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Israeli Elections and Palestinian Citizens with Amjad Iraqi
153 Plays4 years ago
Amjad Iraqi joins host Yara Hawari to discuss the Israeli elections, focusing in particular on the Palestinian citizens of Israel. Iraqi explains the current political deadlock, the history of Palestinian participation in the Knesset, the rise and demise of the Joint List and the curious case of an Islamist party embracing Netanyahu.
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Transcript
Citizenship and Inequality in Israel
00:00:00
Speaker
Citizenship does not imply in any way that they're actually equals. On the contrary, there's a large structure of discriminatory laws and policies that are inherently designed to make Palestinian citizens unequal, and that they are effectively colonial laws that continue to expropriate the lands and properties of Palestinians within the state, and that also applies against their political activism, their political identity, and their history, etc.
Introduction to Rethinking Palestine Podcast
00:00:35
Speaker
This is Rethinking Palestine, a podcast from Ashabaka, the Palestinian Policy Network, a virtual think tank that aims to foster public debate on Palestinian human rights and self-determination. We draw from the vast knowledge and experience of the Palestinian people, whether in Palestine or in exile, to put forward strong and diverse Palestinian policy voices. In this podcast, we will be bringing these voices to you so that you can listen to Palestinians sharing their analysis wherever you are in the world.
Israeli Elections and Netanyahu's Influence
00:01:11
Speaker
In March 2021, Israelis went to the polls to vote in their fourth general election in two years. This seemingly endless cycle of elections and political deadlock has been as a result of a failure by Israeli political leaders to form a coalition government. The most central figure in all of this has been Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister of more than a decade, who admits trying to hold on to his grip on power is also facing serious political corruption charges.
00:01:39
Speaker
Now, a major part of this story, which is routinely overlooked by the mainstream media, is the Palestinian citizens of Israel, who make up about 20% of population in Israel.
Guest Introduction: Amjad Iraqi
00:01:49
Speaker
To discuss all of this and more, I'm joined by Amjad Iraqi, a Shabakah policy member, political commentator and co-editor of 972 magazine.
Right-Wing Politics in Israel
00:02:00
Speaker
Amjad, thank you for joining me on today's episode of Rethinking Palestine. Thanks so much for having me, Euro.
00:02:06
Speaker
So let's start with an overview of what's been going on over the last two years vis-a-vis the Israeli elections. Amjad, can you give us an idea? So in a nutshell, what's been going on over these four elections of the past two years is essentially a battle within the Israeli right wing camp. Just to put this into perspective for our listeners, the right wing in Israel basically makes up the majority of the political spectrum.
00:02:33
Speaker
If you take, for example, the most recent results of the election just a few weeks ago, if you combine, for example, what we define as like anti-Zionist or non-Zionist parties, and also add, quote unquote, Zionist left parties, they essentially make up about a fifth or sixth of the total Knesset. That means everyone else is essentially from the center right to the far right. And this has been the case for
00:03:00
Speaker
I'll be quite a few years. And this has been the defining element of these political battles that are going on within Israel today.
Netanyahu's Alliances and Political Instability
00:03:09
Speaker
Now, the main difference between these parties, especially when it comes to issues of the political questions around Palestinians, is that the main thing that divides them is essentially whether or not they're willing to work with an ally with Benjamin Netanyahu, as you explained. Netanyahu over the past decade has really
00:03:28
Speaker
reshaped Israeli politics to be centrally around him. And so you end up getting a situation whereby right-wingers who basically agree with many of Netanyahu's policies do not want to work with him personally. And the biggest stark example of this is that one of the main challengers to the dominant Likud party, which is called the Blue and Mike Party, led by former Army Chief Benny Gantz,
00:03:51
Speaker
essentially echoed Likud policies in all but name, but they just insisted and almost centered their platform around ousting Netanyahu. But if you even took that out of the equation, they would basically be allies. And in fact, they were allies after the third election of the current four rounds. In reality, what we've seen is that there's no real substantive debate or differences between these right-wingers. It really is centered around the prime minister alone. And this is especially the case if you're thinking about what the Israeli political spectrum believes
00:04:20
Speaker
about Palestinians in the occupied territories, Palestinian citizens of Israel, that they do echo a lot of the same racist rhetoric or the same discriminatory policies, even advocating for annexation. So there isn't really that significant difference between them. That said, what we're seeing is that the ice is very much thinning around Medjabi Netanyahu.
