על ועדת המעקב: חזרה לשאלת היווצרות

ארבעה וחצי עשורים חלפו מאז הקמת ועדת המעקב העליונה לענייני אזרחי ערב בישראל, מאז שנת 1982. עשור השבעים היה עשור של השינויים הגדולים בחיי הערבים בישראל, אחד הבולטים שבהם הוא יום האדמה בשנת 1976, ומה שהתלווה אליו מיכולת פוליטית לגבי הזהות הקולקטיבית של הערבים, דבר שדחף לצורך בהקמת גוף ייצוגי עליון שיבטא את דאגותיהם ושאיפותיהם ויעקוב אחרי ענייניהם.

אז, לפני הקמת ועדת המעקב, הוועדה הקטרית לראשי הרשויות המקומיות הערביות, שהתEstablished in 1975, considered the most prominent representative authority. After יום האדמה, it began to dominate the political scene in the interior, knowing that it was the committee that clashed with national powers, strongly opposing the adoption of the Arab land defense committee's decision for a general strike on March 30. In other words, the national committee for heads of local authorities was among the most opposed to the День الأرض strike decision, at a time when it was also the most beneficial from it. The national committee changed with the arrival of some heads of municipalities and local councils representing active parties in Arab society, along with a new group of young people who held the position of heads of local councils in their villages, surpassing the traditional structure of the heads of the fifties and sixties. This was in light of the political momentum that left the Day of the Earth on the scene in the interior.

However, the national committee for heads of local authorities could not be a comprehensive national representation body for the Arabs in the interior, for many reasons, the most important of which is that the local authority is considered an extension of the Israeli institution in terms of its dependency on the Ministry of the Interior, in addition to the presence of heads of local authorities who were representatives of Zionist Israeli parties, or being that a large part of them reached their position due to sectarian or familial filtering in their village or town. In addition, the nature of the agenda that continued to govern the logic of local authority work, which contradicts in many aspects with the national and patriotic aspirations of the Arabs in the interior. More than that, the Israeli institution was originally the one that encouraged at the time the establishment of the national committee for the heads of Arab local authorities, through its tools from some heads of municipalities and Arab councils. This necessitated the establishment of an alternative representative body at the national level, and thus the Follow-Up Committee was born.

The Follow-Up Committee broadened since its establishment in 1982 to include in addition to the national committee for heads of local authorities, Arab Knesset members, and members of the executive committee of the Arab Histadrut, which formed a structure that established the first contradiction within the committee between a locally elected component, represented in the heads of local authorities, and other components whose members are elected through a national political election, such as Knesset members and members of the executive committee of the Histadrut, if we take into account that Arab Knesset members are elected to the Knesset and not to the Follow-Up Committee itself. Nevertheless, the national committee for heads of local authorities remained the core central component, regulating the rhythm of the Follow-Up Committee's movement in decision-making and process alike.

According to Dr. Azmi Bishara in his book "The Arabs in Israel: A Perspective from Within", the Follow-Up Committee, at its inception, included in its structure Zionist parties through their Arab representatives in the Knesset, which emphasized its "Arab-Israeli" nature, as a coordinating committee at most, between all the active political forces in Arab society and the local councils and municipalities. This means that heads of local authorities and Knesset members come to the Follow-Up Committee for coordination and consultation with each other, more than being there to organize the Arab minority in the interior.

Bishara adds to the contradictions of the Follow-Up Committee in its composition, other deficiencies that represented flaws in its working mechanism, including the lack of clarity regarding the organizational relationship between it and the Arab citizen that the committee is supposed to represent. Therefore, considering it a representative framework is a nationally assumed matter because its existence is better than its absence, but it is not effectively established. The other deficiency is procedural, as the Committee does not have a clear internal system governing the decision-making process, and how it follows up and implements it, despite being called the "Follow-Up Committee".

What Bishara wanted to convey in his discussion of the contradictions of the Follow-Up Committee in the essence of its formation and composition, is that no framework can be a representative democratic and comprehensive national body unless it is directly elected by the citizens it is supposed to represent. This is a dilemma that has been and still is interacting in the core of the Follow-Up Committee and its representative role. However, there are those who see that the direct election of the Follow-Up Committee by Arab citizens poses a challenge covered with separatist pretensions from the Israeli institution, which does not recognize in principle the Follow-Up Committee as a supreme representative body for the Arabs, despite its dealing and coordination with it.

These are the contradictions of the Follow-Up Committee and they still are, but they have now faced greater and more dangerous challenges than those they faced in previous decades. The Israeli institution is no longer what it was in the 1980s and 1990s, especially with the spread of fascist religious Zionism in the Israeli political map. The institution's agenda no longer necessarily passes through Arab representatives in Zionist parties, as much as it has become authentic Arab parties that adopt, or let’s say have recently accepted, the reality of "the state of Zionism". This, alongside the continuous suffocation of "political" exercised by the institution through its security apparatuses in the interior, and narrowing its margin to the conditional extent of remaining on its Israeli political platform.

Hence, the role and performance of Arab representative frameworks, including the Follow-Up Committee, have diminished, along with non-parliamentary political forces, and even parliamentary ones, some of which are threatened with deletion and prohibition. In addition to the harsh reality of Arab society, with the rampant criminal gangs, and the spread of crime in recent years, which has made us, individuals and organizations, at an unprecedented level of confusion and helplessness. The Follow-Up Committee, drawing from both its legitimacy and its name, is the first to bear the burden of answering the questions of its society and its masses.

What hinders the mechanisms of the Follow-Up Committee in following up on our community’s affairs and its major challenges is what has been embedded in it since its birth, in terms of its functional structure and the nature of its composition that is still being eaten away by contradictions of conflicting agendas. Therefore, the election of a new head of the Follow-Up Committee next Saturday, by itself is neither a solution nor a prescription for healing its crisis, except that its upcoming head must be aware of the size of the contradictions of the committee he wants to head, and the challenges facing the community it wants the committee to represent, which means that he must open the door to work wide, starting from the committee itself.