Not Governance. Bullying.

Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir calls it “governance.” MK Zvi Sukkot sometimes wraps his visits in the respectable language of “parliamentary oversight.” Almog Cohen, too, has taken part in one of these tours that ended in confrontation.

But when politicians enter Arab towns in order to provoke residents, manufacture a confrontation and return home with footage for their political base, there is nothing legitimate about it. Arab local leaders should say so clearly, and Arab citizens need to learn how not to give these provocateurs exactly what they came looking for.

The method is fairly simple. A politician enters an Arab community accompanied by a large security detail, cameras and, sometimes, police forces. He announces that he has come to restore “governance,” investigate “incitement” or exercise “parliamentary oversight.” He says what needs to be said to make sure the message gets across. Residents, understandably, become angry. Someone shouts at the politician. The politician shouts back. And soon enough, the whole encounter has been edited and distributed by the provocateur’s social-media team.

We have seen this pattern repeatedly in recent months. Ben-Gvir has conducted a series of so-called “governance tours” in Arab communities. Sukkot has repeatedly visited Arab towns and schools, in some cases under the auspices of his position as chairman of the Knesset Education Committee. Before that, Sukkot and Cohen visited the Bedouin village of Bir Hadaj.

The locations change and the pretexts change, but the pattern remains the same: the Arab community becomes a stage, its residents are unwilling extras, and their anger is the raw material from which the political product is made.

There is a particularly ugly logic at work here. First, you incite against an entire population and portray it as inherently suspect. Then you enter its community in a deliberately confrontational and bullying manner, designed to provoke anger. Finally, you take the anger you deliberately produced and present it as proof that your suspicions were justified all along. It is a trap, and for the intended political audience, it works.

When a government minister uses the police and the authority of his office as scenery for an exercise in intimidation and domination over citizens, this is far more serious than a political activist staging a demonstration. And when a Knesset committee chairman uses parliament’s legitimate oversight powers as a vehicle for bullying and humiliation, the very notion of “parliamentary oversight” becomes a joke.

There is an enormous difference between genuinely seeking to understand Israel’s Arab education system — chronically neglected and underfunded — and turning an Arab school into a stage for political hooliganism. There is a difference between fighting crime and strutting through an Arab town to remind its residents who is supposedly in charge.

Want to demonstrate “governance” in Arab society? Stop the murders. Dismantle organized crime networks. Collect the illegal weapons. Protect business owners from extortion. Solve murder cases. Make it possible for parents to send their children to school without fearing that they will be caught in gunfire on the street.

A minister responsible for public security who arrives in a crime-ridden Arab town with a convoy and cameras to proclaim who is boss is not demonstrating authority. He is displaying his own failure.

Palestinian citizens of Israel are not guests in this country. Arab towns are not foreign enclaves into which the sovereign must periodically march to plant a flag — or stick a finger in the eye of the people who live there.

Arab mayors and local council heads should therefore stop treating these provocation tours as though they were ordinary working visits. They do not need to pose for the polite photograph, participate in the ceremony or lend local legitimacy to an event whose purpose is to humiliate the public they represent. When it is clear that a visit has been designed as a provocation, local leaders should say publicly and unequivocally that they will not cooperate with this display of political bullying.

At the same time, Arab citizens should do everything possible to deny the provocateurs what they want. To the young man who sees Ben-Gvir, Sukkot or Cohen entering his town and feels the entirely understandable urge to run toward them and shout, I would suggest looking first at the camera waiting for him to approach, yell or push a security guard. The most effective response is simply not to engage. There is no image more frustrating for a provocateur than a provocation in which nobody agrees to participate.

The media also bears responsibility. When a deliberately engineered provocation produces a confrontation, and the confrontation immediately produces headlines and airtime, the incentive to stage the next tour is obvious.

Of course elected officials should be covered. But journalists should also ask what kind of event they are covering. Who initiated it? Was it coordinated with the local authorities? Does it serve any genuine public purpose for the community and its residents? Or was the confrontation itself the purpose?

Media outlets should understand that these tours are not merely political “color,” nor are they simply another “controversial” event to be covered from both sides. When their purpose is to provoke a population, portray it as an enemy and then turn its predictable reaction into political profit, they should be described for what they are.

They are acts of political provocation and bullying. And they should not be normalized as legitimate public activity.