Formation of New Government Coalitions
00:04:41
Speaker
If in the past he could rely on a lot of different groups to essentially swear allegiance to him and ally with him in a coalition, now it's much more uncertain.
00:04:50
Speaker
And this is why we're now in a very fragile political moment whereby if Netanyahu is not able to form a coalition within the coming weeks, then we'll have to see if the sort of the quote unquote anti-Bibi camp, specifically the right wing anti-Bibi camp is able to oust him from a coalition majority. Thank you Anjad for that. So what is the current situation now? We're still waiting for this coalition to be formed. What are the likely possibilities or outcomes?
00:05:20
Speaker
Israeli politics never fails to surprise, and coalition bargaining also never fails to surprise. There have been repeated moments over the past decade whereby political figures and political parties who insisted that they would never ally with Netanyahu end up bending backwards and allying with him. And the most sort of infamous example of this is, of course, Benny Gantz of Blue and White, who literally split his own party in order to ally with Netanyahu, even had the Labour Party, which there was a famous
00:05:50
Speaker
where the head of the party shaved his mustache to promise and pledge that he wouldn't ally with Netanyahu, and in the end he did. So a lot can happen literally within the next few weeks if Netanyahu is able to provide certain kinds of portfolios or convince even people on the Zionist left to essentially ally with him. So it's a very unpredictable situation. The kind of hanging thread right now is that you have these two, quote unquote, king makers that could decide whether a coalition ends up forming.
00:06:19
Speaker
Netanyahu basically has the alliances of the more religious Zionists and Haredi parties. And now he has to either be able to persuade Naftali Bennett of the Amina party, which is also a rather far-right party, to ally with him. And Bennett has also made a case of saying that he didn't want to ally with Netanyahu, but he's certainly not going to ally with Yair Lapid. So that essentially means that he's trying to bargain with Bibi to get a good government portfolio, and that has a chance that it might happen.
00:06:47
Speaker
And the other potential kingmaker, which I think we'll talk about further, is the party led by Mansur Abbas, the Islamist Rahm party, which has also said that it's willing to go between the right and left. But essentially the far right parties are not willing to be in a coalition with the Islamist party. So this is a bit of an unlikely possibility.
History of Palestinians in the Knesset
00:07:08
Speaker
So the best case scenario for Bibi essentially is that he's able to peel off right wingers from the quote unquote anti Bibi camp.
00:07:16
Speaker
This could be Gideon Sa'ar, who's a former Likudnik. This could be Avigdor Lieberman, who really despised Netanyahu, but also echoes a lot of the same policies, yet he has issued the religious parties. So there's a big kaleidoscopic tightrope that's operating, but it's really hard to predict how it will go. But the surprises are always possible.
00:07:39
Speaker
I think we'll unpick a bit later the topic of Mansoor Abbas and his party because it deserves some time on its own. Now, by the time this podcast comes out, we might be closer to a clear outcome. Personally, Netanyahu never fails to surprise me with his remarkable ability to survive against all odds.
00:07:59
Speaker
But I want to pause here a bit and go back in history and ask you, Amjad, what has Palestinian participation in the Knesset been like over the last seven decades? And what have been the key moments? So just to explain to everybody who is less familiar, so about 20 percent of Israel's population today are Palestinian citizens of Israel. Historically, what this meant was obviously, you know, in 1948 with the Nakbe, most Palestinians were either expelled or fled during that time.
00:08:29
Speaker
But there was still, in 1948, about 150,000 Palestinians who were able to remain inside what is today the Israeli border, on sort of the inside of the Green Line, so to speak. The state decided to grant them citizenship, and Palestinian citizens have effectively been given the right to vote since the first elections of, I think it was January 1949. And that voting pattern has continued essentially to this day. Now, of course, citizenship does not imply in any way that they're actually equals.
