To confront Israeli fascism, we need a new Jewish-Arab party
Activists protest in Tel Aviv demanding an end to the war in Gaza, 23 August 2025
Basheer Karkabi writes in +972 on 11 February 2026:
There is no escaping the fact that, as Palestinians inside Israel, we live in a harsh reality. Since the October 7 massacre, we have watched a war of expulsion and annihilation against the people of Gaza and an occupation in the West Bank that grows more violent by the day. And as Israeli society’s descent into fascism only accelerates, we face the threat of a similar fate to those in the occupied territories, while also contending with the government’s discriminatory socioeconomic policies that harm us and other marginalized groups.
Among the Arab public, there are those who operate in the political arena in order to protest this reality and express our collective rage, and there are those who seek to organize the community to fight for its rights against an establishment that is becoming increasingly violent and racist. Both of these are legitimate and worthy efforts.
But if we wish to bring about real change in this land — toward an end to the occupation, equality between Jews and Arabs, and peace between Israel and the Palestinian people — we need to offer a political model of an entirely different order. That is why I, along with hundreds of other Jewish and Palestinian citizens of Israel, signed a statement (published in Haaretz on Jan. 23) calling for the establishment of a new Jewish-Arab political party.
Already in the first hours after publishing the statement, we began to encounter criticism, some of it even angry. One entirely valid argument is that a Jewish-Arab party already exists: the Democratic Front for Peace and Equality, or Hadash.