"Conventio ad excludendum, Palestinian parties in Israel"

ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK ON POLITICAL PARTIES IN THE MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA. Edited by Francesco Cavatorta, Lise Storm and Valeria Resta Routledge 2021, ISBN: 978-0-367-21986-4 Chapter 16 (pp.205-216) “CONVENTIO AD EXCLUDENDUM” Palestinian parties in Israel Isaías Barreñada Introduction Since the 1990s, the Palestinian population in Israel has become increasingly prominent, not only domestically, but also regionally and internationally. While its existence was a matter of common knowledge, the research focus on it was peripheral to both the Palestinian question and to Israeli politics. However, the political and social dynamics of the Palestinian minority, the failure of the Oslo peace process, and the conservative, nationalist drift in Israel have all drawn particular attention to this group over the last three decades. The analysis of Arab/Palestinian political parties in Israel is usually included in the group of countries with a competitive democratic framework. However, this categorisation can be problematic, because Israel is not a conventional democracy. After seven decades of existence, the Israel still possesses a wealth of anomalies. Since its original conception, the aim of political Zionism has been to establish a state for the Jewish nation that would be accepted and participate in the concert of nations like the other nation-states. Its colonial origins though produced a unique state, whose legitimacy has always been challenged and was, in the end, rejected by the majority of its neighbours. Indeed, the question of international normalisation is still unresolved. The country’s domestic situation is equally anomalous; while Israel set itself up as a liberal democracy, its ethno-national origins, its practices of segregation and discrimination, and the permanent unrest have turned the supposed ‘only democracy in the Middle East’ into an ethnic democracy. Israel has a democratic regime for the Jewish population that does not apply in toto to the non-Jewish population, which is an obvious contradiction because there cannot be a selective democracy for part of the population. Moreover, for the last two decades, the Israeli political system has been in a state of tumult. Since the early 2000s, the traditional large parties have been losing influence, its national legislature – the Knesset – has become increasingly fragmented, and the volatility of government coalitions has intensified. In this context, Arab political parties have emerged on the parliamentary scene, becoming the third-largest political group. However, instead of resulting in their normalisation, this success has exacerbated tensions between the Zionist parties and the Arab minority, reinforcing the determination to exclude Arab parties from any political agreement or coalition with Zionist parties, revealing the limits of the Israeli democratic system. The result is a Middle Eastern version of the ‘conventio ad excludendum’ (‘agreement to exclude’), a Latin formula that designates an explicit or tacit agreement made between some political parties, social forces, and economic interests to exclude a specific third party from government alliances, participation, or collaboration. The term was originally coined to describe the efforts made to keep the Communist Party from joining the post-World War II Italian national government despite its electoral strength. Palestinians with Israeli citizenship are the main non-Jewish community in Israel. They are the descendants of the indigenous Arab population before the creation of the State of Israel who, due to different circumstances, were not expelled during the ethnic cleansing of 1948–1949. At the end of the conflict, some 158,000 Arabs were still living in the State of Israel, 15 per cent of the population of the recently established country. The Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel, approved in May 1948, guaranteed civil, political, and cultural rights to this non-Jewish population. Consequently, they became Israeli citizens and, as such, were integrated into the political life of the country, with the possibility of organising, participating in elections, and entering elected institutions. According to official Israeli statistics, at the end of 2018, the Arab population was estimated at 1,878,400, representing 20.9 per cent of the country’s population (CBS 2019). However, this minority has always been a foreign body in Israel despite enjoying full citizenship rights because it does not share its foundational ethos and is generally not recognised in the national project. This group is the remnant of a pre-existing Palestinian Arab reality and a permanent reminder of how the state was established, through colonialism, ethnic cleansing, and dispossession. Moreover, for many in Israel this group has always been an extension of the Arab enemy at home, a potential fifth column. For that reason, the Arab population, which is currently segregated into more than 100 Arab towns and Arab neighbourhoods in a dozen mixed cities, was first subjected to an emergency regime (the military government) between 1949 and 1966, which allowed the authorities to establish a system of control using surveillance, co-optation, and division. During this period, the foundations were laid for a reality that continues today: a security first approach to the minority and a subaltern, discriminating status that corresponds to second-class citizenship. In a country that has boasted of having given birth to a new Israeli Jewish society – the melting pot of numerous cultures and diaspora identities – the Palestinians