00:08:58
Speaker
On the contrary, there's a large structure of discriminatory laws and policies that are inherently designed to make Palestinian citizens unequal, and that they are effectively colonial laws that continue to expropriate the lands and properties of Palestinians within the state, and that also applies against their political activism, their political identity, and their history, etc.
Military Rule and Political Representation Limitations
00:09:21
Speaker
Now, in terms of how this is manifested in the Knesset and the Israeli parliament,
00:09:26
Speaker
In the past, especially during the years, from 1948 to 1966, Palestinian citizens were placed under military rule. So the military regime that we are familiar with in the occupied territories, that existed inside the state. And it was a very oppressive, authoritarian regime. Military orders were constantly issued, essentially to restrict political activity, to continue confiscating land, and again, all this operated inside Israel. In terms of voting, at the time, Palestinian citizens couldn't
00:09:56
Speaker
almost effectively weren't allowed to have any kind of national political representation. So the main parties that they would vote for were either what we call like, quote unquote, like Arab satellite parties that were essentially allied with some of the dominant Zionist parties, especially the Mapai party, which is sort of the precursor to today's Labour Party led by Ben Gurion. And the other main camp was actually the Israeli Communist Party, which sort of identified itself as non-Zionist and included both Jews and Arabs
00:10:26
Speaker
And it was actually one of the main sort of political engines for Palestinian activism at the time. Bear in mind, you know, this was a community that was very disillusioned by what had happened in the Naqbi. And due to its fear of what might happen if it did not participate in these elections, there's a sort of bargaining, say that, okay, if we participate in this Israeli system with our right to vote, then we can secure our citizenship, we can secure our existence on this land.
00:10:51
Speaker
And there were a couple of other factors. Some people thought that, you know, this was possibly an exercise in democracy. Some people thought of it more strategically. But these were some of the considerations that led the community to basically agree to being part of that political regime. Now, the Communist Party remained and still is still quite the dominant political force in the Palestinian community here. But another key moment was actually came in the 1960s with what's known as the Other Movement.
00:11:18
Speaker
And this was essentially one of the first manifestations of a Palestinian nationalist political movement that was trying to mobilize the community within the state to reconnect with its Palestinian identity, which had been sort of was being aggressively erased by the Israeli state. A lot called for the idea of like a state for all its citizens or the idea of a state for everybody to exist in with equality.
Evolution of Palestinian Political Identity in Israel
00:11:41
Speaker
And the response by the Israeli authorities was the Israeli defense minister basically banned the movement.
00:11:48
Speaker
And then the Israeli Supreme Court also forbade the movement from running in the Knesset, essentially on the grounds that its stance of trying to demand equality, a state for all its citizens, its passing identity, contradicted the values of the state as like a Jewish, quote unquote, Jewish and democratic state. They saw it as a political threat to the very identity of the Israeli political system.
00:12:12
Speaker
Fast forward a bit, a lot of it eventually kind of died out, but the elements of its identities and its politics persevered in many different respects. And if you fast forward to the 1990s, you had this major political revival among Palestinian citizens. This was under the era of the Oslo Accords. This was at a time where there was a new international language of minority rights and about national minorities.
00:12:35
Speaker
demanding equality. And so you did have in the 90s, these new political parties, these new movements, these new ways of thinking, new artistic endeavors, new cultural manifestations of Palestinian-ness. And this really reshaped a Palestinian political identity to be inside Israel, to be more assertive of its Palestinian-ness while using its Israeli citizenship for strategic purposes. And this is essentially, and what we eventually end up getting was that within the Palestinian political spectrum for the Knesset, you now have today
00:13:05
Speaker
the sort of descendant of the Israeli Communist Party, known as Ajaba or Hadash. This is currently led by Eman Ode. And it still has a communist orientation. You have a party led by Ahmed Tibi, which focuses on the collective rights of Palestinian citizens in general. And then you have the Islamist Ra'am party, which identifies itself as a religious Islamic party, but also deals very much on the collective issues of the community. And then you have the Tajama or Belaad party, which is a more assertive Palestinian nationalist
00:13:34
Speaker
political party, which was formerly led by Hasmeb Shara, which also had a big impact on the political discourse here in Israel. So this is now the kind of general mapping and landscape of the main political parties that we have today.
