PAREDES DIVISORIAS Y DE CIERRE 4.6 VIGAS Y ARCOS Paredes divisorias de ladrillo de 0.20m de espesor y un puntal

It was not until the 1990s that Palestinians in Israel saw the rise of a significant and durable national political force. The National Democratic Assembly (NDA), also known as Al-Tajammu and Balad, was formed in 1996 by Azmi Bishara (who left the DFPE during the 1980s), together with former members of Abna’a Al-Balad and the Progressive List for Peace (PLP, a Palestinian national party that ran for the Knesset in the 1980s) who were dismayed by the failure of the Palestinian national movement to become a leading representative force among ’48 Palestinians. The signing of the 1993 Oslo Accord left the ’48 Palestinians outside of the Palestinian question, officially fortifying their position as an internal issue of the Jewish state. Articulating a political strategy and vision was an urgent task. This crisis provided a fruitful ground for the emergence of the NDA. The rise of the NDA, this chapter argues, marks the rise of ’48 Palestinian nationalism as a liberal national movement – a development that should be understood in light of the global rise of minority rights regimes and liberal multiculturalism.

Responding to the challenges of the post-Oslo Accord era, the agenda of the NDA involved organising the Arabs in Israel as a national minority. Strengthening the Palestinian identity, the party contended, was necessary in light of decades-long efforts

by the state to create the Arab-Israeli as a dislocated and ahistorical subject. As Edward Said notes, ‘even the assertion of Palestinian identity therefore takes on the form of a political challenge’ (Said 1979b, 14). The NDA was critical of the DFPE for its exclusive focus on class and for its narrow negative conception of equality as the lack of discrimination (Bishara 1993). The NDA instead argued that demands should be made on a collective rather than individual level.

The idea of a Jewish and democratic state, the NDA further argued, is an oxymoron. No equality is possible without questioning the structure of the state as a Jewish state. The NDA demanded the transformation of the State of Israel from a Jewish state to ‘a state of all its citizens’ that would recognise the national collective rights of both ’48 Palestinians and Israeli-Jews (as opposed to world Jewry). Under this framework, Palestinians in Israel would be recognised as a national minority and would be entitled to cultural autonomy as specified in international law (Haklai 2011).

The NDA’s political program and ideology were inspired – and influenced – by the global rise of the minority rights regime and liberal multicultural ideology. The new rhetoric employed – and idealised – Western liberal multiculturalism and international law. In his writings, Bishara invokes the Quebecois model of autonomy in Canada, the examples of Belgium and Switzerland, and the experience of the Basques in Spain (though ignoring the experiences of indigenous peoples in Anglophone settler colonialism) to justify claims for cultural autonomy and recognition (Bishara 1993). As Louer elaborates, ‘Tajammu [NDA] activists, explaining their goal, frequently drew attention to such multicultural societies as those of Britain and the United States, where ethnic groups enjoy de facto recognition’ (Louer 2007, 83, emphasis in original).

Relying on liberal and universal claims, the NDA challenged Israel’s claims to be a liberal democracy – the very premise of Israel’s legitimacy in the West. By exposing Israel’s refusal of the liberal demand to transform itself into ‘a state of all its citizens’, the NDA revealed the paradoxes at the heart of Israel’s claim to be a Jewish and democratic state. In Bhabha terms, the discourse of the NDA has subversively destabilised Israel’s identification with Western liberalism by reversing the gaze and positioning the

Palestinians in Israel as the carriers of the true commitment to democratic and liberal values.

