Is racism keeping Arab parties out of Israel’s government?

The Times of Israel · Eilon Schwartz ·

The divide between Jewish and Arab parties is rooted in national conflict and mutual distrust. Overcoming it requires more than invoking democratic rights

One of the least understood, but most significant results of these elections is the unprecedented voter turnout of Israeli Arab-Palestinians, and perhaps even more significantly, the refusal of Jewish-Zionist parties from the center and right to consider them as potential coalition partners. This is getting increasing attention overseas as evidence for the exclusionary nature and inherent racism of the very idea of a Jewish state. For those who aren’t simply looking for talking points to prove that Israel is an illegitimate state in the family of nations, I’d like to take a more serious look at what is happening, and what is at stake.

Portraying the refusal by most Zionist political parties to sit in a government with Arab parties as racism imposes a frame lifted directly from the American experience onto an Israeli reality with a very different history and political context. Such framing is a form of intellectual colonialism; its effect is to confuse rather than to clarify. The underlying problem is not race but national conflict.

Jews and Arabs are far more politically integrated than one is led to believe. Looking at a local level brings this into focus. In all seven mixed Jewish-Arab cities, elected Arab city council members have joined governing coalitions, regardless of the mayor’s national political affiliations. In April 2021, while Benjamin Netanyahu was searching for a way to reach the elusive 61-seat coalition to form a government, the religious Jewish Likud mayor of Lod urged him to consider governing with Mansour Abbas, the leader of Ra’am. Mayor Revivo wrote on his Facebook page, accompanied by a picture of his coalition: “As someone who heads a mixed city whose governing coalition includes the right, the left, Arabs, ultra-Orthodox Jews, and immigrants, I know that it’s difficult – but certainly possible.”

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