are the main non-Jewish ethnic minority and, therefore, do not share in this new society. They are the indigenous people in a colonial state that has perpetuated exclusionary practices and treats the original population differently. This dimension of the Israeli-Palestinian question has been the focus of attention from early on, but in the 1990s, the number of studies increased and began to focus on a variety of facets of the Palestinian reality in Israel. Particularly important in this body of work are political science studies (Ghanem 2001, Jamal 2011, Neuberger 1998, Rekhess 1998, Rouhana 1997, White 2011, Zeedan 2019). This interest is related to one inescapable reality: the particular political participation of a subaltern national minority in a formally democratic system. Broadly speaking, the characteristics of Israel’s political system have both facilitated and constrained the development of the party structures. A series of developments have shaped the parties’ policy frameworks. First is the freedom to create political organisations. Under the post-1948 military control, Arabs could not create really autonomous national or ethnic organisations. Mapai – the hegemonic social democratic – generally oversaw Arab lists for the elections. Another option available to Arab militants and voters was to partner with a ‘refuge party’ like the communists or vote for Jewish lists. In the 1980s, increasingly autonomous organisations began to appear and a decade later, the three main groups in the Arab political arena took shape. In short, there is today freedom of political organisation, as long as the legal framework is respected, namely the use of the peaceful means and, more controversially, recognition of the Jewish state. Second is the possibility of competing in electoral processes. Both locally and nationally, Arab parties are guaranteed the right to participate in open, competitive elections. However, some extreme-Right Jewish political parties have made repeated attempts to exclude them. Third is the electoral system for parliamentary representation. Israel has pure proportional representation in a single constituency, which facilitates the parliamentary representation of small groups, but also encourages considerable fragmentation. The system, which was designed to foster inclusion and the participation of the different Jewish actors in the process of state-building, has also benefited the Arabs, who have always enjoyed e parliamentary representation. However, over time, the system has produced high fragmentation with quite volatile coalitions and chronically unstable governments that often do not finish the parliamentary term. Over the years, mitigation mechanisms have been introduced, such as the adoption of a minimum threshold – 3.25 per cent (since 2014) – that reduces the possibility of parliamentary representation despite its proportionality. This threshold affects in particular parties with a restricted electoral and social base and forces the establishment of pre-electoral alliances and joint lists. This is especially true for the Palestinian parties. In such a proportional system, the Palestinian community, which comprises around 14 per cent of the electorate, could be an important actor if its electoral behaviour were homogeneous. This has not always been the case. Historically, Palestinians have voted for very different parties and, as a result, their presence in the Knesset has lacked clout. However, the main problem in the Israeli political system is the problematic relationship between ethnic nationalism and democracy, a combination of democratic institutions and procedures with institutionalised ethnic domination that gives rise to exclusionary practices. Smooha (1997) developed the concept of ‘ethnic democracy’ and catalogued Israel as the archetype. It follows that the Arab minority enjoys civil rights and citizenship, but within a system of domination. Other authors have gone further, calling Israel an ‘ethnocracy’ (Ghanem and Khatib 2017, Yiftachel 2006), in which one ethnic group dominates and controls the rest of the population, with implications for structural violence and the violation of fundamental rights. Accordingly, Israel cannot be qualified as a liberal democracy. The efforts to assert and consolidate the Jewish character of the state both affects and deteriorates its democratic nature in addition to limiting the exercise of citizenship. The categorisation of Israel as a non-liberal democracy, an ‘ethnic democracy’, or an ‘ethnocracy’ is essentially due to the status of its Palestinian Arab minority, whose demands have become not only an existential threat to the national state project, but also a security issue. This debate began to intensify in 2000, and escalated after 2009 with the successive governments of Benjamin Netanyahu in coalition with ultraconservative, ultranationalist, and religious groups, under whom the country’s political system has taken an illiberal turn. The Palestinian political parties in Israel During the first three decades (1949–the late 1970s) the consequences of the Nakba structured the Arab minority’s political scene. Although they were citizens with political rights, the military government prevented the setting up of autonomous political organisations. However, because of their electoral weight, there was competition for their vote and their participation was encouraged. At that time, they had three main electoral options: choosing the pro-Mapai (Labour) Arab lists, voting for the Zionist lists, or supporting the mixed Israeli Communist Party as a ‘refuge party’. Strictly speaking, the parties presented as Arab were not really independent or were, in fact, Jewish-Arab organisations. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, an important change took place in the Arab political arena due to a number of factors: the lifting of the military government in 1966; a process of Palestinian re-identification beginning in 1967; the adoption of a confrontational strategy by communists with the creation of the far-Left political coalition Hadash and greater emphasis on its Arab-majority status; the loss of Mapai’s hegemony in 1977 and the disbandment of like-minded Arab lists; and the appearance of a new generation of leaders, Hebraicised Palestinians with a higher education level and without the burden of the Nakba. In the early 1980s, new mixed political parties appeared that had a strong Arab presence. In 1984, the Progressive List for Peace (PLP) was created, an Arab-Jewish party led by Mohammed Miari and Mattityahu Peled. The party had a token representation in the Knesset between 1984 and 1992, openly calling for an agenda of social justice for the minority and the need for a peace agreement between Israel and the PLO. In 1988, the then Labour deputy Abdulwahab Darawshe created the Arab Democratic Party (al-Hizb al-Dimuqrati al-Arabi, commonly known as Mada), which openly defined itself as Arab. As an independent party, it won one and two seats in the following parliamentary terms (1988–1996). It is during this second period that the formation of the three political families that are most representative of the Arab camp and that still exist today occurred: the secular Hadash front; the conservative Islamic Movement; and Balad, an anti-Zionist Palestinian nationalist party. Hadash (acronym of the Democratic Front for Peace and Equality, al-Jabha adDimuqratiyah Lis-Salam wal Musawah, which also means ‘new’) was created in 1977 after the traumatic Land Day in March 1976 (a state plan to expropriate land). The front is organised around Rakah (communist) and has included non-communist Arab and Jewish groups and social movements. It took the lead in articulating the new political slogan of the minority – ‘peace and equality’ – combining a pacifist commitment with social demands. Formally, it is a Jewish-Arab organisation like the communist party, but its Jewish component is now a small minority and its visibility is greater than its real influence. The front has a Left socialist agenda, prioritising social issues like labour rights and social policy. It is not Zionist and demands the recognition of Palestinians as a national minority. It criticises the occupation, calls for a just peace agreement, and supports the two-state solution. It is the front most open to Jewish-Arab collaboration on progressive politics. It is particularly well established in urban sectors and among minority communities (Christians and Druze). Its electoral base is concentrated in Galilee and the cities, among secular Arabs and the middle class, in addition to a small number of Leftist Jews. Hadash is established throughout the Arab sector and has traditionally received the most votes from Arabs, vying for the top position with the conservative Islamic Movement. Because of its communist tradition, it is the most structured and organised group. It has controlled important Arab municipalities (for instance Nazareth, the largest Palestinian city in Galilee, for several decades) either directly or in alliance with local lists. Hadash has maintained a continuous presence in the Knesset, doing important legislative work. Formally, Hadash does not define itself as an Arab party, but rather as a party that wants to change Israeli society from within. The Islamic Movement (Haraka al-Islamiya, IM) is the main representative of Palestinian political Islam in Israel. Cheikh Abdullah Nimr Darwish created the IM in the early 1980s, and it is a product of the re-establishment of links with the Palestinians of the West Bank. The IM began as a social movement focused on education and social development, promoting the establishment of mosques and cultural centres, combining dawa and community development. In the mid-1980s, when Hamas was emerging in Gaza, it extended its reach and began to be represented in municipal councils. The movement made its first leap into national politics in 1996. The IM was later pivotal in the formation of the United Arab List, or UAL (commonly known in Israel by its Hebrew acronym Ra’am). Since then, the UAL has always maintained a parliamentary presence, competing alone and, occasionally, in alliances. The movement has traditionally had strong support in the Muslim-majority towns and villages in the Triangle and the Negev, controlling cities such as Umm el Fahm, Kafr Qasem and Rahat. It is particularly strong among the Bedouin population. The Islamic Movement is religiously conservative, exemplifying a particular type of Palestinian Islamo-nationalism in Israel. Its main activity is at the municipal level, supported by an extensive structure in many towns. It also resorts to occasional alliances with local candidates or other lists, making it a big tent party. In 1996, the Islamic Movement split into two currents. The reasons were tactical rather than ideological. There were different ideas about the peace process and the two-state solution, but the real divide was the question of whether or not to participate in the elections for the Knesset. While the so-called southern branch of the IM chose to participate in the elections, the northern branch, led by Sheikh Raed Salah – then mayor of Umm el Fahm, the second largest Arab city in Israel – chose to limit itself to the local level and promote social movements with pro-Palestinian and Muslim identity messages, like the defence of Jerusalem. As mentioned though there were