The Joint List: Challenges and Role
00:13:47
Speaker
Thank you, Amjah. That was incredibly comprehensive. So the development of the joint list was quite a significant phenomenon by becoming the third largest party within Israel. And it forced the Israeli public to acknowledge that the Palestinian community does indeed exist. Can you talk to us a bit more about that? Certainly. Regardless of one thinks of the joint list, the pros and cons of it and their failures and their benefits,
00:14:16
Speaker
It was a very significant moment for the Palestinian community here. It was essentially the first time that all the Palestinian political parties, which have these different ideological streams, united as a single slate and set forward a set of common collective demands. This was a demand very much by the community for years to set this united front. Now to go back down memory lane, this was very much a forced unification. Essentially right-wing parties
00:14:43
Speaker
raised the electoral threshold in Israel from what was then 2% to 3.25%. And though this seems like a bit of a technical detail, it was deliberately designed to try to essentially exclude Arab political parties, which at the time were each getting about between two to four seats in various elections. So it was essentially a smart way to try to exclude them from the parliament. And this was very much promoted, for example, by Avigdor Lieberman, a member of the far-right Yisrael Betenu party,
00:15:11
Speaker
who essentially wants to forcibly transfer Palestinian citizens. And so the party's response to this raising of the threshold was to understand that in order for them to survive in the Knesset, that they had to get together. But even though this was this forced unification, it did fulfill a longstanding community demand. And this was all started in 2015. Now, in the five, six years since its establishment, the Joint List has had quite a significant impact.
00:15:38
Speaker
It was the first time that Palestinian citizens of Israel have one single address. That's not just an MK here and an MK there, but there is a united political party representing the community. It also took much more of a high-profile status compared to another institution called the High Follow-up Committee for Arab Citizens of Israel, which has been a longstanding institution that represents civil society groups, political parties, as well as parties that do not vote for the Knesset,
00:16:05
Speaker
but the High Fault Committee has really reduced in its visibility and impact in the community. So the joint list took this very important space to say that we are the political leadership and that we are uniting the community around the common political agenda, which essentially boils down to national equality for all citizens in the state and inside Israel, and a complete end to the occupation, no questions asked for Palestinians in occupied territories, and finding this balance between asserting their Palestinian identity with utilizing their Israeli citizenship.
00:16:36
Speaker
There's been positive impact, for example, in international advocacy, the way that not just Israelis, but also internationals are now aware that there's such a thing as Palestinian citizens, that for people to hear and listen a political party in Israel, that's not just talking about the idea of a Jewish and democratic state, but that they're asserting themselves as the sole democratic camp in the Israeli political spectrum. The biggest irony of the list was that, you know, that there was only one political camp promoting true equality and end of the occupation.
00:17:05
Speaker
And that political party was led by Palestinians. So that had enormous impact for international understanding. It really shook, I think, much of the Israeli political understanding of Palestinian citizens, you know, even if they disagreed with it. So they forcibly asserted themselves in that respect. But ultimately, the list for all of these kind of added benefits still suffer from a huge amount of flaws and internal issues.
Cooperation Between Palestinian and Zionist Parties
00:17:30
Speaker
And as I'm sure we'll also go into now,
00:17:33
Speaker
this major political project, which was desired, may have come to its rather dreadful end. If you're enjoying this podcast, please visit our website www.al-shabaka.org where you will find more Palestinian policy analysis and where you can join our mailing list and donate to support our work.
00:17:56
Speaker
Something that I find quite ironic about the joint list is that it's essentially become the only alternative the Israeli anti-occupation left, if we can call it that, which I think is quite an interesting development. Now, in the last election round, we saw some developments on the joint list front. Indeed, it was no longer, and there was a split with the United Arab List, the Islamic Party headed by Mansur Abbas, whom we mentioned earlier.
