Nazareth, Israel's largest Arab-majority city, is a key to the hopes of the Arab Joint List. Photo / Getty Images
Nazareth, Israel's largest Arab-majority city, is a key to the hopes of the Arab Joint List. Photo / Getty Images
Four Arab-dominated parties have joined forces to mobilise voters and boost representation in the Knesset.
Though just over one week remains before Israel votes for a new parliament, there's not much of an election buzz in Nazareth, the biggest majority-Arab city in the country.
In Mary's Well Square - where the Angel Gabriel is said to have appeared to the Virgin Mary - four Arab Israeli men are chatting about the election, sitting around a small table on white plastic chairs.
Rasi Abu Amni, a 64-year-old who runs a fish restaurant in the square, said it was important to vote - "to show we are here, and that we exist".
But others at the table said they would not participate in the election, despite the fact that four Arab-dominated parties - Hadash, Balad, Ta'al and the Islamic Movement - have joined forces to create a unified list.
The four parties in the Joint List have starkly different ideologies, ranging from the far-left Hadash to the Islamic Movement, which identifies with the Muslim Brotherhood.
The Joint List was formed after Israel's electoral threshold was increased from 2 to 3.25 per cent last March - meaning that parties failing to garner more than this share of the vote will not be represented in the Knesset, Israel's Parliament.
Many suspect that one of the move's initiators, Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, viewed the raising of the threshold as a way to reduce Arab representation in the Knesset, where the Arab parties currently hold 11 of the 120 seats.
So far, the Joint List has been light on policy, announcing that it is united on tackling racism and the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories, reducing violence in Arab communities, boosting the employment of women, recognising unregistered Bedouin communities in the Negev region, and providing public transport to all Arab towns.
Abu Amni said he was frustrated with the Joint List but would vote for it. "Unity is really good, but it's too late. We needed this 20 years ago. We've been calling for the political parties to unite for a long time, and if they had united earlier we could have less problems now."
Voter turnout among Palestinian citizens of Israel has historically been lower than that of Jewish Israelis - sometimes because of boycotts, at other times because of lack of interest.
Eligible Palestinian voters make up about 20 per cent of Israel's 6.5 million citizens. The 350,000 Palestinian residents of occupied East Jerusalem are not citizens of Israel and cannot vote in national elections. Israeli settlers in occupied East Jerusalem, and in the occupied West Bank, can vote.
The Yafa Research Institute, a marketing company in Nazareth that polls Arab Israelis, found that electoral participation among Arab Israelis has declined over the past 15 years, from 75 per cent in 1999 to 53 per cent in 2009.
This year, Yafa predicts that nearly 67 per cent of Arab Israelis will vote - up from 57 per cent in 2013 - partly as a result of the Joint List.
"Something deep is happening within the Arab society," said Thabet Abu Rass, co-director of the Abraham Fund, an organisation that promotes co-existence between Arabs and Jews in Israel. "This time, Arabs are knocking on the door of the Knesset. We want to vote, we want to participate. If the Arab unified party is going to have 15 or 16 seats in the Knesset, it's a huge, unprecedented force."
The latest poll conducted by Haaretz showed that the Joint List is likely to win 14 seats in the Knesset, with almost 12 per cent of the total vote.
That said, some Arab Israeli groups are opposing participation in the upcoming election. Abna al-Balad, a secular activist movement (not to be confused with the Balad political party), is calling for a boycott. "Participating in these elections means giving legitimacy to Israel as it is right now: an occupying country, an apartheid system that separates the Palestinian people," said Abna al-Balad's leader, Ahmad Khalifeh.
Israeli Arab member of parliament Hanin Zuabi. Photo / AFP
Ayman Odeh, the chairman and first candidate on the Joint List, said he respected such views.
But he believes a boycott would ultimately be detrimental to the interests of Arab Israelis.
"The question is whether we want to isolate ourselves or be very much present in the public sphere," Odeh said. "Do we want to have [Foreign Minister Avigdor] Lieberman isolating us and controlling the public, or do we want to be there and stop him?
"There will not be any bridge for peace and social justice for the two people of this state unless the Arabs fight and exert efforts."
One of the Joint List's more controversial candidates is Hanin Zoabi, a member of the Balad party and former Knesset member who was disqualified from standing in the elections earlier this year by Israel's Central Elections Committee, which accused her of inciting violence against Israel.
But the Supreme Court overturned the decision last month.
The disqualification came after comments she made last year. Five days after the kidnapping of three Israeli teenagers in the occupied West Bank, Zoabi argued against Israel's definition of the Palestinians who kidnapped them as "terrorists". Four days later she was suspended from the Knesset for six months for incitement of violence.
"We consider the Joint List as a historical development in the politics of the Palestinian citizens of Israel," said Zoabi. "Through this list we want to increase our political influence inside the parliament. Voting is a good idea because it's one of the tools to struggle for our rights. It is a tool for visibility and to force the Israeli public to know we exist."
The Joint List's success may well be determined by its ability to win over Arab Israelis alienated from the electoral process.
That includes people like Zaid, a Christian Arab from Nazareth, who lamented that "inside Israel, the Palestinian doesn't exist. We are ghosts." Zaid said he "won't vote for the [Joint] List, and I might not vote [at all] - I'm undecided. When there really is coexistence, I think then I will vote."