also differences regarding the broader Palestinian question. Although the natural counterpart of the southern branch in the occupied Palestinian territories is Hamas, it worked better with the nationalist Fatah, defending the legitimacy of resistance in situations of occupation, but respecting Israeli laws and rules of the game (such as the recognition of Israel) to ensure its survival. In contrast, the northern branch supports Palestinian resistance, Islamic activism, and the non-recognition of Israel. The National Democratic Alliance (NDA), or Balad (Tajammu al-Watani adDimuqrati) was created in 1995 as a secular party supporting a state project for all citizens and the recognition of the national identity of the Palestinian minority. Over time, it has become more Palestinian and Arab nationalist. Its members include activists with a political track record, intellectuals, and representatives of social organisations. The national Palestinian fight is the pillar of the party, and radical mistrust of liberal Zionism and the Zionist Left are important aspects of its stance. The party’s symbols are also the most nationalist; it labels itself as Palestinian and rejects the Jewish nation-state. The NDA participates in national politics to take advantage of the parliamentary arena and not because it aspires to govern. In fact it uses the Knesset as a platform to denounce the state of Israel and its policies. It has, indeed, maintained continuous representation in the Knesset since 1996. Although Balad is the third-largest party in terms of votes and seats, its visibility is greater thanks to its widely shared positions on the legitimacy of resistance and the criticism of racism and apartheid in Israel, which has led to clashes with the Zionist Right. Founder Azmi Bishara left the Knesset and went into voluntary exile before an impending trial, while other deputies have been temporarily suspended. These three main parties coexist with other smaller parties, some with significant history. An example is Abnaa el-Balad (Sons of the Country) founded in the late 1960s and related to the PLO revolutionary organizations, but without legal recognition. A very different party is the Arab Movement for Renewal, or Ta’al (al-Haraka al-Arabiya lilTaghyeer). Ahmed Tibi, a politician with close ties to Fatah, created this small party in 1999. Ideologically, the party is Arab nationalist, but above all, Palestinian and a catchall party. Lacking a large social base, it has allied itself indiscriminately with the UAL, Hadash, and Balad, and participated in the recent Joint List with the goal of having Knesset representation. The makeup of the three main Palestinian political parties with continuous representation in the Knesset since the mid-1990s has gone hand-in-hand with the presence of Arab candidates on Zionist party lists who have won seats. Until 1974, the Mapai-Labour Party and Mapam-Meretz usually had an Arab Member of Knesset as a demonstration of their commitment to minority demands. Later, parties of the Right joined in (Likud, Yisrael Beiteinu, Blue and White) and former Druze soldiers in particular became members. Although the Arab vote for Jewish lists has dropped, it continues to be significant (between 15 and 20 percent in the last 15 years) and is proportional to fluctuations in Arab participation. The main Arab parties share a set of positions that distinguish them in Israeli politics. They do not identify with the Zionist project and reject the definition of the state as a Jewish nation-state. They also hold a different position to the Jewish majority on the Palestinian question. They usually agree on the social and economic issues that particularly affect the Arab minority. Their differences have more to do with values and secularism, with the conservative-religious pole clearly opposed to the secularprogressive one. A further difference though is related to the question of Jewish-Arab political cooperation, a debate that goes beyond the parties, affecting social movements as well. Generally speaking, Hadash is more inclined to collaborate, while Balad and Islamists have been reticent or radically opposed. Like the other legal parties in Israel, they benefit from public financing that allows them to run electoral campaigns, pay some of their running costs, and have parliamentary staff. Formally they are not ethnic parties per se, although they are identified as such and their electoral base is ethnic, with the exception of Hadash’s. Their platforms combine community-social, ethnic-national and state issues with the defence of individual and collective rights. In the Knesset, their key areas of action are: constitutionalising substantive national and civic equality, guaranteeing budget allocations for Arab municipalities, ensuring recognition policies, politicising indigeneity, defending the right to self-government, and institutionalising autonomous Arab civic spheres. Additionally, they have articulated a discourse that contains an explicit demand for the recognition of bi-nationalism (Ghanem 2014). In sum, the field of Arab political parties in Israel has historically been characterised by a fragmentation that results in low representation and vote dispersion. For these reasons reason, the joint lists of 2015, September 2019, and March 2020 represented a dramatic turn. The evolution of election behaviour and participation in institutions Estimating representativeness and evaluating the political role of Palestinian parties in Israel is open to very different interpretations. While the parties participate in national and local election campaigns and elected institutions, they do so in very different ways. The municipal level After the creation