Democracy? Israel Bars Arab Parties from Election

By Jonathan Cook, AlterNet. Posted January 16, 2009.

The only three Arab parties represented in the Israeli parliament vowed yesterday to fight a decision by the Central Elections Committee to bar them from running in next month's general election.

In an unprecedented move signaling a further breakdown in Jewish-Arab relations inside Israel, all the main Jewish parties voted on Monday for the blanket disqualification. Several committee members equated the Arab parties' vocal support for the Gazan people with support for terrorism.

The decision follows the arrest of at least 600 Arab demonstrators since the outbreak of the Gaza offensive and the interrogation by the secret police of dozens of Arab community leaders. The three parties -- the National Democratic Assembly, the United Arab List and the Renewal Movement -- have seven legislators out of a total of 120 in the Israeli parliament, the Knesset.

The elections committee barred all three from putting up candidates for the Feb 10 election on the grounds that they had violated a 2002 law by refusing to recognize Israel as a Jewish state and by supporting a terrorist organization.

Ahmed Tibi, the leader of Renewal, denounced the decision as "a political trial led by a group of fascists and racists who are willing to see the Knesset without Arabs and want to see the country without Arabs".

A petition against the disqualification will be heard by a panel of Supreme Court justices this week.

Hassan Jabareen, the director of the Adalah legal rights group, which represents the Arab parties, noted that the disqualification motion had been introduced by far right-wing parties. Such parties include Yisrael Beiteinu, which campaigns for the country's 1.2 million-strong Arab minority to be stripped of citizenship.

"It is absurd that the committee is backing a motion from racist parties in the Knesset to exclude the Arab parties whose platform is that Israel must be made into a proper democracy treating all its citizens equally.”

The elections committee is composed of representatives from all the major parties. Although it has voted for disqualification of Arab candidates before, it is the first time both that the left-wing Labor Party has backed such a motion and that all the Arab parties have been included in the ban.

Mr. Jabareen accused the right-wing parties of exploiting the war atmosphere. Labor's secretary general, Eitan Cabel, called his party's conduct in voting for the disqualification "patriotic".

All the Arab parties have harshly criticized the attack on Gaza. This week Mr. Tibi described Israeli actions as "genocide", while Ibrahim Sarsour, of the United Arab List, said Israel was seeking to "eliminate the Palestinian cause".

In the past, Arab Knesset members have also upset their Jewish colleagues by travelling to neighboring Arab states, defying a change in the law to prevent such visits.

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