Regular opinion polls show
about 2/3'rds of Israelis support transfer,
either voluntary or forced, of Palestinian citizens from the state.
Recent polls also reveal how Fashionable Racism has become in Israel.
A survey conducted last year showed that 68% of Israeli Jews
do not want to live next to a Palestinian citizen (and rarely have to,
as segregation is largely enforced by the authorities),
and 46% would not want an Arab to visit their home.
A poll of students that was published last week suggests that racism
is even stronger among young Jews. Three-quarters believed
Palestinian citizens are uneducated, uncivilized and unclean,
and a third are frightened of them. Richard Kupermintz of Haifa Univ.,
who conducted the survey more than two years ago,
believes the responses would be even more extreme today.
Lieberman is simply riding the wave of such racism
and pointing out the inevitable path separation must follow
if it is to satisfy these kinds of prejudices.
He may speak his mind more than his
cabinet colleagues,
but they too share his vision of the future. That is why only 1 minister,
the dovish and principled Ophir Pines Paz of Labor,
resigned over Ehud Olmert's inclusion of Lieberman in the cabinet.
Contrast that response with the uproar caused
by the Labor leader Amir Peretz's appointment of the first Arab
cabinet minister in Israel's history. (A member of the small Druze
community, which serves in the Israeli army, Salah Tarif,
was briefly a minister without portfolio in Sharon's first government.)
Raleb Majadele, a Muslim, is a senior member of the Labor party
and a Zionist (what might be termed, in different circumstances,
a self-hating Arab or an Uncle Tom),
and yet his appointment has broken an Israeli taboo:
Arabs are not supposed to get too close to the centers of power.
Peretz's decision was entirely cynical.
He is under threat on all fronts - from his coalition partners in Kadima
and in Lieberman's Yisrael Beitenu, and from within his own party -
- and desperately needs the backing of Labor's Arab party members.
Majadele is the key, and that is why Peretz gave him a cabinet post,
even if a marginal one: Minister of Science, Culture and Sport.
But the right is deeply unhappy at Majadele's inclusion in the cabinet.
Lieberman called Peretz unfit to be defense minister for making
the appointment and demanded that Majadele pledge loyalty to Israel
as a Jewish and democratic state. Lieberman's party colleagues
referred to the appointment as a "lethal blow to Zionism."
A few Labor and Meretz MKs denounced these comments as racist.
But more telling was the silence of Olmert and his Kadima party,
as well as Binyamin Netanyhu's Likud, at Lieberman's outburst.
The center & right understand that Lieberman's views about Majadele,
and Palestinian citizens more generally, mirror those
of most Israeli Jews and that it would be foolhardy to criticize him
for expressing them – let alone sack him.
In this game of "who is the truer Zionist," Lieberman can only
grow stronger against his former colleagues in Kadima and Likud.
Because he is free to speak his and their minds,
while they must keep quiet for appearance's sake, he, not they,
will win ever greater respect from the Israeli public.
Meanwhile, all the evidence suggests that Olmert and the current
government will implement the policies being promoted by Lieberman,
even if they are too timid to openly admit that is what they are doing.
Some of those policies are of the by-now familiar variety, such as
the destruction of 21 Bedouin homes, half the village of Twayil,
in the northern Negev last week. It was the second time in a month
that the village had been razed by the Israeli security forces.
These kind of official attacks against the indigenous Bedouin -
- who have been classified by the Govt. as "squatters" on state lands
- are a regular occurence, an attempt to force 70,000 Bedouin
to leave their ancestral homes and relocate to deprived townships.
A more revealing development came this month, however,
when it was reported in the Israeli media that the government
is for the first time backing "loyalty" legislation
that has been introduced privately by a Likud MK.
Gilad Erdan's bill would revoke the citizenship of Israelis
who take part in "an act that constitutes a breach of loyalty to the state,"
the latest in a string of proposals by Jewish MKs conditioning
citizenship on loyalty to the Israeli state, defined in all these
schemes very narrowly as a "Jewish and democratic" state.
Arab MKs, who reject an ethnic definition of Israel and demand
instead that the country be reformed into a "state of all its citizens,"
or a liberal democracy, are typically denounced as traitors.
Lieberman himself suggested just such a loyalty scheme
for Palestinian citizens last month during a trip to Washington.
He told American Jewish leaders:
"He who is not ready to recognize Israel as a Jewish
and Zionist state cannot be a citizen in the country."
Erdan's bill specifies acts of disloyalty that include visiting an
"enemy state" - which, in practice, means just about any Arab state.
