Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, October 2016, pp. 59-60

Diplomatic Doings

Palestinian Knesset Member:  ­Israel is on a Dangerous Path

DR. BASEL GHATTAS, a Palestinian citizen of Israel and a member of its Knesset, spoke at the Arab Center in Washington, DC on Aug. 25 and warned of an increasingly anti-Arab climate within Israeli politics and society.

The lawmaker, one of 13 members of the Joint Arab List party, said several bills recently passed by the Knesset explicitly target Palestinian Israelis and their supporters.

One bill, the so-called “expulsion bill,” allows Knesset members to expel fellow lawmakers for incitement to violence or support of armed struggle against the state (see p. 8). Under the law, a lawmaker can be expelled if 90 members of the 120-seat Knesset vote in favor of expulsion. Ghattas charged that this bill is “very clearly designed toward the expulsion of Arab Knesset members.”

The “expulsion bill” is an expansion of a previous bill—the “suspension bill”—which allowed Knesset members to be suspended for similar actions. Earlier this year, Ghattas and two other Joint List members were suspended for visiting the families of Palestinians who attacked Jewish Israelis in Jerusalem.

Another bill, the so-called “NGO bill,” requires Israeli non-profit organizations that receive more than half their funding from foreign governments to share this fact on all publications and upon entering the Knesset. According to the Mossawa Center, which advocates for the rights of Israel’s Arab citizens, the law will impact 27 NGOs in Israel, 25 of which are human rights groups sympathetic to the Palestinian cause. Before the bill was passed, Israeli opposition leader Isaac Herzog warned that the law is “indicative, more than anything, of the budding fascism creeping into Israeli society.”

These two laws, Ghattas argued, are indicative of how Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has led Israel throughout his time in office. Netanyahu is not interested in compromise or human rights, Ghattas said, but rather in solidifying his power and implementing his right-wing agenda.

Netanyahu’s tenure shows just how mainstream the Israeli right-wing has become, Ghattas said. As evidence, he noted that a decade or so ago, Jews who insisted on entering the al-Aqsa mosque compound to pray constituted a small, marginal group. Today, however, the Temple Mount movement has become mainstream and, he noted, even includes members of the Knesset.

This push to the right will continue as long as the international community does not hold Israel accountable for its conduct, Ghattas contended. After decades of occupation and actions detrimental to peace, he said, Netanyahu has learned that as long as he occasionally pays lip service to the idea of peace, he will not face international consequences for his decisions. There is thus a burden on the global community, particularly Europe and the U.S.—both of which regularly condemn Israel’s behavior—to hold Israel and its leaders accountable, the Knesset member stated.

Ghattas concluded by offering a grim assessment of the future. If international pressure remains absent, Israeli politics will continue to move to the right, he predicted: “You can expect worse and more extreme and fanatical [behavior] in the future.”

Should current trends continue, Ghattas said, Palestinian Israelis may decide to boycott the next election. He hopes this does not become necessary, but said Palestinian Israelis fear that their presence in the Knesset allows Israel to make the farcical claim that all of its citizens enjoy equal rights. “I think the conditions on the ground are pushing us toward the decision to boycott the Israeli election,” he said, “and say to them ‘ok, play alone, this is your democracy, not ours, this is your Jewish state, not ours, go play alone.’”

—Dale Sprusansky