 10-15.
54. Makor Rishon, January 22, 1999.
55. Klein Halevi, “Mr. Security.”
56. Kul al-Arab, as quoted in Ma’ariv, May 13, 2001.
57. Weitz, “I’m Not a Politician.”
58. Kul al-Arab, August 7, 1998.
59. Weitz, “I’m Not a Politician.”
60. Libeskind, “I’m Not Part of a Flock of Sheep.” In interviews he gave in January 1993, he still claimed that he “was prepared to save anyone on any side from death” and that he did not discriminate between blood and blood: “I condemn and will [continue to] condemn any murder, any killing of innocent people.” Yitzhak Letz, “Hashem Is Nobody’s Fool,” Kol Haifa, January 1, 1993, pp. 28-29; Al Hamishmar, January 7, 1993.
61. Ben-Porat, Conversations, pp. 44-45.
62. On the other hand, the Supreme Court endorsed the establishment of exclusively Bedouin Arab communities and Jewish haredi communities.
63. Mazalha even announced his resignation from the Labor Party because it had supported cuts in child allowances for citizens who had not served in the IDF.
64. Lili Galili, “Nawaf Mazalha Works from Home,” Ha’aretz, August 20, 1999, p. B4.
65. Lili Galili, “Mazalha Hasn’t Been to See Zimmerman Since October 2000,” Ha’aretz, September 17, 2001, p. B9.
66. Sheri Makover, “We Are a Time Bomb,” Ma’ariv, Weekend supplement, June 23, 2000, pp. 20-28.
67. In a poll conducted by Mina Tzemach shortly after the October 2000 riots, 74 percent of Jews polled defined the behavior of the Arab citizens as “treason.” Yedi’ot Aharonot, Friday supplement, October 6, 2000, pp. 11-12. A March 2002 poll conducted by the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies showed that a year and a half later, mistrust among Jewish Israelis remained very high: 61 percent of Jews reported viewing Israeli Arabs as a “security threat” to the country. Ha’aretz, March 12, 2002.
