Joint List: About an Impossible "Settlement"

Author: علي حبيب الله

There is a simple question: what is the reason for calling to reshape the Joint List again to participate in the upcoming Knesset elections?

The war, yes, the genocidal war launched by Benjamin Netanyahu's government against the Gaza Strip, and the war against the entire Palestinian people and their cause from its roots, necessitates taking responsibility and undertaking unified political action within Palestinian territories, represented in reviving the Joint List to participate in the upcoming Knesset elections.

In light of this war, the voice of our Arab community and its four parties calls for the need to reshape the list.

Well, unified political-parliamentary action in a joint electoral list for the upcoming elections is essential, even though the ongoing genocidal war on Gaza, which targets our people daily in all locations, including us, the Palestinians of the interior, required -- and still requires -- more than organizing in a joint electoral list; it needed a unified "national front" behind which all Arabs in the interior can unite to face the phase. But this has not happened.

Even having a joint electoral list based on a unified political program to confront the phase at least parliamentarily seems no longer possible.

There's talk about a joint list that some leaderships of the four components refer to as a "technical or functional list," one that meets the ballot box requirements but nothing more. And "to avoid tiring the people and increasing their frustration," as is said in the Arab street, and for that.

To appear "united in the eyes of our Arab community," as a group of voters, not as a political entity that is actually threatened by being politically suffocated in light of the genocide, via a policy of narrowing its political margins and lowering its rights ceiling according to the standards of the right wing of religious Zionism.

It is not the difference in political visions among some components of the four parties that prevents them from agreeing on a unified political program, but the replacement of that by a list where the common ground is only technical or functional, is indeed more troubling than abandoning the revival of the Joint List from its original purpose.

The leader of the United List, MP Mansour Abbas, stated in an interview a few days ago that a technical list is possible as a "settlement" among the four forces; an electoral settlement – meaning a shared list. However, this settlement will be between the parties and their constituents, not among the parties themselves.

Yes, a settlement is possible and legitimate if it is a political settlement, where the four forces converge – despite their different interpretations of the current phase, and contradictions in some of their political and intellectual components – on a minimum of "political necessity" to serve our Arab community, first by protecting it politically, and before any other question related to service discourse.

The Joint List has failed repeatedly in the past, and if the ongoing genocidal war and the political persecution under it, which has reached the point of activating the policy of administrative detention of people from the interior, have not pushed the Arab parties in the interior to formulate a unified political vision, why then revive the project of the Joint List at all?!

Then, if we assume for argument's sake that the Joint List is only possible in its technical version – that is, a single electoral list for the four components, a "bus" in which everyone gets on, and after passing the "barrier" of the ballot box, each component can get off at the "station" it wants – ensuring more parliamentary representation and less "headache".

Well, who said that this is even possible? A purely technical electoral list will ignite a war among its politically contradictory components over the seats and their arrangement.

And if we take into account that the current parliamentary representation size of the four components at the seat level is more complex than before to rearrange in a technical electoral list; the United List is represented in the current Knesset by five seats, while the National Democratic Assembly has no parliamentary representation for the first time since its establishment, despite its electoral strength demonstrated in the last elections, where it only needed a few thousand votes to reach four seats in the Knesset. This represents a significant difference in seat representation between two components that are the most politically contradictory among the four forces.

As for the Democratic Front for Peace and Equality, its alliance with the Tayibe varies between the United List and the Assembly, both politically and in terms of representation. This means: if there is no political agreement among the parties that forces them to agree electorally in a joint list, what would force them to do so in a list without a political ground and designed only as a technical electoral instrument? Nothing, of course.

The Joint List was the best idea proposed by the forces in the interior and the worst maneuver they executed in their history.

The United List, the largest representative force among the Arab parties in the Knesset, has become convinced, more than ever, of the need to "storm the Israeli political arena and participate in the political game."

This conviction has been reinforced for the united and its leadership by the ongoing genocidal war on Gaza, and the weakened Palestinian situation, compounded by the regional transformations over the past two years, which have not compelled the United List to re-examine its discourse; rather, according to MP Mansour Abbas in his recent interview, the other parties and powers in the interior are the ones that need to re-evaluate their discourse, particularly referring to the National Assembly.

Abbas considers the ongoing war to be a war of "religious Zionism" against the Palestinians and the region, which, in his view, necessitates a role for Arabs in "modifying the path of the State of Israel in the coming stage," he says literally, and this is his slogan for the upcoming elections. Meanwhile, the National Assembly calls for organizing the Arab community around a political program that preserves its national constants and its rights achievements, in the face of a path that has become inevitable for the form and essence of Israel in light of religious Zionism.

Thus, a central current like the Front, with its broad mass base and long political history, must raise its voice louder and clearer regarding "the political and its fate" in the coming stage in our Arab community. And the National Democratic Assembly, which has proven its political effectiveness from outside the Knesset over the last two years in this confused climate, should be ready to stand and protect its political program and slogan "the State of Citizens," which it is capable of if it has to conduct elections alone, as it will not be alone.