Joint List draw Israelis out of their villages


April 17, 2015
Sarah Benton

An article from Washington Post assessing the prospects for the Joint List is followed by a pre-election one on their march to Jerusalem in support of Bedouin rights.


Several dozen protesters join Ayman Odeh, the head of Israel’s Knesset Joint List, in the Bedouin village of Wadi al-Naam at the beginning of a four-day march to Jerusalem. Around 260,000 Bedouin live in Israel, more than half of them in unrecognized villages without utilities. Photo by Ahmad Gharabli/AFP/Getty Images

What’s next for Israel’s new Arab political party?

By Adam Taylor, Washington Post
April 17, 2015

IQRIT, Israel — Many people in Israel don’t know the village of Iqrit exists. In fact, not much of it does exist anymore: If you follow a small, unmarked dirt path up a steep hill near the Israeli border with Lebanon, you’ll only find a modest church, a cemetery and impressive views.

But it was to this all-but-abandoned Christian enclave that Ayman Odeh, now the leader of the third largest faction in Israel’s newly elected Knesset, or parliament, recently traveled a hundred miles from Jerusalem to attend a Greek Catholic Easter celebration.

While Odeh is Muslim, he was greeted like an old friend by a congregation of a few hundred mostly Arab Christians. Many have family ties to the village that date back to before the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, when it was evacuated and subsequently destroyed, and its occupants scattered in the region.

For decades, Israel’s Arab Christians have been campaigning to return to Iqrit, which is now considered government land. In Odeh’s newfound power, they finally see a politician who might help.

“It’s a story that people can relate to,” said Odeh, clearly moved by their pleas.

Iqrit serves as a reminder both of Israeli Arabs’ fresh clout and also the considerable expectations they have now placed on Odeh and his party. Despite its sizable Knesset presence, Odeh’s Joint List party — a newly formed alliance of Israeli Arab parties — will not form a part of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s new coalition government.

Even if Netanyahu did make an offer, it is unlikely the Joint List would take it. Many of the group’s supporters in Israel say their rights have been deeply threatened by Netanyahu’s time in office and say they felt insulted by his election day warning that the nation’s Arab citizens were voting “in droves.”

If, as many expect, Netanyahu forms a coalition that installs a right-wing government, the Joint List may struggle to make an impact in the Knesset. Its members may find it difficult even to find significant allies among Israel’s left-wing opposition, and some wonder if the Joint List can last until the next election.

But for the time being, Odeh, 40, is using his visibility to highlight specific problems for the Arab community. Fresh to the Knesset, Odeh said he hopes not only to bridge the differences within the Israeli Arab population — which is mostly comprised of Muslims, Christians and Druze — but also to reach out to the Jewish community.

Iqrit is just one example of the challenges Odeh sees in the country. Recently, in a bid to draw attention to the plight of unrecognized, poorly serviced Bedouin villages in the Negev desert, he led a four-day march from one such village to the Israeli president’s home in Jerusalem. The march, however, received little attention from Israeli Jews. [see story below]

Odeh knows he needs to make such issues important to all Israelis, not just Arabs.

“My dream is to have a big march, from Nazareth to Jerusalem, the same way that Jesus went,” he said, adding, “It won’t succeed unless it’s a joint battle of Jews and Arabs together.” Referring to major demonstrations in Tel Aviv in 2011 against the high cost of living, Odeh said next year he wants to organize a social justice protest of a “size never seen before.”

St. Mary’s church in Iqrit, the only building left standing. From Wikipedia:

Iqrit was a Palestinian Christian village, located 25 kilometres (16 miles) northeast of Acre. Originally allotted to form part of an Arab state under the 1947 UN Partition Plan, it was seized and forcefully depopulated then razed by the Israel Defense Forces during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, and their territory later became part of the new State of Israel.[3] All of its Christian inhabitants were forced to flee to Lebanon and neighboring Palestinian villages after they were expelled by Jewish forces in 1948-1951. Descendents to this day maintain an outpost in the village church, and bury their dead in its cemetery. All attempts to cultivate its lands are uprooted by the Israeli Lands Administration.

After the service in Iqrit, members of the congregation rushed to praise Odeh, a lawyer and longtime leader in the Hadash political party.

