The color has returned to left-wing commentators' cheeks. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's visit to the Arab-majority city of Nazareth, as with his visit to Shfaram, was marked as an opportunity to revive the abominable idea of establishing a future coalition with the Joint Arab List. But the fact that Netanyahu called on Arab citizens to vote for him is not just completely different from the idea of collaborating with the Joint Arab List, it is the polar opposite.
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The cooperation Netanyahu is offering would see Arab Israelis vote for a Zionist party and gather under the Israeli flag to discuss civil issues about which there is no dispute, while at the same time encouraging the equal incorporation of Arab Israelis in Israeli society so that they enlist in the military or national service and take an active part in the democratic and Zionist Israeli enterprise according to the premise put forward by Zionist visionary Ze'ev Jabotinsky. By contrast, the coalition with the Joint Arab List proposed by the Left is based on accepting the Palestinian narrative, striving for a state of all its citizens, waving a new national flag, and forging alliances with lawmakers whose statements amount to voicing support for terrorism.
In other words, while Netanyahu focuses on civilian equality, the focus on the Left, as with its take on the entire conflict, is on national renunciation. Moreover, it seems there is an expectation, if not demand, that Arab Israelis adopt the Palestinian national line that sets an anti-Zionist approach as a condition to their accepting this cooperation, a move reminiscent of that very same elite's embrace of the Orientalist discourse, which was ultimately turned into a post-Zionist battering ram.
The Left's view that there is an absolute overlap between Israel's Arab citizens and the Joint Arab List is stereotypical, not to mention racist. Does everyone have to identify with the same party just because they are Arab? That would be like forcing all the Jews to vote for Meretz.
As is the case with every society, Arab society is heterogeneous. Beyond the sociological divisions, there are three main streams of thought: an Arab Israeli stream that accepts the State of Israel's existence and strives for full integration in it; a nationalist-communist stream that accepts Israel's existence but opposes its Zionist character, preferring instead a state of all its citizens; and a Palestinian nationalist stream that strives to establish a Palestinian state on all of Mandatory Palestine.
Up until the 1980s, a majority of Israel's Arab citizens were active in Zionist parties like Mapai, Mapam, and later the Alignment, or others that were created by them. Later on, in the 1988 Knesset elections, the voting rate for Zionist parties among Arab Israelis was 40%, and in the next elections increased to 52%. However, there is barely any political expression of this stream today. The fact that the positions held by members of the Joint Arab List range from Hadash party to Balad says it all.
Collaborating with Arab Israelis interested in voting for Zionist ruling parties does not certify as "kosher" a partnership with the Joint Arab List. The move has nothing to do with their "Arabness" and everything to do with their positions. Likewise, ruling out a coalition with the Joint Arab List does not mean ruling out all Arab Israelis. The opposite is true: Those who think we all must strive to renounce the existence of the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state are the ones painting with a broad brush, negating any possible expression of heterogeneousness and even any Zionist affiliation on their part.
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