{"id":38871,"date":"2019-04-05T11:23:57","date_gmt":"2019-04-05T11:23:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=38871"},"modified":"2019-04-05T11:23:57","modified_gmt":"2019-04-05T11:23:57","slug":"israels-arab-minority-urged-to-boycott-election-over-divisive-law","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=38871","title":{"rendered":"Israel\u2019s Arab minority urged to boycott election over divisive law"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\nHAIFA, Israel: Some of Israel\u2019s young Arab citizens are calling for a boycott of Tuesday\u2019s parliamentary election, dismayed by a recent law which they say reduces them to second-class citizens.
The pro-boycott activists, many of whom identify as Palestinian, have tried in the past to persuade others among Israel\u2019s Arab minority not to vote.
But this time, they say, they are tapping into anger over the 2018 law that declares only Jews have a right to self-determination in the \u201cnation-state\u201d of the Jewish people.
Leaders of Israel\u2019s main Arab parties are pushing for their voters to turn out, fearing a boycott would weaken the 21-percent Arab minority\u2019s representation in parliament, and boost Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu\u2019s election chances.
Ignoring the party leaders, dozens of activists from the \u201cPopular Campaign to Boycott the Zionist Knesset Elections\u201d have been handing out leaflets in the northern Israeli port city of Haifa, which has a mixed Jewish and Arab population, and in smaller Arab towns and villages.
\u201cThis is an attempt to boycott the body that actively tries to erase our Palestinian identity,\u201d said Joul Elias, a student from Haifa who turned up to distribute flyers in Wadi Nisnas, a majority Arab neighborhood in the city.
Israel\u2019s Arab minority comprises mainly descendants of the Palestinians who remained in their communities or were internally displaced after the 1948 war that surrounded Israel\u2019s creation.
According to figures released by Israel\u2019s Central Bureau of Statistics, there were 1.9 million Arabs in Israel\u2019s roughly 9 million population at the start of 2019. Most were Muslims, Christians or Druze. Jews made up 74.3 percent of the population.
Wake-up call<\/strong>
Despite holding Israeli citizenship, many Arabs say their communities, from the fertile Galilee in the north to the Negev desert in the south, face discrimination in areas such as health, education and housing.
Netanyahu\u2019s ruling Likud party counters that its 15 billion shekel ($4.19 billion) investment plan for the Arab sector \u201cis the largest such commitment in Israel\u2019s history,\u201d according to Eli Hazan, Likud\u2019s foreign affairs director.
But Netanyahu rekindled Arab resentment in March when he wrote on Instagram that \u201cIsrael is not a state of all its citizens.\u201d It was a reference, he said, to the new law, and the country being the homeland of the Jewish people.
Many in the Arab community saw the Instagram post as an echo of divisive comments he made in the 2015 election.
Hours before the polls closed on election day that year, Netanyahu said that Arabs were flocking \u201cin droves\u201d to cast ballots. This was an attempt to prod any complacent right-wing supporters to get out and vote for him.
\u201cThe nation-state law was like a wake-up call for many people, making them realize this country will never be a country for all its citizens,\u201d said Muhannad Abu Ghosh, 42, a pro-boycott activist from Haifa. But Ayman Odeh, an Arab legislator who heads the Hadash party, says that engagement is key to bringing about political changes that will benefit the Arab minority.
\u201cOur challenge, number one through five, is to increase the number of people who vote,\u201d he said.
He said some Arabs would, as they have in the past, vote for non-Arab center- or left-wing parties, but that even those votes \u201cplay a significant role in fighting right-wing extremism in Israel.\u201d
Arab legislators<\/strong>
Arabs have served in Israel\u2019s parliament since the country\u2019s founding, but low turnout and other factors have typically left them under-represented in the 120-seat body.
No Arab party has served in a governing coalition, meaning they have little say in shaping Israeli policies.
In the 2015 election, Israel\u2019s four Arab-dominated political parties united to form a \u201cJoint List\u201d that won 13 seats \u2014 their biggest representation yet.
But this time around they are divided, which is likely to further deter an already dismayed electorate from voting, say political analysts.
Arab voter turnout is expected to be just 51 percent, down from 64 percent in 2015, according to a recent poll from the Konrad Adenauer Program for Jewish-Arab Cooperation at Tel Aviv University. The poll projects nationwide turnout of 70 percent.
\u201cThe majority of Palestinians in Israel consider the Knesset election as a practical tool. If it helps them, they will go and vote,\u201d said As\u2019ad Ghanem, a professor of political science at the University of Haifa.
\u201cThis time, with the collapse of the Joint List and frustration with discriminatory practices, voter turnout will be low.\u201d
Ahmad Tibi, a veteran Arab legislator whose Ta\u2019al party has forged an alliance with Odeh, says Arab parties are likely to lose two Knesset seats in this election. But he doesn\u2019t see the nation state law or political division as a reason to boycott the vote.
\u201cYou can be a critic, you can have reservations, you can be angry at Arab parties or Arab,\u201d Tibi said. \u201cBut to be nonchalant and to sit aside is not the solution.\u201d
Still, the boycott movement\u2019s members, many of whom voted in previous elections, believe that grassroots activism is a more effective agent of change than voting.
Rula Nasr-Mazzawi, 43, a former activist with the Arab party Balad, says she left the faction and joined the boycott out of frustration with Arab parties\u2019 divisions in the face of what she described as Israel\u2019s \u201cracist policies.\u201d
\u201cThe parties stopped working for the people. They are just clinging onto their own seats and their own power,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

HAIFA, Israel: Some of Israel\u2019s young Arab citizens are calling for a boycott of Tuesday\u2019s parliamentary election, dismayed by a recent law which they say reduces them to second-class citizens.The pro-boycott activists, many of whom identify as Palestinian, have tried in the past to persuade others among Israel\u2019s Arab minority not to vote.But this time,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":38872,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38871","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38871","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38871"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38871\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/38872"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38871"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38871"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38871"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}