BICOM

Ahead of the March 17 election, BICOM Director of Research Toby Greene interviewed Basel Ghattas, a member of the Arab Balad party, now part of the united Arab list running in the Knesset election. Ghattas has been a Knesset member since 2013, has a PhD in environmental engineering and an MBA in Business Administration, and is the founder of the first Arab language economic affairs magazine in Israel. A podcast of the interview is available here.

This election has seen, for the first time, the creation of a single united Arab list running for the Knesset. That list has many different views within it. What can you say that the list stands for together?

The list consists of the four Arab parties who decided to run together on one unified list in order to be a strong power in the Knesset; to maximize our impact in Israeli politics. Although we are different parties and have different ideologies, what we share is much more than what separates us. We came to form this list based on a political and socio-economic programme that we all share. We are running together as parties who represent the Arabs who are a national minority in the country, which faces a lot of discriminatory policies – faces extreme right-wing policies – so our joint interest is to run together in order to achieve our goals.

What impact has the creation of a single Arab list had, do you think, on the Arab voters?

There is a huge impact. Actually, what made this unification possible is the consensus among our people that we should unite together. This had a lot of influence on the leadership, to overcome the differences, and give higher priority to what makes us allies over what separates us. So we actually responded to this consensus, to the desire of our people that wanted us to stop competing against each other and to run on one list, and by this makes our voice much louder.

Some people have speculated that this will improve the turnout of Arab voters in the election. Do you think that that will be the case?

Yes, certainly, we believe so. We see that every day. I am running right now from one meeting to another, a meeting to telling people that on election day we need to work for a huge turnout, to increase the turnout of the Arabs from 55 per cent last time to more than 75 per cent this time.

One criticism that you sometimes hear made against Arab politicians in Israel is that they often represent hard-line views or take a confrontational stance against the state and take populist positions, and that they don’t do enough to actually work with the state to help improve the day to day situation of Arab citizens in Israel. How would you respond to the kind of criticism?

This is the kind of allegation that is normally created by the Zionist parties and by those who are actually in power, when it is they who have the responsibility for our situation. The Arab parties, historically, were always in the opposition and made minimal impact on the government and policies. Those who are in charge of our situation, our weak situation, our deteriorating situation, is the government itself, the Zionist parties themselves. They should be asked and they should be held accountable for our situation, not us.

The Arab list which could have 12 or more seats in the Knesset could be a very significant force in the Knesset. But your party says that it will not join the government, even though polls show that Arab voters would like your party to join the government. What kind of role will the Arab list have? Will it support a Herzog led government for example, to change the current leadership? Can you see a place for the Arab list being involved in government in any way?

Well, let’s first say that being a strong party in the Knesset is going to be very important. We will see our influence maximized, regardless of the whether we join the government or not. Historically, the Arabs have never joined the government and we don’t regard the circumstances as changed, even though there could be a possibility that our votes will decide who will be the Prime Minister.

There is a certain possibility that our votes will decide if [Isaac] ‘Buji’ Herzog can be nominated as the Prime Minister or not. But still, even if we will be those whose votes will count for Buji Herzog, we don’t expect him to call us to join the coalition and that is because of the Zionist consensus that prime ministers in Israel do not rely on Arab parties to form their government.

On the other hand, we also do not see ourselves joining the government, since any government in Israel in the foreseeable future will not answer the minimal requirements for us to join. Their political agenda regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for example, is far away from the minimal requirements or demands, that they go back to the 1967 borders and form a Palestinian state that will have East Jerusalem as its capital and solution for the Palestinian refugees. So we are far away from having the entrance conditions.

Finally, do you think that after the election the various Arab parties will continue to work together as a single bloc or do you think that they will want to split up and work as separate factions until the next election?

We will continue having this political presence as one united party. There is no interest for anybody to go back to small factions with minimal effect. I am sure that the people, who want us to be unified and who will give us their votes next Tuesday, will punish anybody who tries to divide this party into smaller ones.