Despite the rhetoric, all signs point to integration - Jalal Bana

 

​ by Jalal Bana

While some members of the Higher Arab Monitoring Committee continue to hope it will become an ideological and organizational springboard for a demand for autonomy, the trend of integration into Israeli society has prevailed over the committee's separatist tendencies.

Over the weekend, elections will be held for chairman of the Higher Arab Monitoring Committee. The current chairman, Mohammad Barakeh, one of Israel's more prominent political leaders and former Hadash party chairman, will go up against former Joint Arab List MK Masud Ghnaim, an educator and member of the Islamic Movement's Southern Branch. With the election just days away, the role and the very nature of the committee are in question.

The Higher Arab Monitoring Committee was established 40 years ago to unite the Arab public into a national minority and was meant to serve as a sort of "autonomous" parliament that would handle burning issues in Arab society vis-à-vis the state. Until the late 1990s, the committee included representatives from across the political spectrum, including Arab and Druze lawmakers from Zionist parties. The committee chairman was also the chairman of the National Committee for the Heads of the Arab Local Authorities in Israel. As the head of a local authority, the committee chairman had the privilege of being able to enter all the government ministries while wearing various hats, including as chairman of the Higher Arab Monitoring Committee.

For years, ministers and senior officials believed that dialogue with committee representatives or its chairman, regardless in what capacity, was equivalent to recognizing Israel's Arab citizens as a united national minority under one political roof. The institutional reluctance to engage with the committee was ongoing outside of exceptional instances where the government met with the committee, for example following the massacre at the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron in 1994 or the Arab protests of October 2000.

Among the Arab parties, there is a consensus on the committee's importance in helping to resolve two problems: low voting rates among Israel's Arab population, at least until the Joint Arab List showed up on the political map, and a lack of representation of the various Arab political streams that are not represented on the national level.

Ahead of the upcoming elections, a dispute arose over the voting method: The outlawed Islamic Movement's Northern Branch and the Balad party are both interested in holding open and direct elections for the committee chair and representatives, according to the model adopted by other cultural and nationalist minorities around the world. Such open elections would transform the committee into an elected and independent group of representatives that could provide the basis for educational or cultural autonomy in the future.

There are those who see this demand as a kind of separatist signaling that could put the interests of the Arab public at risk. The committee's leaders, all of them political players, are themselves in no rush to advance this kind of process, which stands in opposition to the trend of  Israel's Arab citizens, in particular the younger generation, integrating into academia, the job market, and the public systems. And so while in their statements committee members pay lip service to the committee's original purpose of consolidating the consciousness of the national identity of the Arab minority, and indeed there are some figures who continue to hope it will become an ideological and organizational springboard for a demand for autonomy, the trend of integration into Israeli society has prevailed over the committee's separatist tendencies. Autonomy and integration do not go hand in hand. Despite the rhetoric, all signs point to integration.

 

Jalal Bana  

Source: https://www.israelhayom.com/opinions/despite-the-rhetoric-all-signs-point-to-integration/ 

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