First, kudos and thanks to Kellogg and his recommended diary yesterday for bringing the story to DKos. I was thinking this could be a chance to provide some background on how Israel ticks - but had no time and energy to provide both the story and the analysis.
So let this be an unofficial start of the "Israel-Palestine 101" (IP101) series - hopefully a collaborative effort to bring some reality-based, deeper understanding of that fascinating, infuriating, dangerous land. This ban is actually not a bad topic to start, being somewhat less inflammatory than the main blood-stained news.
In a nutshell: two of the three predominantly-Arab parties with seats in Israel's current Knesset (parliament), have been banned from participating in next month's general elections. The banning forum - the Central Election Committee (CEC) - is a partisan body composed of politicians, with a makeup similar to the Knesset's. I guess you can see the structural problem here... (more ->)
Who are "Israeli Arabs?"
(Disclaimer: the following passage is presented only so everyone knows who they are and whence they came into being. The 1948 war, Nakba, etc., are not the main issue of this diary. Therefore there are no links in this part. Please refrain from 1948-related flame wars here. Fat chance.)
In 1947, the UN General Assembly voted to partition British-Mandate Palestine into two independent states, one Arab and one Jewish. At the time, the country had 1.3 million Arabs and 0.6 million Jews, with most of the Jews being new immigrants or Holocaust-related refugees. Following the Arabs' rejection of Partition, an all-out war broke out. In its aftermath the victorious Jews had Israel as an independent state over a territory quite a bit larger than that allocated by Partition. Five-sixths of the Arabs living in Israel before it became Israel, were turned into refugees (incidentally, they and their descendants are a solid majority in the Gaza Strip). The remaining one-sixth received Israeli citizenship, but most of them were under Martial law until 1966. They are commonly known as "Arab Israelis" even though ethnically and culturally they are identical to Palestinians, and many have relatives in the West Bank and Gaza. Interestingly, now "Israeli Arabs" number about one-sixth of Israel's citizens (this figure is usually padded to 20% in most media outlets, due to the addition of East-Jerusalem Palestinians, who are not voting citizens but rather residents).
(Done. Whew. Remember - no flames on this.)
What's the CEC? And What were they Thinking?
The CEC's main mission is to coordinate the logistics, and ultimately announce the results of, the general election. Its chair - which unlike the other members, is a nonpartisan judge - has the authority to impose penalties on parties breaking election law. Originally the CEC had no authority to ban parties a priori, but in 1984 openly racist and fascist Meir Kahane succeeded in winning a Knesset seat for his Kach party. The next year, the law was amended to give the CEC some teeth to ban parties that are "beyond the pale" - specifically, having a racist or violence-inciting agenda, or "undermining the democratic and Jewish nature of the state."
Well guess what? When the next elections come around in 1988, they indeed ban Kahane, but also an Arab party called "the progressive list for peace" (PLP). As you can tell by its name, PLP was definitely beyond the pale (formally it was an Arab-Jewish party, but with nearly all its support coming from Arab voters). What was beyond the pale? The wish to turn Israel into a state with full equality between Jews and Palestinian, on a collective level and not just a personal one (e.g., revisit the law that grants any Diaspora Jew Israeli citizenship, etc.). Most Jewish CEC members thought this undermines the nature of the state. In the end, Israel's High Court canceled the PLP ban (they managed to squeak in with one seat), but upheld the Kahane ban.
From then on, practically each election cycle Israel's wingnuts would try and ban one or more Arab party at the CEC - but their moderate and left-leaning colleagues would defeat the motion.
Scroll to 2003: the PLP's ideological descendant, Balad, is led by the most charismatic Israeli-Palestinian leader of this generation: philosophy professor and rabble-rouser Azmi Bishara. The CEC decides to ban Balad because Bishara and his ilk are not loyal enough to the state (at least according to the learned opinion of rival Jewish-Israeli politicians), but the High Court overturned the ban again. Balad, who just like the PLP is always teeter-tottering on the verge of elimination from Knesset, is lifted by a huge wave of support in the Arab street following this attempted ban, and wins 3 seats.
In 2007 Bishara suddenly fled from Israel. The Shin Bet, Israel's secret police (yes, we have one! Want some?), claimed that he sold secrets to Hizbullah during the war (note: Arab legislators are rarely given any sensitive security material), laundered money using codewords such as "book" (another note: he's a professor), and was a bad man in general. Bishara says these are lies, and points out that the Shin Bet and police have been on his case for his opinions for many years. It is true that the Shin Bet chief has been very vocally warning the Israeli public in recent years that Arab activities (including Arab-rights NGO's) are undermining the state, so Bishara definitely has a case. After he left, the authorities never bothered to make an indictment, and instead used the court of mass media. But who knows. Maybe the Shin Bet have gotten it right this time, just like they caught that right-wing fanatic who bragged about planning to assassinate Yitzhak Rabin in 1995. (oh wait - they didn't catch that guy in time. Darn)
...Anyway... with the Bishara affair, it was clear Balad would make the ban-candidate shortlist this time around. What was surprising, is that in one fell swoop (really, in the same session) they also banned the largest Arab party, the 4-seat religious-leaning Raam-Taal ("United Arab List" and "Arab Renewal Movement"), which is - as is quite often the case - an amalgam of 3-4 separate parties hanging together in order to clear the 2% minimum vote total bar needed to enter the Knesset. Raam-Taal was banned mainly because of statements by the leader of its Islamic compoment (in 2006 the motion to ban that party was narrowly defeated by left and center Jewish party votes).