“He was always here before he was a member of the Knesset,” said Father Souhail Khoury, the priest at the church. Many of the Arabs whose families fled Iqrit in 1948 still live nearby in surrounding towns and villages.

Israeli Arab political movements have long been fractured and divided. Even some supporters in Iqrit expressed wariness about the Joint List, which formed this year when four small and polarized Arab political parties joined together for the first time.

“When they gathered together for the election, I had a dilemma,” said Shadia Sbait, a guest at the service who voted for the Joint List. “I don’t think that all Arabs need to think the same.”

The Joint List’s decision to band together was a response to new voting rules that could have left the Arab parties without seats. Even with its new momentum, some doubt that the alliance can overcome the significant ideological differences between the parties.

For example, the party Odeh leads, Hadash, is a left-wing party that makes a point of co-operating with Israeli Jews and focuses on social issues. Two other parties, Balad and the Islamic Movement, focus more on Palestinian nationalism and religious issues.

“The real split is in the politics,” said Sammy Smooha, a professor of Sociology at Haifa University. “Will it be a nationalist struggle or a socio-economic struggle?” he asked, adding that one major disagreement was about whether the Joint List should cooperate with Jewish parties.

Odeh said that he was well aware of the differences.

“Every morning, I have to make sure that I agree with my way, and what I’m doing,” he said. “I’ve chosen the way of Martin Luther King, but obviously there are others in the community who prefer the methods of Malcolm X.”

The lofty expectations placed on the Joint List may be an even bigger issue.

“The Joint List must come up with something new and give hope to the Arab community in Israel,” or Arab voters will desert them, said Thabet Abu Ras, the co-director of the Abraham Fund, a group that works to promote cooperation between Jews and Arab citizens of Israel.

For now, Odeh said he is focusing on what unites Arabs — in particular, disputes over land. Earlier this week, Odeh and other Arab members of the Knesset met with leaders in the Arab village of Kafr Kanna, not far from Iqrit. There, a local man’s home had been demolished by the government because it was built without the required permits, which Arab Israelis say authorities make difficult to obtain.

At the meeting, many expressed doubt that they would find a route to help through the Knesset. In the end, a decision was made to rebuild the house, even though it might be demolished again, and plan a protest in Tel Aviv as well as a general strike.

As the night dragged on, Odeh decided that rather than return to the Knesset, he would sleep with others in a tent by the house to protect it from further demolition. Sometimes, he said, justice was more important than the law.

Ruth Englash contributed to this story.



March 29th, Joint List’s mixed band of Arab and Jewish supporters arrive in Jerusalem and walk past the Knesset in support of Bedouin rights. Photo by Ahmad Gharabli / AFP

Top Arab Israeli MP begins 4-day march for Bedouins

By AFP
March 26, 2015

Israel’s top Arab MP began a four-day walk to Jerusalem on Thursday in a show of support for the impoverished Bedouin community and to put a spotlight on the “human misery” they face.

Ayman Odeh, who was elected in last week’s Israeli polls and heads the Arab parliamentary bloc, set off on a 100-kilometre (60-mile) walk from the southern Negev — where he has long campaigned for the rights of Bedouin Arabs.

Odeh leads the Joint List, an alliance of Israel’s main Arab parties which won 13 of parliament’s 120 seats, becoming the third largest grouping in the Knesset.

As part of the opposition, it has vowed to fight for the rights of Israel’s Arab minority which accounts for more than a fifth of the population and to push for a resumption of peace talks with the Palestinians.

Odeh began his march with several dozen supporters in the Bedouin village of Wadi al-Naam which is located near the southern city of Beersheba but is not recognised by Israeli authorities.

“The Negev is precious to us!” they chanted, wearing T-shirts and yellow baseball caps bearing the slogan “March for recognition”.

One of Odeh’s key election pledges was to secure formal recognition for more than 40 Bedouin villages in the area that have no running water, are not connected to the electricity grid and lack basic infrastructure due to their unrecognised status.

He will visit several of the biggest villages on the four-day march to Jerusalem, and will camp out with protesters at night.

“In these villages there is no electricity, no water. Children have to walk tens of kilometres (miles) to attend primary school,” he told AFP.

“This is human misery and it must stop now.”

Around 260,000 Bedouin live in Israel, more than half of them in unrecognised villages without utilities. Many live in extreme poverty.

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