In 1968, Fatah movement put forward the idea of a single democratic state for Israel's Jews and Arabs, in which citizens would enjoy equal rights regardless of religion and language. In 1969, at the fifth and sixth sessions of the Palestine National Council, two ideas were adopted: a democratic society of Muslims, Christians, and Jews, and a democratic state that does not discriminate on the basis of religion or race.
Thirty years later, building on his critique of the Oslo Accords, Edward Said published an essay stressing the priority of the two peoples living together in justice and equality rather than being separated, and of grounding rights on citizenship, without the Palestinians giving up their identity or the Jews their own collective life.
Now, following the recent elections and the increase in Arab turnout, popular mobilizations and demonstrations have broken out, some of them massive, demanding a Jewish-Arab government. This may not amount to a binational state of the kind Said had proposed, but it may open a path that leads toward such a target.
The truth is that Palestinian calls made since 1968, in all their various formulations, are more than justified in principle.
They champion universal citizenship and would put an end to the heresy contained in the "Jewish and democratic" state formula and the discrimination it entails, while qualitatively widening the space for Arab integration into the state.
But whatever prevented Israel from positively receiving the proposals that emerged between 1968 and 1999 will again prevent any positive reception of similar proposals that may emerge today. After "Al-Aqsa Flood" in particular, as we well know, Israeli extremism surged to its outer limits, and any call carrying a whiff of needling Zionism or threatening its demography has come to amount to a declaration of war within Israel itself.
This extremism is strong, and beyond the instruments of violence, it is reinforced by public opinion. Netanyahu and his allies won nearly 60 percent of the Jewish vote. More importantly, most of his opponents, Eisenkot and Lieberman above all, match his bellicosity, extremism, and reliance on security concerns. When they criticize him, they focus on his "security failure," along with objections that are partly personal and partly technical, concerning his performance.
Beyond the fact that the sympathetic Zionist left won no more than eight seats, the climate of war, with Iran and in Lebanon, and the charged climate that the "Flood" has produced mean that haste in demanding Palestinian rights is akin to a costly gamble that may backfire on those making haste. In an episode bearing some resemblance to our current moment, the second Palestinian intifada could be reduced to terrorism in the climate unleashed by the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington.
Likewise, Israel today can recycle the battle for Palestinian rights and attach it to the regional war, casting its Arab population as a "fifth column" working for the external enemy, and the tepid condemnations of October 7, 2023, can be offered as proof.
The Arab minority’s experience is defined by two contradictory conditions: it is a victim of the Jewish state, especially since the 2018 "Nation-State Law" and under the leadership of Netanyahu and his alliance with the religious settlers. At the same time, it enjoys rights and freedoms far exceeding those of its Arab neighbors, the latest proof being the recent elections.
Accordingly, unbridled radicalization, even in pursuit of just demands, becomes a pretext for entrenching the first condition, which could otherwise potentially be gradually improved, and for pouncing on the second, in a confrontation that would drain the Arabs before the right conditions have ripened.
With these factors in mind, the Arab political representatives are acting with wisdom and rationality, whether in the conduct of the Joint List, which declares that it does not want to join the government, or in that of the United Arab List, which ties the idea of participation exclusively to civil and service-oriented tasks. The list's leader, Mansour Abbas, took part on that basis in the Bennett-Lapid government in 2021.
Most of the tasks and slogans Arab politicians are putting forward, as they draw on the momentum of the recent elections, have been sensible and wise. Into this category fall the efforts to prevent Netanyahu, and with him his games and lies, from returning to the premiership, treated as the priority of priorities; backing a government formed by the opposition without joining it; and keeping the Likud candidate out of the Knesset speakership... Through intensive, carefully considered effort, one may even count on restoring the climate that preceded October 7, which was then dominated by the dispute over the judicial overhaul.
All this is coupled with near-self-evident goals, urgent as they are: fighting crime in Arab society, which the government’s indifference is fueling, economic development and providing services for Arab citizens, and curbing the terrorism of Jewish settlers in the West Bank, especially since this final goal enjoys American, not just European, support...
What outweighs all the other considerations, and what best explains the need for patience and for long, circuitous routes, is that change will come to Israel only in response to change in the region. We had better not deceive ourselves into thinking that Israeli public opinion will turn from radical hostility to sympathy for Palestinian rights while the ethnic, religious, and sectarian minorities of the Arab neighborhood suffer as they do now, and politics becomes confined to a contest of numbers. For what is decisive and determining is a regional mood that takes shape, or does not, and finds its reflection in Israel. To assume the opposite is to extend a sickly, self-demeaning idea: that Israel's domestic elections are the sole source of change in our world.
