The Change Bloc must accept the Arab parties, and vice versa

A pamphlet handed out by an activist at a Joint List stand in Haifa on the day of the elections reads: “The ministers and generals lied to us, claiming that war was necessary for security. After three years of hell, what is the result? Eternal war, the mass killing and destruction of Palestinians in Gaza, settler terrorism, and the destruction of livelihoods of poor people in Lebanon and Iran… Who is this good for? The Netanyahu government, the leaders of the settler right, the arms companies, the banks… And what is the ‘solution’ of Golan and Eisenkot? To have more ultra-Orthodox youth bear the burden of war and occupation – equality in carnage.” 

The pamphlet was written by a protest movement called the Socialist Struggle Movement, a so-called Marxist/Trotskyist organization that called for a “protest vote” for the Joint List in Israel. While it vehemently condemned every other Israeli party, from both the Change and Netanyahu blocs, it stated that “the Joint List is the only party that consistently opposes eternal war.” But, if the Joint List is the solitary righteous party, what good is it partnering with those that support “carnage”? 

One could dismiss this pamphlet as coming from a radical branch formally unaffiliated with the political party, like Marx21 to Die Linke in Germany. But the rhetoric of Joint List politicians is not far off. Jewish Hadash MK Ofer Cassif is infamous for pointlessly provocative stunts, such as calling Israel’s bombing of Gaza in response to the Hamas attack in October 2023 a Nazi “final solution,” and, when he was still a professor at Hebrew University, calling former Jewish Home Party Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked “neo-Nazi scum”. Many of his statements have resulted in several-month suspensions from the Knesset: with constant parliamentary absences, he is more full-time activist than elected official. Ta’al MK Ahmad Tibi has given speeches praising Palestinian “martyrs”; Hadash MK Ayman Odeh recorded a video from Jerusalem’s Damascus Gate calling on Arabs serving in Israeli security forces to quit and refuse to participate in the “occupation forces”; and Balad party leader Sami Abu Shehadeh withdrew his Joint List candidacy following uproar over an article he wrote on October 8, 2023 praising the Hamas attack on October 7. On Wednesday, in an interview with a Qatari television station, Shehadeh called Yashar leader Gadi Eisenkot a “racist” for refusing to commit to partnership with the Arab parties, saying Israel was a “racist society.”

This ignores the fact that, unlike Bennett or Lieberman, Eisenkot did not rule out partnership with Arabs on principle. He previously stated that he could not partner with either Ra’am or the Joint List since they did not meet his terms, namely: to recognize Israel as a Jewish and democratic state; accept the values expressed in Israel’s Declaration of Independence; denounce Hamas as a terrorist organization and support its dismantlement; and accept mandatory national or military service for Arab Israelis. On Tuesday, according to the Guardian, Hadash Secretary General Amjad Shbita said that Eisenkot was “in no position” to establish conditions on partnership with the Joint List. “We will negotiate as equals,” said Shbita. 

But the Joint List has itself established conditions on partnership with the Change Bloc. Joint List Chair Yousef Jabareen stated weeks before the election that the Joint List would not formally join a Change Bloc coalition, but instead provide support to a minority government so long as its demands were met. “After the election, we’ll impose our conditions on any political constellation in Israel,” said Jabareen. “We have full freedom of action.” Its conditions included: more funding to fight crime in Arab communities, stopping the home demolitions of families of Palestinian terrorists, and creating a political roadmap towards a Palestinian state. Jabareen emphasized that Joint List support would be absolutely conditional on these terms. 

The Joint List’s goals are laudable. But its strategy and rhetoric are not one of a party – in the words of MK Odeh in an interview on Wednesday – looking to “extend a hand to anyone who wants to… pave the way for an alternative government.” It is that of a group looking to extract concessions from the Israeli government while continuing to formally “oppose” it. This is not true partnership. It is cynical quid pro quo, reminiscent of the attitude of the (also anti-Zionist) ultra-Orthodox parties. 

It’s true that Lieberman and Bennett have made campaign promises refusing to partner with the Arab parties, stressing the importance of a uniformly “Zionist” – meaning, Jewish – coalition, perverting the meaning of Zionism into an ethnic category rather than a democratic commitment. Ra’am, a Muslim party, has more Zionist bona fides than any of the Jewish parties in the outgoing coalition: it respects Israeli democracy and the rule of law, recruited a Jewish centrist politician to demonstrate the importance of Jewish-Arab partnership, and explicitly advocates for Arab Israelis to participate in voluntary Israeli national service programs. As manifestly proven by Mansour Abbas and his party, Zionism is not a question of religion, it is a question of commitment to supporting Israel as a Jewish democracy. 

The blanket rejection of Arab parties by Israel Beitenu and Beyachad is wrong. It is racist, anti-democratic, and it feeds a false narrative entrenched by Netanyahu that Israeli governance must be exclusively Jewish, when over 20% of its population is Arab. It is also wrong for Eisenkot to subject the Arab parties to strict policy and ideological conditions, especially while giving Jewish parties on the hard right like Bennett and Lieberman a free pass. But this attitude finds a mirror image in the radicalism of the Joint List and its inability to rhetorically commit to true and pragmatic partnership with other parties in the Change Bloc, even if it disagrees with them. People in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. The Joint List criticizes the Israeli government for refusing to recognize a Palestinian state, while it in turn refuses to recognize a Jewish state. 

The successes of Tuesday’s election – which saw a historic voter turnout and a record combined 19 seats for the Arab parties Ra’am and the Joint List, as well as 21 seats for a completely new party led by Eisenkot – did not come from conditional acceptance or exclusionary narratives. It came from partnership. During the disastrous 2022 elections, division and factionalism on the left led to Netanyahu’s election. This time around, there were unions everywhere: in the center-right with Beyachad (a merger between Bennett and Lapid), on the Jewish left with the Democrats (Labor and Meretz), and on the Arab left through the Joint List (Balad and Hadash-Ta’al.) The central campaign promise of all of these parties, ranging from the national religious Bennett faction to the Arab nationalist Balad, was “change.”

But there can be no change if any of the parties in Netanyahu’s coalition come to power. Improving Israel after sixteen years of Netanyahu leadership – and four years of an acutely destructive coalition – will take resilience and a commitment to rebuilding democratic discourse. It will take a totally new government that is willing to make compromises in order to move forward, and prioritize true partnership over factionalism and ego. The ultimate goal is to remain unified to prevent another election and another chance for Netanyahu to regain power. Einsenkot, Bennett and Lieberman must abandon their conditionality and principled rejection of Arab parties. In return, the Joint List must decide whether it wants to be part of a government that will make a change, or not. Offering its support on a tenuous vote-by-vote basis, thereby increasing the likelihood of a government collapse, is a recipe for failure. 

Good democratic governance is incompatible with religious exclusivity or performative ideological purity. It implies accountability for both successes and failures, and requires pragmatism and the ability to see the reality of the other. Good governance means promoting respect, the rule of law and equality, while working together to improve the country as a whole. Other than the Democrats and Ra’am, neither the Change Bloc parties nor the Joint List have demonstrated this. Hopefully they will soon.