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PDF FormatWhile Arab MKs normally avoid explicit support for violence against Israelis, preferring instead transparent innuendoes well-understood by their constituents (primarily in order to avoid Knesset censure or possible criminal charges), unambiguous support for terrorist activities is not entirely absent. Consider, for example, a statement by Taleb El-Sana in an August 2001 interview for Abu Dhabi television, concerning a shooting attack in the center of Tel Aviv:
This is a case of an act of special quality, in the sense that it was targeted not against civilians but against soldiers in the heart of the State of Israel. Israelis have to understand that if there is no security for Palestinians, there will be no security for Israelis either. Just as they [i.e., the IDF] reach Nablus, so the Palestinians reach Tel Aviv.
He added that “there is no cause here for guilt feelings; we shall not apologize for it. This is a legitimate struggle of the first order for the Palestinians, and it was carried out against soldiers and not against women and children.”51
Indeed, the idea that certain types of Israelis—settlers or soldiers—are fair game for terrorist groups is frequently advanced by Arab MKs. When Saleh Saleem (Hadash) was asked in 1998 about his attitude towards the Hamas squads that kill Israeli soldiers in ambushes, he answered: “Every person has the right to act in occupied territory against soldiers who are abusing the population. The Palestinian people has suffered greatly. Every occupied people has acted in the same way.” Nor does Saleem have any particular sympathy for the loss of life among the Jewish families living across the Green Line; in his view, the Jews in Hebron “are neither citizens nor soldiers; they are mosquitoes.”52 In an interview, Hashem Mahameed explained why he would not protest if Palestinians attacked a settlers’ bus in the occupied areas, even if there were children aboard: “If a child rides a settlers’ bus or [a bus] with armed occupation soldiers, do you really expect them not to be attacked because of one child who might be sitting with them and who might be hurt?”53
Even when MKs are pressured into denouncing an attack on Israelis, their criticism is frequently forced or accompanied by explanations that place the real onus on Israel by ascribing to it acts of terror of a more extensive and severe nature. In an interview in 1999, Dehamshe said the Palestinian suicide bombers “were compelled to blow themselves up” because the settlers were killing Palestinians.54 Referring to Hezbollah attacks in northern Israel, Hashem Mahameed said he had no wish to see Jewish civilians killed by bombs launched by the Shi’ite organization, but added immediately that Israel bears responsibility for the casualties since Hezbollah’s attacks are a result of Israeli policies, because those attacks would not have occurred if there were peace.55 Similarly, Ahmed Tibi blamed Israel for the kidnapping of three Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah in September 2000 since, he said, Israel invented the practice of abduction in the first place. “The Lebanese resistance was forced to abduct the soldiers,” he told the Kul al-Arab newspaper in May 2001, “in light of the mindset of the Israeli leadership and its stupidity.”56 Muhammad Barakeh offered a similar opinion in an interview in the Jerusalem weekly Kol Ha’ir in October of last year:
I think that Hassan Nasrallah and Lebanese nationalism—that is, the Hezbollah and others—did what they were entitled to do and had to do: To take action to drive out the Israeli occupiers…. To resist the occupation, they were forced to kidnap three soldiers after the Israelis kidnapped several Hezbollah leaders…. Israel kidnapped [Mustafa] Dirani and [Sheikh Abd al-Karim] Obeid and thereby behaved like the Mafia and not like a state…. The behavior of the Israeli establishment was what led to the kidnapping of the soldiers.57
However, the Arab MKs save the brunt of their contempt for those Arabs who choose to assist Israel—Israeli Arabs serving in the IDF, Palestinians providing Israel with information on terrorist groups in the territories, soldiers in the South Lebanese Army, Arabs who sell land to Jews, and others. These they label as traitors to their people, who may be legitimately killed. During a tour of the Old City of Jerusalem by the Knesset Internal Affairs Committee in August 1998, Saleh Saleem, then Hadash faction chairman and deputy speaker of the Knesset, expressed his opinion about Arabs who sell land to Jews. “I am surprised at the Palestinians for putting an end to their policy of assassinating Arab land dealers who betray their people,” he said. “They should be ‘taken out,’ turned into hamburger meat.” In an interview with an Israeli Arab newspaper, he added that these “traitors” belong in the trash dump at Ramat Hovav.58 Similarly, Muhammad Barakeh told Kol Ha’ir in October 2001 that he was certainly “against the death penalty anywhere,” but then added that “there is no doubt that the collaborators are one of the worst infected abscesses of Palestinian society…. [The Palestinian people] cannot tolerate subhuman creatures in their midst, who are in the service of those who starve, oppress, and occupy.”59 Hashem Mahameed recalled his reaction to a murder committed in Umm el-Fahm while he served as the city’s mayor:
I saw a man lying dead on the floor and asked what happened. They told me: It is a collaborator. I will be frank with you—I felt nothing for him. His blood is worthless…. I sat down and drank coffee…. If somebody else had been killed, I might have fasted for a whole day, because I cannot eat when someone has died. But this simply did not move me. These men worked against the interests of their own people.60
In general, Arab members of Knesset do not view as legitimate any assistance given to the Israeli authorities by Arab citizens, even when that assistance is required to prevent acts of terror against civilians in Israeli population centers. The charge of treason they level at any Arab who works against those fighting Israel is as uncompromising as their support for this struggle is enthusiastic.