00:18:25
Speaker
We then later saw Mansurah Abbas flirting with Lekrud and Netanyahu, which I think was incredibly odd for a lot of people to see. But is it really that odd? Is it out of character for Mansurah Abbas to do this? Or is it a logical move?
Mansour Abbas's Pragmatic Alliances
00:18:44
Speaker
There will always be something very bizarre about seeing an Arab Islamist being at the center of the
00:18:52
Speaker
political stage of the self-described Jewish state. It will always be very strange. And there's something about that spectacle as well, which makes it very appealing for analysts to talk about it as this like major moment in Israeli history. But I think what you're asking is actually a good question. How different is this exactly?
00:19:11
Speaker
On one level, there's a historical take whereby it's not the first time that Arab political representatives or political parties are sort of opening to dealing with Jewish Zionist parties. And that includes the right wing. I mentioned earlier about the idea of the Arab satellite parties that existed. And though I'm certainly not that, there is something kind of eerie about harkening to those days whereby the identity of the political movement is so enwrapped in the politics of
00:19:41
Speaker
of the Jewish state and of Jewish parties. Now, if you bring it to sort of more recent years and the political developments, especially around the joint list, one can argue that it's not a huge leap for someone like Mansour Abbas to say that we should get into an alliance with Benjamin Netanyahu and with the Israeli right in general. Now, since the 1990s, essentially, there's been a sort of
00:20:08
Speaker
political consensus, a very abstract political consensus about how Palestinian citizens should engage with Zionist parties and in the Israeli political spectrum. And what this essentially meant was that the Palestinian parties should, that their closest allies, strategic allies, I should say, belonged to the Zionist left. That even though our political ideals did not, you know, was not represented by these Zionist parties, which still essentially demanded the inequality of Palestinian citizens,
00:20:37
Speaker
that there could be ways to strategically ally with them. This was seen also in the 90s with Yitzhak Rabin, who at the time was pushing forward with the Oslo Accords, and Arab parties essentially gave their support to allow him to have a coalition government. So it's not unprecedented, per se, that Palestinian political parties would want to throw their support behind an Israeli prime minister.
00:20:59
Speaker
And also in the past two years, with these recent elections, the Joint List really made what was a rather daring move, let's say, to actually recommend Benny Gantz of the Blue and White Party to essentially try to strategically oust Benjamin Netanyahu. The Joint List was under no illusions about who Benny Gantz was, who really is this center-right, if not hard-right military general who literally boasted about bombing Gaza back to the Stone Age.
00:21:27
Speaker
They had no illusions about who this man was and what his politics were, what his party represented. But for them, there was a strategic element to at least getting Netanyahu, who has really been a linchpin in the Israeli political system for the past decade plus, to try getting him out and then to try holding some kind of bargaining chips over Benny Gads. And even though, especially among Palestinians, really debated how wise this move was, there was an understanding that the jointless was trying to occupy this blurred line, again, between asserting their Palestinianness
00:21:57
Speaker
and especially bringing issues of the occupation with trying to achieve the basic needs of Palestinian citizens here. Now, Mansoor Abbas, in his opinion, and apparently in the opinion of people who voted for him in this party, it's not a big leap to recommend someone like Benny Gantz and not recommend someone like Netanyahu, who essentially echoes the same politics, who is allied with religious parties, which the Islamists believe that they actually have a lot in common with, especially in regards to
00:22:25
Speaker
social and religious services within the state. And that strategically speaking, in the end, the real people who are in power are Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israeli right. And so in Mansur Abbas's mind, the idea is don't just stop at this myth of a center left block, which a lot of people are arguing doesn't even exist anymore. If we really want to achieve some benefits for Palestinian citizens who are suffering
00:22:51
Speaker
from major internal issues like gun violence and organized crime. We're still experiencing discriminatory land policies and confiscations. We're demanding all kinds of social services, especially in the time of corona. All these needs can only be met by the Israeli state. And so for Mansour Abbas, it's logical to go with those who are actually in power.
