Israeli Arabs May Hold Key to Next Israeli Government

By Joshua Azriel

With attention focused on whether the next Israeli government will be a Labor- or Likud-led government, the role Arab political parties could play in the next government coalition is often ignored. Heading into May’s election, there are 12 Arab members now seated in the Knesset, making up 10 percent of the body’s membership.

Five Knesset members belong to the Arab Democratic Party (ADP) led by former Labor member Abdulwahab Darawshe. Four Knesset members belong to Hadash, the joint Jewish-Arab political party, formerly known as the Communist Party, led by Azmi Bishara. The other three Arab Knesset members belong to left-wing Jewish parties.

The ADP and Hadash’s platforms both call for the establishment of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza. They differ in their stance over Jerusalem. Hadash supports Jerusalem as the joint capital of Israel and a future Palestinian state. The ADP supports East Jerusalem as the capital of a Palestinian state.

Over 540,000 Arab votes were cast in the 1996 election. Of those, 60 percent went to the ADP and Hadash and about a quarter of the vote went to various Jewish parties.

This will be the second election with the separate votes for prime minister and Knesset members, and Arab voters will participate in both. In 1996, despite overwhelmingly supporting Labor Party candidate Shimon Peres for prime minister, large numbers of Israeli Arab voters cast their Knesset ballots for Arab-led political parties.

Prof. Ken Wald of the University of Florida, a veteran Israel watcher, believes the May 1999 Israeli election will be one of the toughest elections to call because of the disintegration of traditional party structures in Israel. “The major parties’ share of the Knesset is falling,” he explains. “Minor parties are growing, there is more fragmentation.”

Wald believes that if Labor Party leader Ehud Barak wins the election but has difficulty forming a governing coalition, then inviting an Arab political party such as the ADP into a coalition government could happen. “It’s possible that it may not be as much of a taboo as it used to be because this is the first post-peace agreement election,” Wald said.

“Bishara and Darawshe are impressive. Either of these two could be the one to enter a government. The price for their support could be a cabinet or assistant cabinet position instead of the usual financial incentives,” Wald believes.

Wald notes, however, that the decision with which Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat is wrestling, whether to proclaim an independent Palestinian state May 4 or postpone the announcement, may also have a decisive influence on the Israeli election. If Arafat declares a Palestinian state before the election, Wald warns, this could promote a Netanyahu victory and a government not sympathetic either to Arafat or to the peace process.

Since coalition politics is the main force in formulating political and economic policies in Israel, it has been difficult for the Arab political parties to directly influence the state’s political agenda. In previous years Arab political parties indicated a willingness to share power with a Labor-aligned government on condition that the government promote the peace process and equality for Arab citizens. In 1988, Darawshe tried unsuccessfully to forge a political partnership with left-wing Jewish parties.

Until now, Labor’s leadership has rejected the idea of inviting either Hadash or ADP into a governing coalition out of fear that such a coalition might not be viewed as sufficiently Jewish-oriented by the Israeli public. This public was sharply divided in the 1996 election over the future and direction of the peace process. However, if the major parties seem evenly divided in May’s election, the Israeli Arab vote might play a decisive role both in electing Israel’s next leader, and in enabling him to create a governing coalition.

Joshua Azriel is a reporter for mid-Florida Public Radio and a graduate student at the Univ. of Florida.