Vol. 73/No. 13      April 6, 2009

In spite of its victory earlier this year in the war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, the long delay reflects that Tel Aviv cannot solve the most fundamental problems it faces—the still-growing number of Arab citizens of Israel and their ongoing fight for equality and against discrimination and what to do about Gaza and the West Bank.

Binyamin Netanyahu, whose Likud party came in second place—one seat behind outgoing prime minister Ehud Olmert's Kadima—could have formed a ruling coalition with a slim majority much sooner. But he delayed in the hopes of putting together a "national unity" government that would exclude the most extremist of the right-wing parties.

Netanyahu previously won commitments from the third place Yisrael Beiteinu (Israel Is Our Home) party and the small rightist Shas party.

On March 24 the fourth-place social-democratic Labor Party, led by Ehud Barak, the current defense minister, agreed to join the Netanyahu-led coalition, in spite of opposition by many in Labor. Defections by Labor members of parliament could still leave Likud with a slim margin.

Kadima leader Tzipi Livni, the current foreign minister, has rejected Netanyahu's offer to join the coalition, saying she would not serve in a "right-wing extremist government under Likud."

The United Arab List, Balad, and Hadash, three predominantly Israeli Arab-based parties in the parliament, won 10 seats in the elections, but are not part of negotiations to form the new government.  
 
No more 'Greater Israel'
All the main bourgeois political parties based in the Jewish population in Israel recognize that a "Greater Israel" including large parts of the West Bank, much less the Gaza Strip, is no longer possible.

Most, including Likud, Kadima, Yisrael Beiteinu, and Labor, say they are in favor of some kind of "two-state" solution: a Palestinian state, with a police force but no army and the Israeli government still in control of its airspace, side by side with a Jewish state.

But the parties don't agree on how to do that or what its borders should be. Neither do they have confidence that this would permanently block the aspiration of Palestinians to return to lands that were taken away from them since the creation of Israel in 1948, or end the struggle against racist discrimination inside Israel itself.

Yisrael Beiteinu's Avigdor Lieberman, who is expected to be the new foreign minister, has provoked the biggest controversy. He calls for incorporating into Israel areas of the West Bank occupied by Jewish settlers, while separating some predominantly Arab parts of Israel, including sections of Jerusalem, and placing them under the control of the Palestinian Authority. Kadima's Livni has supported this. Other parties say that Israel should never give up any part of Jerusalem.

There are also disagreements over the power of government-funded religious courts. Rabbinical courts for Jews, Sharia courts for Muslims, and separate courts for Christians and Druze have exclusive jurisdiction in marriage and in most cases, divorce. Civil unions are not recognized. Thousands of Russian immigrants, who are a key base of support for Lieberman, are not recognized as Jewish by the rabbinical court, and therefore unable to marry.

Jews, Muslims, and Christians cannot intermarry. If they can afford to, some who can’t marry by the religious courts get married outside Israel. Their marriage is then recognized under civil law when they return.

Lieberman campaigned that he would support "civil unions" in some cases, but rapidly threw his pledge overboard so that Netanyahu could keep the rightist Shas party, which opposes any loosening of marriage laws, in the emerging coalition.

In its latest issue, the U.S.-based Jewish Forward published an opinion piece titled "Avigdor Lieberman's Bright Idea." Written by Hebrew University of Jerusalem professor Sergio DellaPergola, the article is not tongue in cheek.

DellaPergola backs Lieberman's land-and-people swap. This is not a "far-right" idea, he writes, noting that Labor Party leader Barak said in 2002 "such an exchange makes demographic sense and is not inconceivable."

The professor notes that while Israel's 1.4 million Arabs are at least 20 percent of the inhabitants of the country today, "25 percent of all births in Israel are to Arab families." He worries that by 2020 the Arab population could be 30 percent and Israel would become a "bi-national state" not the "Jewish state that most Israelis prefer."

Israeli Arabs have waged hundreds, if not thousands, of struggles over the past decades to take on widespread discrimination, the continued occupation of the West Bank and assaults on the Gaza Strip, and evictions of Palestinians from their homes and land. In many of these fights they have won significant support from Jewish Israelis.  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home