Lod As Template? What Is It About Living in Israel, a Jewish State, That Its Arab Citizens Don't Understand?

"They say they wanted to come to a quiet place, not where there is this kind of background noise, and where they have to be afraid."

"Things here now are a mess, and they say they didn’t pick up and move to Lod to live in a mess. If you ask me, it is sad – sad that a Jewish family has to leave this city, eight minutes from the airport, because they are afraid."

"You never know, one day someone is your friend, you buy your groceries at his store, you have friendly relations, and today you just don’t know. My mechanic is connected to the family of the Arab who was killed on the first night of the rioting – Hasuna – I called him up to ask if we were still okay. He said to bring my jeep by."

"We live here together. Why are you going to boycott an Arab store? Then next month you will go back and buy there. So what have you accomplished – that will only widen the rift."

"If you ask me what needs to be done, I think the police have to take more initiative, provide people with a sense of security – Jews and Arabs. It can’t be that Arabs can build here illegally and nothing happens, or they fire off firecrackers whenever they want, testing the response, and nothing happens. That creates a perception that they are in charge."

"[The police do not enforce the law because they simply don’t want to ruffle feathers], they want quiet]."

"I asked people what happened, and they replied, ‘You touched al-Aqsa.’ The fanatics live in paranoia. They believe the Jews, the Garin Torani, are coming to kick them out, that they are from the Shabak [Shin Bet]. They are paranoid that we want to kick them out and destroy al-Aqsa. Go convince them otherwise. Most of the people don’t have a problem, but the fanatics and the religious incite things."

Assaf Weiss, young religious Jew who moved into Lod 15 years ago

Coexistence crisis in Lod.   (photo credit: MIRIAM ALSTER/FLASH90)

"They [Jewish thugs from the far-right Lehava and La Familia] walked with sticks and looked for cars, Arab cars. Then they bashed the windows in."

"Jews live in my building, I have no problem with them. The problem is the settlers [catch-phrase used to refer to those associated with the pre-army academy, or the Garin Torani]."

"If you look deeply, the Jews cannot live here without the Arabs, and the Arabs cannot live here without the Jews. We need each other. I don’t want to live in an Arab state. I’m used to it here, used to the laws. In the Arabs states the law is not straight."

"[Lod Mayor Yair] Revivo says he also does for Arabs. But what does he do? Only demolish homes. He only gives to the Jewish neighborhoods."

"They want to bring in settlers, and the settlers are racists. And so are those they brought in two weeks ago who caused all the problems."

"They [Jews] could offer me five million shekels, and I wouldn’t sell [to a Jew]. Besides, where would I go?"

"I have three apartments. A settler will come here and say he wants to pay double. I’ll sell and he will live next to my parents – a settler who was raised on hating Arabs. They don’t study Torah, only hating Arabs."

"I have no problems with Jews, I am only talking about the settlers who were living in the West Bank and Gaza, and who are now looking for a place to live where Arabs live. I’m not talking about regular Jews. On our first floor there is a religious Jew. But not a settler."

Sheik Yusuf Adam Bassam, Arab Lod resident

ARAB RESIDENTS and activists protest the death of Musa Hasuna, killed during Jewish-Arab clashes, outside Lod District Court on May 28. (AVSHALOM SASSONI/FLASH90)

"We have a problem when a group of Jews is coming not only to live, but to Judaize the urban space, coming into Arab neighborhoods or close to Arab neighborhoods."

"If you come to an Arab neighborhood and you find a very old building nobody is using, and they are passing it on to NGOs – very Zionist radical NGOs – who convert it to a synagogue or a center for young Jews. Judaizing the urban space means instead of making it available to young Arabs, offering it instead to Jewish people."

"What is happening in Sheikh Jarrah is really connected. It is the same policy of the evacuation of Arabs and replacing them with specific Jews, with settlers. It is the same policy that is happening in the old city of Jaffa, for example, in the historical Palestinian cities. This is frustrating the Arabs in those cities. 

It is pent-up anger that was waiting for a specific moment to explode. And these kinds of policies bring it to an explosion."

Thabet Abu Rass, co-executive director, Lod-based Abraham Initiatives NGO 

THE FUNERAL of Yigal Yehoshua, who succumbed to injuries sustained during rioting in Lod, on May 18. His family later donated one of his kidneys to a Palestinian woman. (AVSHALOM SASSONI/FLASH90)

 

"We decided to join the government in order to change the balance of political forces in the country."