of the State of Israel, the Arab minority was spatially segregated in more than 100 Arab towns and in Arab neighbourhoods in several mixed cities; a situation that continues today. This has allowed though for a space for Arab municipal and local politics. In Israel, municipalities have very few powers and depend on budgetary allocations from the government. In general, Arab towns have had to deal with considerable problems related to services, restrictive urban management, and budgetary discrimination. Historically, the municipalities were an area of competition for the political parties; Rakah and Hadash had their strongholds in Galilee and the Islamic Movement in the Triangle, competing fiercely for control of the large Arab urban centres of Nazareth, Umm el Fahm, Rahat, and Tayyiba. In some cases, they participated directly, while in others they supported local candidates in sui generis alliances in traditional clientelist and family-based temporary arrangements. Municipalities allow for a form of Arab self-government, organising community life and providing jobs. Turnout in the municipal elections of November 2018 was 85 percent. However, since 1990, there has been a change, with the national parties stepping back and the local lists dominating competitions. In the municipal elections of 2018, mayors from national parties were only elected in four out of the nearly 80 Arab municipalities. This phenomenon also occurs in Jewish towns, but is especially notable among the Arabs. Local politics also reflects social changes among the minority, the renewal of elites, and the emergence of populist expressions, in addition to the parties’ different strategies. The state, parliament, and government In the 23 legislative elections held between 1949 and 2020, their electoral behaviour has varied. Traditionally, Arabs have reasonably high turnout, although usually five to ten points below the national average. Moreover, their vote has been dispersed among several options. This fact, in addition to the lower average age of Arabs, has resulted in a modest parliamentary representation. However, two phenomena characterised the recent Arab vote. First, a change occurred during the Oslo peace process when new parties appeared and Arab identity was reinforced. Since 1996, there has been a significant ethnicisation/nationalization of the vote – a solidification of Arab votes for Arab lists – which grew from 47.4 per cent in 1992 to 65 per cent in 1996, 73 per cent in 2006, 81.9 per cent in 2009, 83.2 per cent in 2015, and more than 85 per cent in 2020. This has translated into an increase in parliamentary representation. At the same time, with the collapse of the peace process and the intensification of intercommunity tensions, there has been an increase in the abstention rate, which rose from 30 per cent in 1992 to 43.7 per cent in 2006 and to 50.8 per cent in April 2019. Since the failure of Oslo, questions regarding the usefulness of voting and participating in institutions have been part of the public Palestinian debate in Israel. As in any country, non-participation has many causes. Some abstention is due to passivity, apathy, and a general lack of interest. However, part of it is due to frustration and mistrust in the system and its institutions. Although the Knesset may serve as a loudspeaker for Arab demands, a conclusion has been reached that the real effectiveness of participation is quite limited and that policies cannot be substantially changed. Political boycotts have become more widespread and, while not new, they are now articulated in campaigns calling for the boycott of parliamentary elections. Participation is condemned for legitimizing a ‘democratic farce’. Moreover, the parties are being radically challenged: the effectiveness of their pragmatism has been called into question, their legitimacy disputed, and their internal operation and dependence on state money questioned. Finally is the issue of unity of action. Historically, the fragmentation of the Arab political field has contributed to vote dispersion and low representation. Since the 1990s, electoral alliances have been common, but have also been very volatile. The creation of an Arab joint list in 2015 is not the result of a desire for unity of action or a political culture of compromise, but a reaction to external events, namely the electoral threshold and the threat that groups would disappear if fragmentation continued. To a large extent, this explains the internal diversity in the Arab bloc in the Knesset since 2015, along with the frequent disagreements and dissonant positions between its members. The 2015 and 2019–2020 legislative elections are illustrative of the current role and significance of the Palestinian parties in Israel. In the elections of 17 March 2015, the four principal Arab parties ran on the so-called Joint List (al-Qa’imah al-Mushtarakah) for the first time. This had two results: turnout increased, with the Arab vote going to the Arab list (82 per cent), which, in turn, translated into 13 seats, making the Joint List the third largest political party in the Knesset. The decision was taken to form the electoral alliance in January 2015, after the threshold was raised from 2 to 3.25 per cent. The result was a novel parliamentary bloc, which was ideologically diverse (communists, Islamic conservatives, Palestinian nationalists) and with disparate positions at times. The 20th Knesset had a much more visible and belligerent Arab group, which helped to put the minority question in the public debate. During this parliamentary term, the controversial Nation-State Bill was passed, and the Knesset became the setting for a virulent confrontation between the anti-Arab