Israeli Arab Party Targets Abbas
This is a cross post from the Z Word blog by Kenneth Bandler, Director of Communications for the American Jewish Committee.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas must regret the failure of Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beteinu to get Balad, the nationalist party in the Israeli Arab sector, banned from the Knesset elections earlier this year. Balad party head Jamal Zahalka is now openly calling on Abbas to resign.
Judge Richard Goldstone’s report on Israel’s operation against Hamas in Gaza is at the center of the controversy. To advance the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, the United States persuaded the Palestinians to ask the UN Human Rights Council to defer until March 2010 a vote on the Goldstone report. Not a perfect solution for Israelis, who would prefer to see the report buried forever. Nor for the Palestinians who want the HRC to refer the report to the UN Security Council and the International Criminal Court in their ongoing campaign to use every possible international organization forum available to assault and condemn Israel.
The apparent compromise scored two points for Washington. First, it gave apparent vindication to the Obama administration’s decision to successfully return to the HRC as a full member. Second, it enhanced President Obama’s commitment from day one of his presidency to make real progress towards a negotiated resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
But in the Middle East, change we can believe in does not come easy. The backlash from Palestinians, especially the Hamas government ruling Gaza, but also Abbas’s own Fatah colleagues, created a firestorm of outrage. The Palestinian leader has been backtracking from his commitment to Washington faster than a spinner cyclist pedaling in reverse at the gym. And just like those stationary bikes, there is a lot of motion in Ramallah but no movement in any particular direction. In his televised address on Sunday, Abbas delivered conflicting messages to the Palestinians. On the one hand, he defended his decision to defer the vote. On the other hand, he announced the PA envoy in Geneva will request an HRC vote on the Goldstone report.
Meanwhile, by joining the Palestinian chorus of fury over Abbas’s handling of the Goldstone report, Balad has distinguished itself as the first Israeli Arab political party to ever demand a Palestinian leader’s resignation. The reason,according to Zahalka, is Abbas’s “behaving shamefully vis-a-vis Israel and in the Goldstone report affair.” Although MK Zahalka serves in the Israeli parliament, and obviously does not vote in Palestinian elections, he nonetheless seems eager to appear more Palestinian than Yasser Arafat.
Balad occupies four of the 120 seats in the Knesset. That an ardently Arab nationalist political party can serve in the Knesset is testimony to the strength of Israeli democracy. This fact was at the heart of the Israeli Supreme Court decision to overturn the Central Elections Committee ban, thus allowing Balad to run last February, as it had done in prior Knesset elections.
Still, controversy has surrounded Balad since Azmi Bishara founded the party in 1995, and its first electoral success in the 1996 Knesset elections. Bishara’s parliamentary career was short-lived. An unauthorized visit to Damascus in 2006 and contacts with Hezbollah finally caught up with him. Two years ago, Bishara suddenly left Israel amidst an investigation into his alleged ties to Hezbollah. In April 2007, Bishara announced in Cairo his resignation from the Knesset.
MK Zahalka, Bishara’s successor at the helm of Balad, is continuing the party’s firebrand tradition in sharply criticizing the Israeli government. But, by entering the fray of Palestinian political debates and disputes, Zahalka, intentionally or not, may reinforce the perception Balad is innately beholden to groups that are Israel’s enemies.
Comments
| 13 October 2009, 4:59 pm |
SimonD – eh?
| 13 October 2009, 5:23 pm |
“shocking examples of Arabs actually standing up themselves”
Well, at least in Israel they can stand up. In Hamas-ruled Gaza, women cannot even sit down in a motorcycle.
| 13 October 2009, 5:43 pm |
Please keep up!!!
Abbas has now called for the UN to consider Goldstone ASAP because Hamas caused a fuss about Abbas dropping it. They organised demos and threatened not to hold hands with Fatah.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1120776.html
Now Abbas is hurling insults back at Hamas saying that by forcing Goldstone they are delaying reconciliation.
While don’t this pile of crap just fight it out once and for all and make their effing minds up. (Hey, you don’t help things by calling them “a pile of crap”) Well calling them nice names and inviting them to tea ain’t achieved anything! Basically they don’t know what they want and they want different things. Its a shambles.
“The Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity”
The West will crush Goldstone because it will deny them the freedom to confront terrorism and retrospectively label their own actions as “War Crmes”. Example: At the very outset of Iraq War II the Coalition (that means USA and UK) fired missiles into a restaurant believing that Saddam and sons were attending but KNOWING that they would kill civilians sitting down to dinner.
Those are actions nowhere near the scale of anything Israel is accused of since Israel was ctively engaged in combat and the Coalition were not!
| 13 October 2009, 5:46 pm |
SimonDumb, what are you on about. You must be a fugitive from MPAC UK (where I’m kicking butt). You see, some of the posters there don’t understand the word “Antisemitism.
| 13 October 2009, 6:32 pm |
“Glad to see Harry’s place still daring to expose these shocking examples of Arabs actually standing up themselves ”
Zahalka stands up against the interest of the Israeli Arabs. About two years ago some alarming statistics showed a catastrophic trend: More and more Israeli Arabs volunteered to do national service either serving in the IDF or working in different government run social services. Zahalka started a vicious campaign against it, called the volunteers traitors, demanded from the Arab community to excommunicate them together with their supporters. He did everything in his power to block something that could have brought closer the Arab citizens to the Israeli mainstream. He is not different from any other populist demagogue politicians who happily and proudly selling out his constituency.
| 13 October 2009, 6:52 pm |
“He is not different from any other populist demagogue politicians who happily and proudly selling out his constituency.”
Well isn’t that what politicians are supposed to do? It’s kind of his job, isn’t it?
| 13 October 2009, 8:39 pm |
Isy you are absolutely right.
| 13 October 2009, 11:17 pm |
‘Zahalka, intentionally or not, may reinforce the perception Balad is innately beholden to groups that are Israel’s enemies.’
Indeed, and judging by Azmi B’shara’s example, very profitable it is too. To flee a country under suspicion of treason and money laundering, to work against that country from abroad, and yet still draw a Knesset pension…nice work if you can get it!
| 13 October 2009, 11:39 pm |
As Judy remarked yesterday, Obama’s pressure on Abbas to eschew Goldstone is causing unexpected (to the US) blowback. Goldstone himself is alleged to have agreed to chair this disgraceful committee so as to prevent it being even more extreme than it was.
Attempts to triangulate on the I/P issue are failing because they involve moral cowardice that is evident to both sides. The result is the counter-intuitive increase in polarisation that we are now seeing. That is our reward for failing to stand up for what we believe – that Israel has a right to existence and peace, and that those who seek its destruction (i.e. far too many Arabs) are a disgrace. The massive pro-Palestinian lobby has been pushing against flab for some 40 years now and think they can keep on doing so. Who is going to inject a bit of backbone into Western leadership, and tell them that Israel is there to stay?
| 14 October 2009, 1:22 am |
“Although MK Zahalka serves in the Israeli parliament, and obviously does not vote in Palestinian elections, he nonetheless seems eager to appear more Palestinian than Yasser Arafat.”
That’s not hard, Arafat was from Cairo.
| 14 October 2009, 4:09 am |
Remind us again, please.
Just which countries are on the UN Human Rights Council?
Great post. Glad to see Harry’s place still daring to expose these shocking examples of Arabs actually standing up themselves -Antisemites!