"I say here clearly and frankly: when the very establishment of this government is based on our support ... we will be able to influence it and accomplish great things for our Arab society."

Mansour Abbas, leader, United Arab List party

In the frantic drive to oust Prime Minister Benjamin Natanyahu, a left-wing and a right-wing Jewish Israeli party linked in their hatred of the current prime minister, if not in their ideologies, invited an Islamist party head to join their coalition to achieve enough momentum through a slender majority of seats in the Knesset to drive the prime minister from power. The tiny Islamist action brings just enough lead for a paper-thin majority, making the United Arab List the first Arab party to join the governing executive of the country.

Mr. Abbas; MK Abbas, a Palestinian with Israeli citizenship, has deigned to ignore the differences he cannot but hold as vitally important against a leader representing a major Jewish settlement group, an advocate of annexing most of the West Bank for the larger purpose in his opinion of advancing the cause of the 21percent minority Arab citizens of Israel. His hope, said MK Abbas is to improve conditions for Arab Israeli citizens mired in complaints of discrimination and neglect by government.

There is more than a bit of dissonance in this association, since Mr. Abbas's party is the political wing of the southern branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel, established in 1971, its origins with the Muslim Brotherhood. As an Islamist party and as an arm of the Muslim Brotherhood the party, its members and its leader are fundamentally opposed to the State of Israel and diligently work toward its elimination. Their mandate is little different, in effect, from that of Hamas. 

The appeal for Mr. Abbas was the allocation of over 53 billion shekels to improve infrastructure and curb the violent crime that plagues Arab towns. In other words, a party dedicated to the violent overthrow of the Jewish state, seeks funding and dedication from that Jewish state to quell the violence and crime plaguing Israeli Arabs in their towns, brought to them courtesy of their Muslim Arab restive youth whom the Arab authorities in those towns appear incapable of controlling in their constant rampages.

Approval for his initiative in agreeing to join the coalition to oust the prime minister, came from the Islamic Movement's advisory Shura Council, a religious body from whom Mr. Abbas sought guidance, the very source of direction given to the party in past votes in the Knesset on LGBT rights and other like issues. There are Arab Israelis who are critical of Mr. Abbas's decision to join the coalition, querying his justification in being part of a government that imposes a 'military occupation' over West Bank and Gazan Palestinians including a Gaza blockade. 

 

Loyalty to Israel is not writ large on Palestinian sentiments.

"He should be commended for trying something new, but if there's another war with Gaza, and he's in government, there will be pressure on him to abandon ship", noted Moussa al-Zayadna, from the Bedouin town of Rahat in southern Israel. "He is a traitor. What will he do when they ask him to vote on launching a new war on Gaza? Will he accept it, being a part of the killing of Palestinians?", rhetorically queried Badri Karam in Gaza.

Joint List member Sami Abou Shehadeh, from whose party Mansour Abbas split to form his own party, claimed that the Islamist party led by Abbas "dramatically changed its historical political behaviour" joining with Bennett and other right-wing leaders, "a very big crime. Bennett was the head of the Yesha council (settler umbrella group). We're talking about dangerous people, and supporting them means that Mansour Abbas has chosen to stand with the extreme settler right against the interests of our people."

From left, Yair Lapid, Naftali Bennett and Mansour Abbas signing a coalition agreement. Credit...United Arab List Raam, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

 

A Jewish State for all Its Diverse Citizens

"This list is the most effective answer to the racist intentions of Lieberman who wanted to keep the Arabs out of the Knesset."
"Our answer was to band together and to become even stronger than we were before."
"If that [majority of Arab citizens moved enough to vote] happens, the government will not be able to ignore our issues including ending the occupation [of the West Bank and east Jerusalem] and pushing for equal rights for Arab citizens of Israel."
Aida Touma-Sliman, Hadash (Communist) Arab-Jewish party; joint Arab party list, Israel

Hadash’s new party chairman, Ayman Odeh, along with the party’s second in command, Aida Touma-Sliman. What kind of compromises will Hadash have to make as part of a united list? (photo: Oren Ziv/Activestills.org)