Zionist Right and the Joint List. The following elections took place in April and September 2019, with a third round being held in March 2020 due to the inability of the parties to form a government. The previous experience brought about an intensification of anti-Arab discourse during the campaigns by the Zionist Right, with attempts for instance to again exclude certain candidates. At the same time, there was a growing divide in the Arab field about the issue of participation; the Popular Campaign to Boycott the Zionist Elections, for instance, questioned the legitimacy of the Knesset and the role Arab political parties play. During the April 2019 elections, the Joint List split and two lists ran: Hadash-Ta’al and UAL-Balad. The results were bad. Turnout decreased to 49 per cent and the parties won only 10 seats, 6 for Hadash -Ta’al and 4 for UAL-Balad. Moreover, in an attempt to cast a useful vote, a portion of the Arab vote switched to the Zionist parties. In the September 2019 elections, the Joint List re-formed in view of the events of April. This led to a ten-point increase in turnout and a return of the Arab vote to the Joint List (82 per cent), which won 13 seats, once again confirming the experience of 2015. When neither Likud nor Blue and White were able to form a governmental majority, the question of whether or not to join forces with the Arabs and, in other words, accept them as legitimate received new visibility. The debate divided the members of the Joint List. While Hadash and Ta’al announced that they were willing to provide outside support to Blue and White leader Benny Gantz to form a government and set conditions for it – a larger budget allocation for Arab towns, the repeal of the Nation-State Bill, and meaningful dialogue with Palestinians – Balad opposed this. In any case Gantz rejected Arab support and, in the end, a new round of elections was called for. The third elections in less than a year took place on 2 March 2020. Palestinian parties once again ran together. During the campaign Netanyahu promised to annex portions of the West Bank and the Trump Plan, which includes the possibility of ceedin gof the Triangle in the framework of a future Israeli-Palestinian agreement, was launched. This favoured the Joint List and results exceeded all expectations: Arab participation reached 64.7 per cent (the highest in 20 years) and the Joint List captured 12.67 per cent of the valid vote and 87.2 per cent of the vote in Arab localities. This translates into 15 seats, four of them assigned to women. The Joint List is again the third political force of the Knesset and a potential essential partner for Gantz to prevail over Netanyahu, but both men preferred a grand coalition to delaing with the Arab parliamentarians. The Palestinian political coalition became the the main opposition force in the Knesset. Several points can be drawn from the 2015 and 2019–2020 elections. First, when there is an Arab joint list, turnout increases, which translates into greater representation. Second, fragmentation in the Arab field contributes to low turnout and the migration of part of the Arab vote to Jewish Zionist lists. Third, abstention can once again become very important and boycott campaigns have an impact. However, the novelty of the Joint List has a significant limit: it continues to be a fragile electoral alliance with internal tensions and a limited shared programme. Table 16.1Evolution of the Arab/Palestinian vote and seats in Israel in the general elections, 1988–2020 1988 1992 1996 1999 2003 2006 2009 2013 2015 2019 2019 2020 General turnout (%) 79,7 77.4 79.3 78.7 67.8 63.2 64.7 67.7 72.3 68.41 69.8 71,5 Arab turnout (%) 74 69.7 77 75 62.3 56.3 53.4 56.5 63.5 49.2 59.2 64,7 Arab vote for Arab 59 47 65 68.6 69.2 71.9 81.9 77.2 83.2 71.6 82.2 >87 41 53 35 31.4 30.8 28.1 18.1 22.8 16.8 28.4 17.8 <13 MK in Arab lists (*) 6 5 9 10 8 10 11 11 13 10 13 15 MK in Zionist lists 3 5 4 4 4 5 3 2 5 3 2 3 lists (%) Arab vote for Zionist lists (%) (*) Includes non-Zionist Jewish deputies from the Hadash list. Source: Israel Central Bureau of Statistics (cbs.gov.il) and the Knesset (knesset.gov.il) Although participation in the elections and the results obtained have given Arabs a continued presence in the Knesset, this does not mean that the situation has been fully normalised. As soon as Arabs achieve positions of power at state level, the limits of participation in the institutions become evident (Ghanem 1997). In the Knesset, Palestinian deputies participate in all the activities. They take part in committees and pressure groups and may even preside over them; they draft and promote legislative initiatives; and they participate in regulatory activities, parliamentary inquiry committees, and are present in some international delegations. They have been members of the Knesset Presidium. They have made a name for themselves in a variety of areas, such as finance, labour, social issues, education, the law, and the environment, especially when these issues directly affect the minority. However, they have always been excluded from security and intelligence committees. Tensions usually arise when topics related to the Palestinian question are put on the table, when the government is censured for violence in the occupation or for military operations, when the Palestinians speak in Arabic, or when the ultra-Right seeks to withdraw immunity from Arab parliamentarians. There is an unwritten rule the Zionist parties share in the Knesset: while it is acceptable to request occasional support from Arabs, they should not participate in debates that deal with ‘national’ (i.e. Jewish) questions, be sought out when the prime minister is nominated, or form