Palestinians Voting for Zionist Parties
00:23:11
Speaker
Now, this is from his perspective, essentially, but the ramifications
00:23:17
Speaker
of what Mansour Abbas is doing and the breaking of the political consensus that it's not just a central left that we should ally with, but with the Israeli right as well. It really sets a very different tone for what Palestinian politics in Israel is trying to achieve. And the fact that Mansour Abbas was able to accumulate now four seats in the Knesset versus the broken joint list, six seats, shows that this might be a viable political option, which has very concerning implications for the community and also for the wider Palestinian people.
00:23:48
Speaker
Yeah, Mansoor Abbas is clearly an opportunist politician through and through and it is indeed very concerning. So building on this topic of possible Palestinian collaboration with Netanyahu, we have statistics from this latest election round that there were more Palestinians voting for Likud than ever before.
00:24:08
Speaker
which is just mind-boggling for so many. So how can this phenomenon of Palestinians voting for the coup be explained? You touched upon it briefly in your previous answer, but perhaps you can unpack this mind-boggling phenomenon a bit more. I would sort of like Amanda's note that though there was a slight spike, it wasn't like a major voting spike per se, so there's some positivity in knowing that was the case.
00:24:36
Speaker
To put it both again in the sort of historical and the more present scene, I mean, historically, Palestinian citizens have also voted for Zionist parties. This would be all the way back to the early years of the state, whereby they, a lot of people voted for Mapai, for example, again, the precursor to labor. And even to this day, for example, you have people voting, you have some Palestinian citizens voting for Likud who basically vote for it, not because, you know, necessarily believe in all their principles and ideologies,
00:25:05
Speaker
But it could be something as basic as thinking that Likud is better for economic policy, that they think that they support small businesses or have a more free market thinking, which gives me the idea that Likud is able to economically manage Israel in a better way, which inherently benefits them. There are those who, again, like Mansur Abbas, think that if you're going to vote for someone, vote for those who are actually in power. And so the Likud party essentially is at camp. So it's not like an unprecedented phenomenon per se. It's not a major one.
00:25:33
Speaker
And the biggest struggle when it comes to the Palestinian citizens voting for Zionist parties actually is more along the Zionist left. So parties like merits, parties like labor, which has drastically shrunk, drastically, drastically shrunk from what it was back in its original days. And this is both because sometimes there's an idea among certain segments of Palestinian society that you're better off voting for sort of like an Arab Jewish Zionist party who will have the ear of other members of parliament.
00:26:00
Speaker
There are those who are actually very disillusioned also with their own Arab political representatives because they see them being targeted and excluded and discriminated and that they can't really achieve much because they're Arab basically. And so they think they'll have a better shot at some kind of influence and shaping their political platforms if they vote for these center-left Zionist parties. I mean, in the end, the vast majority of Palestinian citizens who vote vote for Arab political parties. And in the previous incarnation, the majority voted for the joint list and now it's very much split between
00:26:28
Speaker
Rahm and the list itself. So it's not a huge phenomenon, but it is an indication of the extent to which, especially as the larger Palestinian question shrinks in the minds of Palestinian citizens, that they're going to continue looking inwards to the Israeli-Zionist political spectrum, and that they'll try to find more answers to meet their basic needs through the Zionist parties to provide for them, and to try to channel the policies that they require. This is again very concerning in terms of the effect of
00:26:58
Speaker
This will have a passing identity on keeping the occupation as a central pillar also of their politics, or if this will entail a return to an Arab Israelification, so to speak, of the community here.
00:27:13
Speaker
So it's clear that the phenomenon of Palestinians voting for Likud has been sensationalized by the Israeli media and perhaps even by Palestinians elsewhere, because it does seem incredibly bizarre. But when we put this in the context, the historical context, as you did, Amjad, of Palestinian participation in the Knesset,
00:27:34
Speaker
it becomes less of a phenomenon. And in general, Palestinians voting for Zionist parties always needs to be understood in the context of settler colonialism and that Indigenous people have long been co-opted as common practice and for many of them it seems as a mechanism of survival and perhaps the only mechanism of survival.
