JERUSALEM: A sharp polarisation between Israeli Arab parties and the rest is expected to mark the upcoming elections on Feb 10.

The Arab parties are contesting after the Israeli Supreme Court overturned the Knesset Election Committee’s decision to ban the United Arab List Ta’al and Balad parties.

Human rights associations accuse both Jewish and Arab parties of populism.

Last Monday, the Central Election Committee, consisting of representatives of all Israeli parties, voted overwhelmingly for the exclusion of Arab lists from the elections. According to the Committee, the Arab parties were not eligible to contest because they did not recognise Israel as the Jewish homeland.

Arab politicians filed an appeal against the ban, and the decision was overruled earlier this week by the Supreme Court in a unanimous vote.

“This is the only right decision,” Ta’al chairman Ahmed Tibi told IPS. “The Central Election Committee’s decision was discriminative: it would have prevented the Arab minority from being represented in the Knesset.”

“Former chief of justice Aharon Barak once said that democracy doesn’t have to kill itself to prove it is alive. The court threw that sentiment out and virtually gave the Arab parties permission to kill Israel’s character as a Jewish and democratic state,” Yisrael Beytenu Chairman Avigdor Lieberman said in a statement.

Ultranationalist party Yisrael Beytenu had launched the idea, and soon got the support of centre parties Kadima and Labour.

“I respect the decision of the Supreme Court and hope that these Arab parties have understood the message,” said Yoel Hasson, head of Kadima’s response team.

“Israeli Arab parties must represent the interests of the Arab citizens in Israel and of the State of Israel. They should not regard Azmi Bishara and the enemies of Israel as part of their agenda.”

Azmi Bishara is a former Arab Christian member of the Knesset who was accused of espionage for Hezbollah during the 2006 Lebanon war. He resigned in 2007 and fled the country, but officially he is still leader of Balad.

The Central Election Committee’s decision did not come as a surprise, nor did the Supreme Court verdict: before the 2003 and 2006 elections, the Committee had also decided to exclude the Arab parties, and that was later overruled by the Supreme Court.“The majority of the parliamentarians who voted for the exclusion actually voted in protest against the inflammatory rhetoric the Israeli Arab leaders used against Israel during the war in Gaza,” Kadima spokeswoman Maya Jacobs told IPS.

“In times of war the political differences between different parties are set aside in favour of national unity towards danger and hatred from its enemies. The violent and unpatriotic rhetoric used by the Arab parties created such antagonism.”

“There is an atmosphere of war,” says Ta’al’s Ahmed Tibi. “Whenever there is war, Israeli society is full of anger and anti-Arab feelings. Those feelings were there in the room of the Central Committee, and the Arab parties paid the price.”

“For most politicians this was merely a populist decision,” says Nirit Moskovich of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel. “The attack on Gaza increased mistrust towards any criticism of the Gaza attack, especially criticism coming from the Arab minority. They are automatically considered to be representing Palestinians and therefore the ‘enemy’.”

President of the Arab Human Rights Association Mohammad Zeidan agrees: “It was propaganda, just like the war itself. We definitively see these two events as one story, planned to be part of the political propaganda of Kadima and Labour.”

In an earlier interview with IPS, Yisrael Beteynu’s Danny Hershtal claimed that excluding the parties would not result in electoral gain. He also described the ban as a necessity to defend Israel’s democracy, as Balad and Ta’al “specifically negate the idea of Israel being a Jewish state.”

According to Ahmed Tibi, the fact that his party takes part in the Knesset meetings is “obvious evidence that we recognise the state Israel. But there is a contradiction between the definition of a ‘Jewish state’ and the definition of democratic and equal rights. We are discussing this contradiction both in the Knesset and outside, in a democratic way. That doesn’t justify a ban on our party.”

“It should also be mentioned that the Arab politicians did not miss the opportunity to make some remarks aimed at their voters,” Nirit Moskovich adds. “Ahmed Tibi voiced his criticism in a clearly provocative way: he told the Committee, for instance, that ‘every vote for Kadima is a bullet in a Gaza child’s heart’, which persuaded other politicians from the centre-left to vote for his exclusion.”—Dawn/The IPS News Service