Israel's Elections... In Every Arab Home

For two full days, the electoral scene in Israel overshadowed all other events. Some were glued to developments in the Upper Galilee, Tel Aviv, and Jerusalem, holding their breath until dawn.

To avoid taboo subjects, true democracy is measured by the equality among all citizens and fairness in electoral law, as well as by the rights of the Palestinian people and the practices of the occupying state toward them.

This is what we see. The election results have indisputably revealed that Israel is a quintessentially Jewish and racist state toward Arab Palestinians—free and formal from above, yet discriminatory from below.

What matters to citizens is knowing which government will emerge from these elections and what its foreign policy orientation will be. This is undoubtedly an issue that transcends Israel’s borders, its internal problems, and its domestic conflicts.

Israel and its successive right-wing governments have wielded significant influence over the trajectories of the Lebanese, Syrian, Gulf, and Iranian situations, due to their direct intervention and full engagement with on-the-ground realities, as well as the red lines they have drawn in each case concerning war and their national security—not the national security of Arabs. This influence extends even to any potential settlement. Consequently, Israel’s electoral dynamics have become intertwined with its geographic neighborhood, reaching as far as the Bab el-Mandeb Strait and the Strait of Hormuz.

Arab interest, as evident on Arab television screens and among their correspondents deployed across Israel, stems from a sense that the balance of power has shifted in Israel’s favor, leaving Arabs as the weakest link in the equation.

There are no fundamental differences between Netanyahu’s camp and the opposition on major issues; therefore, a change in government may not necessarily entail a change in policies, approaches, or strategies.

The Arab citizen, in general, did not cast a vote in Israel’s ballot boxes, yet remains vulnerable to paying the price for the policies that result from them.

The question that arises is: Why have we, Arabs, become so deeply concerned with an electoral process in which we have no voice?

Perhaps these elections revealed just one thing, as noted by my colleague Saad Mahio from Beirut: “Israel, after the Arab electoral earthquake, will not be the same as it was before.”