NAZARETH, ISRAEL // The only three Arab parties represented in
the Israeli parliament vowed yesterday to fight a decision by the Central
Elections Committee to bar them from running in next month’s general election.
In an unprecedented move signalling a further breakdown in
Jewish-Arab relations inside Israel, all the main Jewish parties voted on Monday
for the blanket disqualification. Several committee members equated the Arab
parties’ vocal support for the Gazan people with support for terrorism.
The decision follows the arrest of at least 600 Arab
demonstrators since the outbreak of the Gaza offensive and the interrogation by
the secret police of dozens of Arab community leaders. The three parties – the
National Democratic Assembly, the United Arab List and the Renewal Movement –
have seven legislators out of a total of 120 in the Israeli parliament, the
Knesset.
The elections committee barred all three from putting up
candidates for the Feb 10 election on the grounds that they had violated a 2002
law by refusing to recognise Israel as a Jewish state and by supporting a
terrorist organisation.
Ahmed Tibi, the leader of Renewal, denounced the decision as “a
political trial led by a group of fascists and racists who are willing to see
the Knesset without Arabs and want to see the country without Arabs”.
A petition against the disqualification will be heard by a panel
of Supreme Court justices this week.
Hassan Jabareen, the director of the Adalah legal rights group,
which represents the Arab parties, noted that the disqualification motion had
been introduced by far right-wing parties.
Such parties include Yisrael Beiteinu, which campaigns for the
country’s 1.2 million-strong Arab minority to be stripped of citizenship.
“It is absurd that the committee is backing a motion from racist
parties in the Knesset to exclude the Arab parties whose platform is that Israel
must be made into a proper democracy treating all its citizens equally.”
The elections committee is composed of representatives from all
the major parties. Although it has voted for disqualification of Arab candidates
before, it is the first time both that the left-wing Labor Party has backed such
a motion and that all the Arab parties have been included in the ban.
Mr Jabareen accused the right-wing parties of exploiting the war
atmosphere. Labor’s secretary general, Eitan Cabel, called his party’s conduct
in voting for the disqualification “patriotic”.
All the Arab parties have harshly criticised the attack on Gaza.
This week Mr Tibi described Israeli actions as “genocide”, while Ibrahim Sarsour,
of the United Arab List, said Israel was seeking to “eliminate the Palestinian
cause”.
In the past, Arab Knesset members have also upset their Jewish
colleagues by travelling to neighbouring Arab states, defying a change in the
law to prevent such visits.
Following the vote on the ban, Avigdor Lieberman, leader of
Yisrael Beiteinu, suggested his party had additional goals: “The next battle is
making [the National Democratic Assembly] illegal because it is a terrorist
organisation whose objective is harming the state of Israel.”
Mr Lieberman and other legislators have been hounding the NDA for
years, chiefly because it is led by Azmi Bishara, an outspoken proponent of
equal rights for Arab citizens. Israeli secret police forced Mr Bishara into
exile two years ago, accusing him of treason after the 2006 Lebanon war.
During the 2003 election, when the committee barred the NDA and
Mr Tibi from running, the decision was overturned by a majority of the Supreme
Court. But few of the justices from that hearing are still on the bench.
“There are reasons to be fearful,” Mr Jabareen said. “The Supreme
Court is also susceptible to the current war atmosphere and its authority has
been greatly eroded over the past year. It has been forced on to the defensive
over claims from the Right that its decisions support the Left.”
If the ban is upheld, some Arab representation in the Knesset is
likely to continue. The joint Arab and Jewish Communist Party is allowed to
stand, and the three major Jewish parties include one or two Arab candidates on
their lists, though not always in electable positions.
Meanwhile, Israeli police admitted they arrested about 600 people
involved in protests against the Gaza offensive, some of them for
stone-throwing. Adalah lawyers said more than 200 people, most of them Arab,
were still in jail.
“We’re talking about mass arrests,” said Abeer Baker, adding that
Israel was exploiting a 30-day window before an indictment had to be filed to
hold suspects without producing evidence.
In addition, the Shin Bet, Israel’s secretive domestic security
service, has called in dozens of Arab leaders for interrogation. Ameer Makhoul,
head of the Ittijah organisation, which promotes Arab causes in Israel, was
detained last week. He said a security official who interrogated him threatened
to jail him over demonstrations he helped to organise in support of Gaza.
“The officer called me a rebel threatening the security of the
state during time of war and said he would be happy to transfer me to Gaza,” Mr
Makhoul said.
Haaretz, a leftist Israeli daily newspaper,
has called the interrogations “intimidation tactics to prevent legitimate
protest”.
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