Most observers believe that, after Erdan's bill has been redrafted
by the Justice Ministry, it will be used primarily against the Arab MKs,
who are looking increasingly beleaguered.
Most have been repeatedly investigated by the Attorney-General
for any comment in support of the Palestinians
in the occupied territories or for visiting neighboring Arab states.
One, Azmi Bishara, has been put on trial twice for these offenses.
Meanwhile, Jewish MKs have been allowed the most outrageous
racist statements against Palestinian citizens, mostly unchallenged.
Former cabinet minister Effi Eitam, for example, said in September:
"The vast majority of West Bank Arabs must be deported ...
We will have to make an additional decision, banning Israeli Arabs
from the political system … We have cultivated a fifth column,
a group of traitors of the first degree." He was "warned"
by the Attorney-General over his comments(though
he has expressed similar views several times before), but
remained unrepetant, calling the warning an attempt to "silence" him.
The leader of the opposition and former prime minister, Binyamin
Netanyahu, the most popular politician in Israel according to polls,
gave voice to equally racist sentiments this month when he stated
that child allowance cuts he imposed as finance minister
in 2002 had had a "positive" demographic effect
by reducing the birth rate of Palestinian citizens.
Arab MKs, of course, do not enjoy such indulgence
when they speak out, much more legitimately, in supporting
their kin, the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza,
who are suffering under Israel's illegal occupation.
Arab MK Ahmed Tibi, for example, was roundly condemned last week
by the Jewish parties, including the most leftwing, Meretz, when he
called on Fatah to "continue struggle" to establish a Palestinian state.
However, the campaign of intimidation by the government
and Jewish members of the Knesset has failed to silence
the Arab MKs or stop them visiting neighboring states,
which is why the pressure is being ramped up.
If Erdan's bill becomes law – which seems possible with govt.
backing – then the Arab MKs and the minority they represent
will either be cut off from the rest of the Arab world once again
(as they were for the first two decades of Israel's existence,
when a military government was imposed on them) or threatened
with the revocation of their citizenship for disloyalty
(a move, it should be noted, that is illegal under international law).
It may not be too fanciful to see the current legislation
eventually being extended to cover other "breaches of loyalty,"
such as demanding democratic reforms of Israel
or denying that a Jewish state is democratic.
Technically, this is already the position as Israel's election law
makes it illegal for political parties, including Arab ones,
to promote a platform that denies Israel's existence
as a "Jewish and democratic" state.
Soon Arab MKs and their constituents may also be liable to having
their citizenship revoked for campaigning, as many currently do,
for a state of all its citizens.
That certainly is the view of the eminent Israeli historian Tom Segev,
who argued in the wake of the government's adoption of the bill:
"In practice, the proposed law is liable to turn
all Arabs into conditional citizens, after they have already become,
in many respects, second-class citizens.
Any attempt to formulate an alternative to the Zionist reality
is liable to be interpreted as a 'breach of faith'
and a pretext for stripping them of their citizenship."
But it is unlikely to end there.
I hesitate to make another prediction but, given the rapidity
with which the others have been realized, it may be time
to hazard yet another guess about where Israel is going next.
The other day I was at a checkpoint near Nablus,
one of several that are being converted by Israel into
what look suspiciously like international border crossings,
even though they fall deep inside Palestinian territory.
I had heard that Palestinian citizens of Israel were being allowed
to pass these checkpoints unhindered to enter cities like Nablus to
see relatives. (These familial connections are a legacy of the 1948 war,
when separated Palestinian refugees ended up on different sides
of the Green Line, and also of marriages that were possible
after 1967, when Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza,
making social and business contacts possible again.)
But, when Palestinian citizens try to leave these cities
via the checkpoints, they are invariably detained and issued letters
by the Israeli authorities warning them that they will be tried
if caught again visiting "enemy" areas.
In April last year, at a cabinet meeting at which the Israeli govt.
agreed to expel Hamas MPs from Jerusalem to the West Bank,
ministers discussed changing the classification of the
Palestinian Authority from a "hostile entity"
to the harsher category of an "enemy entity."
The move was rejected for the time being because,
as one official told the Israeli media:
"There are international legal implications in such a declaration,
including closing off the border crossings, that we don't want to do yet."
Is it too much to suspect that before long, after Israel
has completed the West Bank wall and its "border" terminals,
the Jewish state will classify visits by Palestinian citizens
to relatives as "visiting an enemy state"?
And will such visits be grounds for revoking citizenship,
as they could be under Erdan's bill if Palestinian citizens
visit relatives in Syria or Lebanon?
Lieberman doubtless knows the answer already.