Boycotting Knesset Elections
00:27:56
Speaker
Amjad, I want to end on something that we haven't talked about yet, and that's that not all Palestinian citizens of Israel do vote. Indeed, there is a small but significant group of people that have long boycotted the Knesset elections, such as Ibn al-Balad, but also individuals not particularly affiliated with political parties or groups.
00:28:20
Speaker
And for many of them, it comes from a principal stance of not wanting to legitimize the Knesset or not wanting to recognize the colonial entity. But I think it also comes from a place of recognizing and even frustration at the limited achievements of the Palestinian presence in the Knesset and the high political cost of that presence.
00:28:42
Speaker
We know very well that Israel frequently uses Palestinian participation in elections and the existence of Palestinian members of Knesset as an example and manifestation of Israeli democracy. And this boycott campaign has gone through its ups and downs in terms of popularity. Perhaps it will gain more traction since the split of the joint list. But I wondered if you could share your thoughts about the campaign and the tactic to boycott.
00:29:13
Speaker
Yeah, it's a very complex subject. I would start first and foremost by kind of recontextualizing why Palestinian citizens vote in Israel. It's not because they necessarily believe that Israel is a democracy. And in fact, Israel, for all intents and purposes, is not a real democracy. Any country that defines
00:29:35
Speaker
its citizens' rights and its political identity based on their ethnic, racial, religious identity is inherently undemocratic. And the legal system and political system is designed to ensure that that stays that way. Most Palestinian citizens aren't under any illusions of it. For them, I'm speaking very broadly, but voting is a method of survival. It's a method of trying to achieve some influence over your basic needs.
00:30:02
Speaker
But then another significant part of why they would vote is not because they're trying to legitimize the Knesset or legitimize the state, but because voting in the elections is a mechanism for the community itself to decide its own national representatives. So in a way, it's kind of taking this institution provided by the state, but for the community to tell itself, who are we voting in to speak for us? To speak for us in front of the Knesset, to speak in front of us in our towns and communities,
00:30:31
Speaker
to set our demands for international audiences and international actors, that it's almost like this system that the committee uses entirely for itself. And this is kind of like a sort of implicit understanding because we don't really have any other mechanisms at the moment or any other really institutions to ensure this kind of democratic method. We have the high fault committee, which was supposed to be this sort of external, this body unassociated with state that was supposed to represent all segments of Palestinian society, but they're not elected.
00:31:00
Speaker
They're mostly these older men who are completely unrepresentative of the society. No one really knows who is in it either. And so in an ironic way, the joint list is more democratic for Palestinian citizens than the high follow-up committee, which is supposed to be the main representative of the community.
Participation in Politics vs. Boycotting
00:31:16
Speaker
Now, what this kind of leads to is a question of like, if we're not going to vote, then what are the other institutions and political mechanisms in place to
00:31:27
Speaker
channel our political grievances, our political demands, and ensure that there is some representation in our society and some kind of political leadership. The boycott movement has very, very strong points, a very strong case essentially, and it's growing almost by the year to say that
00:31:47
Speaker
You can keep voting for the Knesset, you can keep doing all this, you can try to shape it, but like you pointed to Yotta, it's never really going to achieve your full equality. You might get like a few budgets here or like a small block in the policy there, but in the end, your inherent inequality will always exist and the evidence completely justifies that and proves that.
00:32:10
Speaker
And I think especially, you know, over the recent period where there's been a lot of disillusionment with the joint list, which achieved 15 seats in the earlier elections, the highest amount that Palestinian citizens ever accumulated, and that even having those 15 seats, literally the third largest party in the parliament, that that was not enough to get you political bargaining chips. That was not enough to force the Zionist parties to treat you as an equal partner or to listen to your demands. In fact, Benny Gantz literally
00:32:39
Speaker
broke his sole campaign promise to L.A. of Bibi in order to avoid being with the joint list. The question that's still not being answered, or that still doesn't have an answer, let's say, is if not to vote, then what? The alternatives aren't very clear for the Palestinian community. The high follow-up committee, unfortunately, is not a decent leadership alternative. And the kind of movements, the grassroots movements that might have once existed in Palestinian society, they don't
00:33:08
Speaker
exist as strongly anymore. And in fact, the Palestinian community has really looked very much inwards more and more, especially to the issues of organized crime and violence and guns, especially, to the point that there's almost a desperation to just have anything. Now, for me, as an analyst, a big question, a big part of the equation that's often ignored is, what if the alternative comes in Palestinian national politics itself?