V
The prevailing consensus among the current generation of Arab political leaders in Israel negates the Jewish state and accords broad legitimacy to the struggle against it. A number of reasons may be cited to explain the change that came to pass in the last two decades: The improvement in economic and educational standards for Israeli Arabs gradually reduced their sense of helplessness vis-a-vis the Jewish majority; the freedom of movement across what had been an international border prior to the Six Day War helped foster a sense of fraternity with the Palestinians in the territories and rekindled powerful national sentiments; and the setbacks Israel suffered from time to time in its ongoing conflict with its enemies provided encouragement that the Jewish state was not invincible. Ahmed Tibi’s description of his response to the news that the Egyptian army had crossed the Suez Canal in 1973 offers a telling example:
To hear that any Arab has succeeded in breaking out of the bubble of defeat, and that an Arab flag was flying over liberated Arab land, was a source of pride…. I have no doubt that this was the overall feeling of the Arabs in Israel. Anyone who says otherwise is being misleading and not telling the truth…. I am certain that at least some Arabs… hoped to humble the Israeli arrogance…. When you hope the Egyptians will conquer Sinai and the Syrians the Golan, it is clear what the results will be.61
The sense of pride Tibi describes has grown whenever Israel has been put on the defensive: During the Yom Kippur War and its aftermath; the energy crisis and Israel’s international isolation during the 1970s; the internal crisis that developed in the wake of Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982; the frustration caused by Israel’s inability to deal with the Intifada when it first broke out in late 1987; and culminating in the revolutionary change of Israeli policies in the 1993 Oslo accords, the creation of the Palestinian Authority, and the dependence of the Rabin government on Arab MKs to sustain its parliamentary majority. These events played a considerable role in shaping the attitudes of the new generation of Arab leaders in Israel, and in creating the model of a political leader who would truly represent them: An MK whose self-confidence (and parliamentary immunity) enabled him to challenge the foundations upon which the country had been established.
Paradoxically, the greatest shift in the attitudes of Arab leaders in Israel happened in the 1990s, at a time when the Arab population was making its most significant advances towards integration into Israeli society, on both the symbolic and substantive levels: It was during this time, for example, that government child allowances, originally reserved for families of IDF veterans (and subsequently extended, in other ways, to the haredi population that does not serve in the army) were extended to the Arab sector; the Arab population benefited substantially from the National Health Law, which extended health-care benefits to all citizens while placing the principal burden—billions of shekels’ worth—on Jewish taxpayers; and the High Court issued its landmark ruling regarding the community of Katzir, which for the first time undermined the legitimacy of establishing exclusively Jewish communities.62 These changes, and others like them, clearly did not presume to resolve all Arab grievances, to eliminate the economic disparity between Arabs and Jews, or to undo the preferential status accorded to the Jewish collective. But they reflected an unprecedented willingness on the part of the Israeli authorities to recognize the needs and sensitivities of the Arab community, to the extent of challenging some of the basic elements in the character of the state. Just when the Arabs’ struggle for equality was beginning to bear real fruit, the change of course by their political leadership has made it clear to the Jewish majority that the national struggle, rather than civic equality, is their main priority. Indeed, no one aspiring to leadership of the Arab community in Israel can hope to win public support without placing the struggle against the Jewish state at the forefront of his agenda.