a part of any government coalition. This obviously relegates them to a marginal position and highlights the pre-eminence of the principle of national Jewish legitimacy above democracy. In the Israeli parliamentary system, the executive branch emanates from the Knesset, and the extreme fragmentation of the political field, a consequence of the proportional electoral system, always makes it necessary to form coalitions. Government coalitions in Israel are instrumental and temporary alliances; arithmetic is more important than ideological harmony, with Zionism the only accepted point of departure. Arab parties have always been excluded from any coalition and the red line of depending on the Arabs has never been crossed. In 1992, Yitzhak Rabin received the external support of the Arabs and was vilified for accepting it. As noted above, more recently, after the 2019 and 2020 elections, members of the Joint List (with the exception of Balad) announced that they were willing to provide external support to Benny Gantz to prevent a new term for Benjamin Netanyahu, but Gantz preferred ultimately a grand coalition with Netanyahu to avoid it. The pact to exclude Arabs as a foreign body that is legal, but not legitimate, prevails. The Palestinian parties in Israeli and Palestinian politics Palestinian parties in Israel face a twofold challenge. On the one hand, there are Palestinians who oppose participation in elections and, on the other are Zionist institutions. Internal opposition comes, above all, from young people who, while recognising the role parties played in earlier decades, today perceive them as obstacles to new forms of resistance and sumud (steadfastness) (Ali 2017). The Zionist Right, in turn, questions their legitimacy and in some cases openly advocates for the exclusion and expulsion of the Arabs. As political actors, the Arab parties also participate in other fields of collective action in the Arab sector, in trade unionism and in the Arab national umbrella organisation (High Follow-Up Committee for Arab Affairs in Israel). The parties also participate to varying degrees in the mobilisations that take place in the Arab sector: general strikes, demonstrations, days of solidarity with the occupied territories, or national commemorations like Land Day. Although they might not have a central role in the political activities of the Palestinian minority in Israel, they are important actors, because they have visibility and are, as such, the object of attention and recrimination. The institutional and extra-institutional political actions of Arab actors –particularly parties with parliamentary representation – are subject to the social, political, and general ideological context in Israel at any given time. Beginning in 2009, when Benjamin Netanyahu returned to office, there has been a notable turn to the Right that has been confirmed in following elections and translated into an intensification of tensions with the Palestinian minority (Mustafa and Ghanem 2010). In the last decade, Israel has adopted a series of illiberal measures that have seriously affected the democratic quality of the political system and the operation of its institutions, which has been rightly labelled the decline of liberalism or Israel’s democratic corrosion (Feinstein and Ben-Eliezer 2019; Scheindlin 2019). This political shift clearly has a defensive identity component that follows the failed peace agreement, but at the same time, it is the product of the exacerbation of unresolved contradictions in the political system (democratic-Jewish, occupier, liberal, ethnic-exclusionary). Moreover, it has been associated with a true conservative constitutional revolution, which includes the adoption of questionable norms according to conventional liberal democratic standards, while at the same time imposing a trend towards a majority system with clear repercussions for the representation of the Arab minority. The drift to the Right in Israel directly affects the Palestinian Arab minority. After the Second Intifada, a new Zionist hegemony began to form, insisting on the Jewish nature of the state, combined with a widespread feeling of existential threat coming from the Arab minority. Thus, the collective action of Palestinian citizens is increasingly perceived as a challenge to Jewish hegemony (Rubin 2019). The response to this perceived challenge has manifested itself in legislation, public policies, changes in public opinion and public discourse, and, in short, in the redrawing of the boundaries of citizenship for non-Jews. The last ten years have been a true liberticidal decade, with the adoption of laws that affect fundamental rights and weaken the rule of law and the separation of powers. Between 2010 and 2020, more then 20 discriminatory laws or amendments that particularly impact the minority have been discussed or passed. The state’s emphatic affirmation of Zionism since the 1990s illustrates this dynamic and, finally, on July 19, 2018, the Basic Law: Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People was passed. This initiative divided the country’s political spectrum, but the conservative majority triumphed. Palestinians, but by liberals, Leftist Zionists, and even Druze members of the army on the Right fought the controversial law, but were eventually defeated. The law constitutionalises a difference between citizens by recognising only the right of Jews to self-determination, perpetuates a status of oppression and control, entrenches second-class citizenship, and contravenes Israel’s international obligations regarding fundamental rights (Jabareen and Bishara 2019). A further manifestation of the illiberal drift is the expansion and normalisation of