The double ban leaves only Hadash - the political descendant of the communist party, with a strong long-standing (though much smaller) Jewish contingent - as the only viable party representing Israel's Arabs. The ban was definitely affected by the current war, during which everyone's tempers have flared high, and tolerance for dissent in Israel has reached a new low (as, for example, Israeli activist Nomika Zion attests in my previous diary).
Legal experts are in near-universal agreement that the bans will be thrown out the window in court again. But I am not so sure. The court, too, is affected by the public mood. It is true that current Chief Justice Dorit Beinish is more liberal than her predecessor, especially on Palestinian issues - but the court now has the option to "cut a deal" with the public, release one party and keep another banned, or something. Everything's possible.
Look Who's Talking
To pre-empt some predictable comments saying that these banned parties are killing babies etc.: the bans are mostly because of statements and stances, not actions. Israel's Palestinians are asked to walk a very fine line between "treason of state" and betraying their identity and self-respect, not to mention giving up fighting for their rights. Previously, simple survival instincts dictated the latter option, and "Arab Israelis" had put up with being third-rate citizens or worse, and even voted overwhelmingly for Jewish Zionist parties (some of which have a token Arab Knesset member) or for "independent" puppet Arab parties set up by the Labor party (these were around until the 1970's).
The tumultuous 1990's brought a sea-change in "Israeli Arab" attitudes: the younger generation began to fight for its rights, openly identify as Palestinian - and vote for independent Arab parties, who went from 5-6 seats around 1990, to 10 seats nowadays. The Knesset has 120 seats, so Arabs' electoral potential is still higher than that - perhaps 17-19 seats. If all Arabs vote for Arab parties, a Likud-led far-right coalition is probably impossible. If that happens, perhaps they will finally be invited to join the governing coalition (to date, they have never been offered that). But the opposite is happening: as Arabs lobby for their rights via parties and non-partisan bodies like Adalah, the Jewish Israeli street (and its security apparatus, as mentioned above) increasingly sees these activities as evidence that they are a Fifth Column. Many Israelis (who are, I dare say, far less informed than is good for them) even complain aloud why these "Israeli Arabs" keep expressing solidarity with Occupied Palestinians.
To add even a bit more context: the Israeli political scene, and generally the political culture of the Middle East, is much more bombastic and foul-mouthed - from all sides - than the Anglo-Saxon etiquette that governs American politics. If one would throw the book at every Jewish Israeli politician who said unacceptable and/or anti-democratic and/or blatantly racist and/or bloodthirsty things about Arabs - or sometimes even about other Jews - the Knesset would be pretty much emptied of its inhabitants. For the past 20 years there has been at least one party openly advocating the deportation "by consent" (wink wink) of Palestinians, including those in Israel - not only have such parties never been banned, they've been in the government several times. So look who's talking.
(I'm willing to go to the mat on this one, it's a no-brainer, but it's truly a waste of time. If you don't know this about Israeli politics, you really don't know Israel - so it's better if you learn a bit before jumping up and down on the keyboard.)
Patch it up for me, Will You?
Whence the bright idea of letting the cats (competing parties) guard the cream (who participates in elections)? One thing to keep in mind is that Israel has no constitution. Again, this is a stark contrast to the United States. In America, after the dust settled on the war of independence, leaders sat and within a decade or so (which, in the 18th century, corresponds to what - about 3 weeks in the Internet age?) came up with a complete design and legal framework of how to run the country.
Israel, by contrast, is a work in progress. Essentially it was set up by political parties which existed quite a few decades before its independence, and by other bodies that floated around with vague and overlapping mandates (the Jewish Agency, the Jewish National Fund, etc.). These bodies didn't like to give up their power, of course. So the minimal framework needed to run a state was set up (most of it hand-me-down from the British Mandate government), and away we go. Over time, the High Court stepped in as the preschool teacher who cleans up the political system's mess-ups and temper tantrums (and in return, allows it a free pass on the Occupation's main infrastructure; but I digress).
We keep patching up things as we go along, and never really take a step back to see how the complete picture looks. For example, the particular patch which allowed the CEC to ban Kahane, also allows Israel's majority exclude its Palestinian minority (or other unpopular groups) from the political process. In 1990 I was in fact active in a movement wanting to step back, take a look and fix the entire system once and for all. The movement gained huge popularity, but guess what: the political parties quickly jumped on the bandwagon and eventually derailed it.
[ Side note: even though Israel's system is definitely too tinkery and unstable, some flexibility is not a bad thing, and in that sense the American system is near the opposite extreme. Americans are still stuck with the Presidential electoral-college system, outdated by a mere century-and-a-half, with no change in sight. ]
I think that'll be all for now. The issue of "Arab Israelis" deserves more than one diary, of course. Clearly, if two of their parties remain banned, this will be a very rude shoving of Israel's Palestinians farther out of "legitimate" Israeli society (they are already in the margins), and towards their own Intifada.
10:51 PST Update:
Thanks for keeping the debate civil, though I did spot one civil attempt to blame Arab parties for their being banned. Think of it this way: if the state is defined as Jewish, and the large Arab minority has rights (almost) only as individuals, then any lobbying of Arabs to win collective rights can be perceived by many Jews as undermining the character of their state.
I "improved" some passages by adding some more fluff. Enjoy.