Can the United Arab Emirates change Israeli politics from within? | New Israel-Palestine Conflict

Seeing the political drama surrounding Benjamin Netanyahu output, The novelty of Israeli politics disappeared almost in the background: for the first time in Israeli history in Mansour Abbas United Arab List (Ra’am) became part of a coalition government.

However, Ra’am has a hard time working to draw attention to the Palestinian electorate and walk the fine line between being a sensible partner of Israel’s far right.

Although the Palestinians make up nearly 20% of the Israeli population, the voice of the minority has traditionally been left out of the decision-making process.

Their representatives were personae non-gratae, unwelcome, not only in ultra-Orthodox and right-wing circles, but also in left-wing and liberal parties.

Following the March 2020 elections, Ra’am offered support to the center-left coalition below Benny Gantz. However, Gantz refused the offer – fearing the right-wing camp would move away as an Arab brother and instead joined a coalition with rival Netanyahu – an opportunity he will now regret.

Thanks to Netanyahu, who in the past tended to politicize the Arab question frequently and tend to arouse antipathy against them, Ra’am is now a member of the Israeli government.

“He broke a taboo, ironically, the Netanyahu camp, tried to get the support of the Arabs from the Netanyahu coalition and failed. The methods used were quite reprehensible,” Benjamin Neuberger, a professor of political science at the Open University of Israel, told Al Jazeera.

However, Netanyahu legitimized Ra’am, which allowed the anti-Netanyahu camp – the Block of Change – to join the Ra’am coalition.

“From now on, any coalition with the Arab party has become legitimate – and that’s the first time in Israeli history,” Neuberger said.

Within the system

However, it is not the political landscape that has witnessed the change, but also Israeli society. In February 2020, polls indicated that only 23% of Jewish voters would support the idea that the Arab parties in the country should support an Israeli government. In April 2021, polls found that 48% of Jewish voters heated up on that idea.

Ra’am became more and more aware that he could achieve more within the system.

Normally, the Palestinian issue would dominate the electoral programs of the Arab parties, but the participation of the Arab community remained relatively low. This year’s turnout was the worst in history, at 44.6 percent.

However, this indifference to politics forced the Arab parties to make a paradigm shift by prioritizing Palestinians in the occupied territories and improving the living conditions of voters of Israeli Palestinian citizens. It made sense to change the strategy, as Palestinian citizens who vote first have an interest in their own destiny.

Arab parties are responding to the changing mood of voters, who are increasingly interested in the issues of bread and butter: increased criminal violence in Arab towns and villages; education; social services; discrimination in employment and municipal budgets, Neuberger said.

“Ra’am was successful with the trend.”

However, although Ra’am has benefited from this new reality in Israel, the status quo does not necessarily represent the future. Among Jews, fundamental concerns about Ra’am remain about defense, public safety, and foreign policy.

Ra’am naturally advocates the creation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, with East Jerusalem as its capital. It also supports the equal rights of Palestinian citizens of Israel. However, Ra’am is also ideologically aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood of Youth and the Hamas that are now banned in Egaza. The latter, in particular, raises difficult questions that the coalition will have to answer, especially if the conflict with Gaza erupts again.

Ra’am is on the right track, especially with regard to the Israel-Palestine conflict.

However, Neuberger said the first change in this issue will not be brought about by Ra’am because he has become part of the coalition that agreed to engage the center and even the left-wing right-wing party. coalition.

“This commitment has made it easier for Ra’am to join the coalition,” he said.

‘Ideological concessions’

However, the fact that forces have joined forces with the Israeli far right will certainly be seen by some as a betrayal of the Palestinian cause. In an attempt to disprove the idea, Mansour Abbas Ra’am’s leader has shown his claim by following the plan previously advocated by the ultra-Orthodox religious party SHAS, Neuberger said.

“Abbas will make ideological concessions, such as accepting Zionism and recognizing the Jewish state in exchange for support from his party’s interests, such as subsidies for his schools.”

However, given that Ra’am has only four seats in the Knesset, the coalition will respond more to the Jewish majority, which seems natural.

It seems that the fundamental change from now on will be of greater importance to the Arab minority than before, Neuberger said.

For his party’s vote, Abbas called for additional funding for the Arab sector. Prime Ministers Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid agreed and doubled the budget for the five-year plan to develop Israel’s Arab sector to 35 billion shekels ($ 10.75 million).

Moreover, Ra’am obtained recognition from three subsequent illegal Bedouin peoples in the Negev desert, a district made up mainly of Israeli religious or nationalist Palestinian citizens. It represents a fundamental change in Israeli politics – with the Knesset’s ability to represent issues for the benefit of Palestine.

“This is the first time in Israel’s history that the Arab national party is part of the government and is dependent on its vote to form, survive and legislate. It is an unprecedented situation – unlike Rabin’s coalition in 1992-95 when Arab parties supported the government from the opposition,” Al said Jazeerei Sammy Smooha Professor of Sociology at the University of Haifa.

“Ra’am’s main goal in this coalition is to act as the main representative of the Arab Arabs and to have more representatives than other leading bodies in Alava, such as the Unified List, the Council of Arab Local Council Leaders and the High Member. -Top Committee.”

Therefore, Ra’am is likely to continue to implement other policies, such as allocating land for public needs and housing in Alava, the war on violence and crime in the Arab sector, and building an Arab university in Galilee, Smooha said.

Above all, the problems of crime are becoming increasingly devastating in Arab communities as homicides continue to escalate.

However, the representation will not form charges that appear as Ra’am.

Bennett, who once called Abbas a “terrorist aide,” is in favor of a Jewish settlement policy and is a staunch opponent of the Palestinian state. In fact, most coalition members are right-wing nationalists, perhaps critical of Netanyahu’s character, but not necessarily of his policies.

How many concessions can be thought of in such an environment?

The political involvement of an Arab party is unlikely to lead to reconciliation between Jews and Muslims. The latest religious unrest has shown how fragile coexistence remains.

However, with the historic coalition agreement, Israeli citizens of Israel are no longer pariahs. In the long run, some experts say it could bring Jewish and Arab citizens closer together – if a very heterogeneous coalition can be maintained.

‘New dynamics’

Moreover, Ra’am’s involvement may contribute to some sort of relaxation of the fronts, as radical steps such as the annexation of the occupied territories could mark the end of the coalition.

“The new dynamic is that the government cannot ignore the needs and goals of the Arab minority in the civic field and can jeopardize survival if it crosses the red lines in the national area,” Smooha said.

Smooha said these red lines will be in the new Israeli government, which is the aforementioned civil and socio-economic demands or in the subsequent Israeli war in Gaza.

However, the chances of crossing the two red lines are “not great,” he added.

Despite a promising change in Israeli politics, Ra’am is now in a precarious situation where his ability to maneuver between ideology and reality appears to be quite limited.

His role and behavior in the coalition are likely to be presented as an experiment that the Arab parties in government will consider legitimate or have failed and will hinder progress in the future.