Compared with the other Arab political parties, the NDA has taken a more confrontational approach towards the state. Its resistance as subversion has been antagonistic. Like the national movements that preceded it – such as Al-Ard, Abna’a Al-Balad, and the PLP – the NDA faces fierce state opposition and its leaders are the targets of political persecution. Since 1999, there have been four attempts to disqualify the party from running for the Knesset (1999, 2003, 2006 and 2009), with the Supreme Court overturning those actions. In addition, efforts were made to disqualify Azmi Bishara (2003) and Haneen Zoabi (2012, 2015) from running for the Knesset. In 2007, Bishara fled the country amid charges of treason and espionage.36

4.1 The Prospects of Palestinian Parliamentary Activity

In recent years, attempts to exclude Palestinian parties from participating in the Israeli elections have intensified. Before the 2015 legislative elections, the Knesset raised the electoral threshold from 2% to 3.25% in an effort to prevent Palestinian parties from being elected (Lis 2014a). As a result, for the first time in the history of the Palestinians in Israel, Palestinian parties formed an alliance (not unity) and established the Arab Joint List, which ran in the 2015 elections. This has been an important historical juncture in ’48 Palestinian politics, amid decades of fragmented leadership (Jamal 2006). The Joint List – an alliance of the DFPE, the NDP, the United Arab List and Ta’al – is the third- largest party in the Israeli Knesset.

36 _{In 1999, an appeal was made to the Supreme Court to disqualify Al-Tajammu (Erlich v Central Election}

Committee). In 2003, the Central Election Committee decided to disqualify Al-Tajammu from running as a party and to disqualify Azmi Bishara personally and Ahmad Tibi (Ta’al party) personally. The Supreme Court overturned these decisions (in accordance with the Basic Law, the Knesset demands Supreme Court approval for any decision by the Committee to disqualify a party or a person from running for election). In 2006, the Committee rejected a request to disqualify Al-Tajammu. In 2009, the Committee decided to disqualify the Al-Tajammu and Ta’al parties from running. The Supreme Court overturned these two decisions. In 2012, the Committee decided to disqualify Hanin Zoabi from running. The Supreme Court overturned this decision. In 2015, the Committee decided to disqualify Hanin Zoabi from running, rejecting a request to disqualify the Joint Party. The Supreme Court overturned this decision.

However, despite its significant electoral achievement, the party is marginalised, excluded and incited against. Arab MKs are seen as illegitimate and as a foreign element in the Knesset. Their presence in the Knesset, like their citizenship, is temporary, conditional, partial and vulnerable – an indulgence of the settler state. Recently, Palestinian MKs were accused by Jewish-Israeli MKs of being ‘agents of terror in the Knesset’ (Nahmias 2016), while the Prime Minister stated that ‘they don’t deserve to be MKs’ (quoted in Harkov 2016). Avi Dichter, a former head of the General Security Services and today an MK on behalf of the ruling Likud Party, contemplated ‘the merits of assassinating Mr Odeh [the head of the Joint List], before concluding it was not worth “wasting the ammunition”’ (Cook 2016).

The current political atmosphere is driving a serious debate among the Palestinians in Israel on whether they should continue to participate in the Israeli elections. Calls to boycott the elections and to transform the High Follow-Up Committee into a democratically elected representative body are gaining momentum. These calls have been prompted in light of Israel’s banning of the Islamic Movement Northern Branch (Ravid 2015) and its attempts to ban the NDP. Restrictions on Arab participation in the Knesset continue to be promoted. The Israeli government has recently approved a Bill that will enable the suspension of Arab MKs (Lis 2016). Passed on first reading, the Bill ‘grants powers to members of Knesset to suspend or depose serving MKs for political reasons’ (ACRI 2016). Under these conditions, the ability of Arab lawmakers to influence Israeli politics – let alone make significant achievements to benefit their constituency – is becoming even more limited.

The paradoxes that are at the heart of Palestinian parliamentary activity are best explained through an understanding of Israel as a liberal settler state (Robinson 2013) at the frontier stage of settlement (Wolfe 2013). As the history of ’48 Palestinian mobilisation shows, political movements have always been challenged, suppressed, restricted and surveilled by the state. However, paradoxically, participating in the Knesset has also provided some of the necessary conditions for Palestinian political organisation, and for the consolidation of the ’48 Palestinian national movement as a leading political force. The experiences of Al-Ard and Abna’a Al-Balad reveal the vulnerability inherent in operating outside Israeli parliamentary politics. At the same time, the history of participation in the

Knesset indicates a structural failure of parliamentary activity to secure equality, rights and basic protections.