"This is the first time in the history of the Arab nation that you have a list which includes nationalists, securalists, Islamists, Jews and Arabs."
"You don't have a list like that anywhere in the Middle East. People kill each other for these kinds of differences in Syria, in Egypt and in other places, and here we run together."
Hassan Jabarin, lawyer, founder of Adalah, advocates for Israel's Arab minority

"I don't see them joining any government that could make a decision on going to war in Gaza and Lebanon or that could demolish Palestinian houses."
"All of the Jewish parties want Israel as a Jewish state, while we want Israel as a state for all of its citizens."
Mtanese Shihadeh, analyst, Mada al-Carmel

And there it is in a nutshell. Israel is a Jewish state, it was always intended for it to be a place of haven for the diaspora, Jews spread throughout the world, cast out of their ancient homeland by the forces of conquest; ancient Persians, Romans, Muslims. The world time and again spurned Jews and Judaism, targeted Jews for persecution, deadly slanderous accusations leading to ghettoization, victimization and mass death throughout history. The Holocaust was the last and most successful attempt at eradication of Jews from the world scene.

And that event and the subsequent and all-too-brief horror of the realization of complicity in genocide by the world body of the League of Nations/United Nations led to assenting in permitting the return of Jews to their ancient homeland and re-naming that place Israel. Persecuted ethnic groups like the Jews, like the Armenians, like the Kurds, are owed their own geography since it was their own to begin with before it was annexed by exterior powers both malicious and unmoved by justice.

While the Arab world reacted to the establishment of the Jewish State by forcing Jews living among them for millenna to relinquish their possessions to the state and flee an oncoming pogrom of religious-racist fury that Judaism would dare to challenge the universal supremacy of Islam in the Middle East by its very presence, Israel accepted the presence of non-Jews in their nation, valuing democratic justice as much as they did their own security of existence.


Ra’am-Ta’al MK Ahmed Tibi. (photo: Activestills.org)

And the result is that the Arabs living among the majority Jews in a Jewish state deplore that Israel is a Jewish nation. Even as Arabs are able to sit on the supreme court, in parliament, given equal rights, recognized as full citizens, they chafe at the ignominy of citizenship in a Jewish state, even while given the opportunity to leave Israel and take up residence in the West Bank or Gaza, they demur. What they do indulge in is attempts to undermine the legitimacy of Israel as a Jewish state.

And what many parliamentarians as elected Arabs sitting in the Knesset also do, is express support for the terrorist group Hamas which has sworn to destroy Israel and create a newer, more permanent Holocaust. The goal of Arab MKs is to transform Israel into an Arab state where Jews may also live. The goal being to retake all the land that Israel sits upon and return it to Arab/Muslim rule. Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, who unsurprisingly is a fervent supporter of Israel as a Jewish nation, sought to bring an end to Arab intervention in a Jewish state.

He persuaded the government to raise the "threshold" of the minimum vote percentage required to take a seat in the Knesset, to 3.25% from the prevailing 2%. Which led the fractured Arab parties reflecting their various political positions to respond by coalescing to collectively amass the required percentages. Singly they were unable to meet the new percentage requirements, together they succeeded.

Analysis are hoping that the new greater alliances will spur Israeli Arabs to set aside their traditional voter apathy and come out to vote in greater numbers. The 20% of Arab-Israeli citizens anticipate achieving a 15-seat goal in the 120-seat Knesset; that achievement if it became reality would make the combined party the third or fourth largest in the Knesset. Which speaks to the great divides among political parties in the country, in total.

Israel's fragmented, differentiated, opinionated citizenry with their varied viewpoints, values and urgencies guarantee that this is a country whose government is challenged by a multitude of political parties, unlike most other democratic liberal countries whose federal political parties can be counted on the fingers of half-a-hand. Which is why no single party can ever achieve a majority position enabling it to govern, without the support of other parties large enough to amass sufficient votes for the parts to make up a viable governing whole.

Which in turn, amounts to a lot of horse-trading, division, promises and heartburn before a coalition government can be successfully cobbled together, enabling a new government, post-election to take its turn at governing an unruly citizenship where everyone has an opinion not necessarily shared by their neighbours. But it is a country where the rule of law counts, and where the system of justice is fully independent, and where all its citizens have the opportunity to share in government.

Even those among them who make every effort to destroy that government.