Any time the subject of Arab legislators or Arab parties in Israel comes up, someone always feels the tiresome need to mouth off about how horrible Arab members of Knesset are. With crocodile tears, they accuse those MKs of manipulating or forgetting Arab citizens and getting lost in their occupation obsession (a thin guise for their real goal which is the destruction of Israel), instead of working to improve the lives of their voters.
With all due respect, I’d like to blow this nonsense out of the water with a few facts.
A recent quantitative study by the Abraham Fund released just a few months ago 2013 examined legislative activity from a 19-month period during the previous (18th) Knesset. It did not examine all 17 Arab MKs, but chose to focus on 11 who are most often accused of the things above (10 of them from Arab parties, one from Labor). Here are some of the findings:
– 1,107 private bills were proposed; 158 of them were submitted by the 11 Arab legislators. That’s 14 percent of the total, although those MKs make up less than 10 percent of the Knesset. Assuming the remaining six MKs submitted some bills, the actual percentage submitted by Arab MKs is presumably higher.
– Three of those bills involved the occupation; two involved Arab Israeli citizens, and had something to do with the conflict. Together, those five bills made up three percent of the bills submitted.
– The remaining 153 bills, 97 percent, addressed civic issues such as improved administration, narrowing socio-economic gaps, adjusting distortions and preferential treatment in existing laws.
– Parliamentary activity such as short speeches, calls to order, or queries to ministerial committees were also categorized. One-quarter had to do with the occupation; 46 percent had to do with Arab Israeli citizens and 29 percent were issues related to Israeli society in general.
A quick glance at some of the individual MKs provides a snapshot of their activities:
– Hanin Zoabi of Balad, best known in Jewish Israeli society for her participation in the Gaza flotilla and as the target of attacks by right-wing nationalist parties, was the most active MK of all in 2012 in posing queries to ministers about gender issues, according to the Israel Women’s Network’s 2012 Knesset monitoring report. While this does not seem as exciting as proposing bills, it is worth remembering that most bills proposed by Arab MKs are quashed anyway. Therefore, parliamentary activity by other means is not surprising.
– Ahmed Tibi, from the United Arab List-Ta’al is commonly viewed as a firebrand on Palestinian issues; most recently for heckling Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper during a speech on his recent visit. He is less known for his most recent parliamentary activity, submitting a bill, together with other MKs, regarding the rights of women who have been sexually or physical abused in the family. According to the Open Knesset resource site, he is a very present parliamentarian, scoring high on both the number of hours spent in the Knesset and in committee meetings, relative to other MKs (Zoabi is on the low side).
– Afu Agbaria and Muhammed Barakeh of Hadash do not have a great attendance record, but their recent legislative initiatives are completely oriented towards improving Israeli society: they recently sponsored bills to prevent discrimination in insurance policies, and Agbaria was among the sponsors of a bill to protect the rights of the terminally ill. These initiatives are hardly subversive, or even exclusive to the Arab sector, for that matter.
– Basel Ghattas from Balad has high marks for hours spent in the Knesset and very high attendance at committee meetings. Among his recent activity was the revival of a bill to annul the special status of the Jewish National Fund (JNF). Sounds provocative? Why attack the nice organization that plants trees in the Land of Israel? Here’s a very brief summary:
The JNF was established over a century ago to purchase land for Jews from Arab owners under Ottoman rule. After 1948, the Israeli government sold “absentee” lands to the JNF – property whose Arab residents or owners fled during the war – a process enabled by Israeli law. The organization then continued implementing its policy of selling land only to Jews. To make things worse, the Israel Lands Authority, a governmental agency, administers JNF land – making the state a collaborator in a policy of outright ethnic discrimination. There has been a legal battle over these issues due to challenges by civil society groups in recent years. This isn’t just about abstract principles; land appropriations and restrictions remain one of the biggest problems constraining development and living standards of Arab community in Israel. From the Arab perspective, this is has a real impact on people’s lives.
Another way to gauge if they represent their constituencies is to ask those voters. The Abraham Fund report cites Sami Smooha,who does the most rigorous polling of the Arab community. Smooha found that over the last decade, the portion of Arabs who feel the parties represent their communities faithfully rose from 53 to 62 percent – a clear majority, at a time of overriding cynicism in general in the Western world about politicians. There’s no doubt that Arab-Palestinian Israelis also have plenty of frustrations with their representatives, which I’ve heard them say in focus groups, no different from Jewish Israelis.
These are just a few observations. But it’s time to end this desperate, cheap accusation against Arab MKs once and for all. They are not angels and they are not perfect, which makes them very much like Jewish MKs. But they simply cannot be delegitimized for poor parliamentary work, and their vocal scenes regarding Palestinians do not cover up any lack of activity on behalf of the citizens of Israel. Apparently, those issues are actually a matter of genuine and urgent concern.
Read more:
To fight anti-democratic legislation, Palestinian citizens must unite
Knesset raises threshold, putting Arab parties at risk
Why the electoral threshold stokes internal conflict