This week, the Israeli Central Elections Committee voted to bar several Arab-led political parties and candidates from participating in the upcoming Knesset elections, including Knesset Members Ofer Cassif, Sami Abu Shehadeh, Mansour Abbas and parties Ra’am, and the Joint List. The petitions argued that they violated Section 7A of Israel’s Basic Law: The Knesset, which allows candidates or electoral lists to be barred from participating in elections if they deny the existence of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state, incite racism, or support armed struggle against Israel.
These decisions are not final. Under Israeli law, the disqualifications must be reviewed by the Supreme Court before they take effect. Historically, the Court has overturned the majority of Central Elections Committee attempts to disqualify candidates or lists. The main exceptions were the Kach and Kahane Chai parties, whose disqualifications were upheld by the Court in 1988 and 1992. Both were Kahanist parties and and their politics helped shape the political tradition associated with today’s Otzma Yehudit.
This case not only raises questions about the boundaries of Israeli democracy, but also a broader question: What happens when a society becomes so consumed by an ongoing conflict that defeating the other side begins to overshadow other urgent problems at home?
That question was brought into sharper focus this week when, in addressing the vote, Avigdor Lieberman, a member of the anti-Bibi bloc, argued that the elimination of Hamas should be a central goal of any future Israeli government, and that any party that doesn’t support this shouldn’t be part of the Knesset. That position illustrates how the question of Hamas’s future has come to dominate Israel’s political and security debate.
Yet Israel faces a number of pressing challenges that extend beyond the battlefield.
The latest PISA scores, released this month. show that Israeli students’ scores in mathematics, reading and science were the lowest ever recorded for Israel in the assessment. Meanwhile a crime epidemic has taken hold in Israel’s Arab-Palestinian communities. Thousands of young Israelis have also had their studies, entry into the workforce, or careers disrupted by the ongoing demands of reserve duty. These problems are distinct, and the war in Gaza did not cause all of them. But each has been affected, directly or indirectly, by the enormous political, economic, and social costs of the ongoing war.
At Partners for Progressive Israel, our goal is to deepen understanding of the complexities of Israel and Palestine while highlighting Israeli and Palestinian civil society activists working to create change in the region. Partners believes that security and prosperity are intertwined and must be achieved for both Israelis and Palestinians alike. That commitment means asking difficult questions of ourselves and of Israel, as we did in last week’s webinar on Ethical Reflections. It also means examining the realities of the conflict through publications such as Israel Horizons.
Political scientists Pruitt and Rubin have written about how, as conflicts escalate, the goals of the parties can shift from “doing well” to “hurting the other.” Once that happens, defeating the other side can become an objective in itself, extending beyond the battlefield and shaping political discourse and social priorities. The political attacks on Arab-led parties are just one example of how the logic of conflict can extend beyond the battlefield and shape political life inside Israel. When a society organizes its politics primarily around defeating an adversary, what happens to the other work of building a healthy society?
That is not an argument for ignoring security threats or minimizing the trauma and danger of war. It is an argument for remembering that security is not the only measure of a society’s well-being. Education, public safety, economic opportunity, democratic participation and the ability of young people to build their futures matter too.
At Partners for Progressive Israel, we believe that confronting those questions is part of what it means to care deeply about Israel and its future, as well as the future of all people living on the land from the river to the sea.
Leave A Comment