00:33:35
Speaker
What we've been seeing with the past decade, through the split with Fatah and Hamas, with the growing decline of the PLO, is that Palestinian citizens don't know where they're heading. As I was alluding to earlier, if the Palestinian movement doesn't know where it's going, then how are Palestinian citizens supposed to know who to turn to or what they're trying to fight to achieve? And at the moment, the only option they have in front of them is the Israeli political system, whether it's justified or not, or whether it's beneficial or not. But as long as the Palestinian national movement itself is in this current chaos,
00:34:05
Speaker
And in this internal fragmentation, the not voting and boycotting the Knesset will only, the fear is that it will only increase the sort of demise and fragmentation of the Palestinian community inside Israel as well. Now this could potentially be revived. I mean, you know, we're having, we're expected. We'll see if it happens. It's supposed to be having Palestinian elections this year. And though there's a lot of skepticism and pessimism, maybe this might help to reawaken some sense of
00:34:34
Speaker
of redirection for where the Palestinian people are trying to move towards. But again, I know there's also debate about whether or not one should even vote in those Palestinian Authority elections, with all the justified reasons. But the concern is that if we do not even strategically use the tools that we have in front of us, even just to organize ourselves, forget about influencing Israeli parliament, forget about legitimizing the state, how do we organize ourselves? If the right to vote
00:35:03
Speaker
is one of the most trusted, most established ways for us to do it and to say, and to hold our leaders accountable, especially, then I'm not sure that it can be so easily abandoned.
Failures of Palestinian Leadership
00:35:16
Speaker
And I'm speaking to someone who, if I may bring myself personally, you know, I've voted in and out, sometimes did, sometimes didn't. And for me, for example, I was a believer, a pessimistic believer in the jointless opportunities, but even I didn't vote in the last election.
00:35:31
Speaker
essentially to hold my political representatives accountable. That I think that no matter what my differences were about their decisions to recommend guns, et cetera, it was worth trying to shift the political cards a little bit. But then the internal fighting, the complete lack of alternatives when the approach with guns failed, then what was your alternative? Did you communicate with the public? Did you come up with a different strategy that's outside of the Knesset, which I think is ultimately the answer.
00:35:59
Speaker
Sitting in a Knesset is meant to be a strategy for the community. If you're only using it to achieve better budgets, better policies, then you're there for the wrong reasons. Unfortunately, the joint list was increasingly digging itself there into the wrong reasons. And so by me not voting in the previous election, I'm holding my leaders accountable. And I, for one, don't have any other method to properly do that. I don't know whether this is right or wrong. And this is essentially the dilemma that's faced by many Palestinian citizens. But the idea of boycott is
00:36:27
Speaker
Paramount and it's fundamental, but the key question in the end is what is the strategy that goes behind it and can we rally the community behind that strategy? Otherwise, we will only see fragmentation as we're seeing now the fact between you have the list and the rotten party and the people who haven't voted. It's just an illustration that if we're not clear where we are, where we want to be heading collectively, then we're only going to weaken ourselves for the future.
00:36:54
Speaker
I'm also glad that you brought in the Palestinian National Movement. I think as long as it continues to marginalize and ignore the Palestinian citizens of Israel, many will see the Knesset elections as the only vehicle.
Conclusion and Call to Action
00:37:07
Speaker
And that is one of the many failures of the Palestinian leadership.
00:37:13
Speaker
Amjad, I'm afraid we'll have to stop here. This has been brilliant. Thank you so much for your concise and nuanced analysis on this topic. I hope that you will join us on one of our future episodes of Rethinking Palestine. Thank you so much, Yara. It's a real pleasure. And thank you to Shabuka as always.
00:37:34
Speaker
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