discourses of hatred, incitement, and explicit racism on the public and political stage. The deterioration in relations between Jews and Arabs is also a demonstrable fact (Waxman 2012). Parliamentary debates and election campaigns have become an opportunity to show off anti-Arab rhetoric. For the ultra-Right politician Avigdor Lieberman, leader of the Yisrael Beiteinu Party and a cabinet minister several times, Arabs are opposed to the Jewish state, represent an internal threat, and are a hostile element controlled from abroad by Hamas and the PLO. The Likud has picked up this incendiary rhetoric and Netanyahu used the Arabs to frighten the electorate with his slogans ‘It is us or them’ and ‘Bibi or Tibi’. The discourse about the de-Arabisation of Israel, a topic once considered unacceptable, has also been normalised. Today, there is open talk about the desirability of encouraging the emigration of the Arabs or including them in a territory or population exchange or transfer. Since the Oslo process, the question of swapping population has been a recurring theme. In September 2010, then Minister of Foreign Affairs Lieberman proposed a land and population exchange, in which areas with a high concentration of Israeli Palestinians would be exchanged for colonies in the West Bank, the first time a proposal of this nature was expressly put forth by a high government official. In January 2020, the proposal materialised in the so-called Trump peace plan, which included the possibility of ceding the Triangle zone. Recent years have also witnessed an intensification of control measures, especially during military operations against Gaza, when possible protests are expected, as well as restrictions on freedom of expression, demonstrations of Arab culture and religion, and freedom of movement to prevent direct contact between Palestinians in the occupied zones and the ones in Israel. Since 2014, the number of Israeli-Palestinian political prisoners condemned for supporting Palestinian resistance or belonging to illegal organisations has increased to over 200. In the Knesset, this restrictive, confrontational context has materialized in threats to the freedom of expression of Arab members of parliament and the disqualification of draft legislation for political reasons. The bestknown political figures on the Palestinian political scene have been criminalised. In the last ten years, the Knesset has served as the setting for a number of highly tense and verbally violent episodes against the Arab members. Finally, as Palestinian political parties in Israel are also involved in Palestinian politics, this connection is considered disloyalty in Israel. Conclusion Israel’s seven decades of state experience highlight the problematic participation of the Palestinian minority in the Israeli political system. Although its participation is formally accepted, it is both disputed and limited in the end because it takes place in a broad exclusionary structure. A system based on the rule of difference has not only prevented assimilation, but has systematically denied Arabs full civic participation as citizens of Israel (Mehozay 2012). The minority embodies the paradox of democratic exclusion in a strongly divided society. For many authors, this status is related to the nature of settler colonialism and the associated practices of domination and control that remain in Israel, resulting in settler-colonial citizenship (Rouhana and Sabbagh-Khoury 2015). It is not clear whether this status is related to the resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or if it is definitive in a national Jewish state project in the terms established so far. A large part of the Palestinian population has doubts about the possibility of equality and full citizenship for non-Jews in Israel. The Palestinian political parties in Israel are important in the field of collective action, resistance, and multifaceted sumud, which have made it possible to maintain a Palestinian identity and presence inside the country. Local authorities and, above all, the action of a wide range of extra-institutional politics through social movements have complemented parties’ activism. In this respect the counter-hegemonic role played by some actors in civil society has been particularly important. The parties provide some representativeness, give visibility to the demands of the minority, exploit legal and institutional channels, and in some cases can influence decision-making. The Palestinian parties in Israel are de facto national parties, but of an unrecognized national minority. Sadly, the illiberal drift in Israel in the last ten years has entailed greater polarisation between the Jewish majority and the Arab minority. Policies to nationalise the ethnocratic regime have created a shrinking space for the Arab minority citizenry and in this context, demands for recognition and equality become a threat (Ghanem and Khatib 2017). To demand equality endangers the Jewish national project. Not only the extreme Right, but also by broad sectors of liberal and centrist Zionism do not see the Arab parties as legitimate. Repeated opinion surveys show that most Jewish Israelis are not in favour of allowing Arabs to access positions of power or to be included in government coalitions. They accept the self-government of Arabs at local level, within some very specific limits – culture, religion, social services, economics – but they question a more important role at national level. In short, the Palestinian Arab minority, which is increasingly more proactive and visible, personifies the disjunction between the Israeli national discourse and democratic practice. 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