Not a “vibrant democracy”. This is apartheid.

Palestinian citizens limited in exercising the right to vote and run for office

The roughly 1.7 million Palestinians with Israeli citizenship status can, like Jewish citizens, take part in the general elections. They can vote for their candidates, start their own parties or join existing ones. However, their political participation has been cast as illegitimate since the very inception of the state, along with attempts to restrict or deny them true political representation.

There is no shortage of examples illustrating the widespread view in Israel that Palestinians’ political participation should be monitored, controlled and curtailed, and that their right to vote and run for office should be drained of any meaning. The Military Rule imposed on Palestinian citizens until 1966 treated this entire population as enemies, severely restricting their political activity. Mapai (later the Labor Party), which governed the state and most of its institutions in Israel’s early years, refused to take on Palestinian candidates until the early 1980s and set up satellite parties for Palestinian citizens, dictating who would run in them and how they would vote. Efforts to de-legitimize Palestinian political participation continue to the present day, clearly showing that some of the Israel’s leaders and the public at large see such participation as undesirable. This sentiment was perfectly captured in various slogans used during election campaigns, such as “Netanyahu is good for the Jews” (1996), “No loyalty, no citizenship” by right-wing party Yisrael Beitenu (2009), or a clip released on election day (2015) in which then-Prime Minister Netanyahu warned that “the right-wing government is in danger. Arab voters are heading to the polling stations in droves”.

The underlying message is clear: the political participation of Palestinian citizens is not, and must not be, equal to that of Jewish citizens. It is often seen as an attempt to undermine the Jewish citizens’ monopoly on political power in the entire area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. That is also why Knesset resolutions that rely on votes by Palestinian MKs, without obtaining a Jewish majority, are widely considered illegitimate.

This is more than longstanding practice and rhetoric. The political participation of Palestinian citizens is also limited by Basic Law: The Knesset. Section 7a, legislated in 2002, stipulates that a candidate or a list of candidates can be barred from running for Knesset if their actions or goals explicitly or implicitly include “negation of the existence of the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state.” The Central Elections Committee – a body comprised of representatives of various political parties – has repeatedly relied on this clause to disqualify Palestinian candidates and lists, arguing that their civil struggle for full equality violates the clause as it denies Israel’s existence as a Jewish state.

In 2003, shortly after Section 7a passed into law, then-Supreme Court President Aharon Barak ruled that running for office is a constitutional right and that, therefore, the section must be interpreted narrowly such that lists will be disqualified only when there is “clear, unequivocal, persuasive evidence” and only when the goal is injurious to “the ‘core’ features that form the minimal definition of Israel as a Jewish state.” The Supreme Court has since repeatedly relied on this interpretation to reverse decisions made by the Central Elections Committee and to clear Palestinian candidates and lists to run in the elections.

Nevertheless, in these decisions, the justices repeatedly stressed the limits of Palestinian political participation. President Barak, for instance, explained that demanding equality does not threaten the existence of Israel as a Jewish state only so long as the aim is to “secure equality between citizens internally, while acknowledging the rights of the minority living among us.” If, on the other hand, the demand for equality “seeks to undermine the rationale for the country’s establishment, thereby denying Israel’s character as the state of the Jewish people, then it is injurious to the core, minimal features that make Israel a Jewish state.” In this case, there is room, he held, to consider disqualifying a list or candidate supporting this position.

In June 2018, the Balad party submitted a bill titled Basic Law: A Country of All Its Citizens while the Knesset was debating a bill titled Basic Law: Israel – the Nation State of the Jewish People. Balad’s bill was intended to enshrine “the principle of equal citizenship for all citizens, while recognizing the existence and rights of both national groups – Jewish and Arab.” In a rare move, the Knesset Presidium refused to admit the bill, thereby blocking debate on the matter in the plenum.

Though the bill was never even debated in the Knesset, submitting it clarified the breadth and scope of equality sought. Supreme Court President Esther Hayut ruled that merely proposing the bill crossed a red line and was “a significant act by Balad MKs sitting in the 20th Knesset, attempting to effect, through a bill, a political program and worldview that negate the existence of the State of Israel as a Jewish state.”

Justice Hayut also ruled that this position could have justified disqualifying the party, but stopped short of banning Balad for technical reasons (partly because a disqualification would also apply to the Ra’am party, which ran jointly with Balad). In a recent hearing regarding Balad’s disqualification, in the run-up for the upcoming elections on 1 November 2022, President Hayut repeated these remarks, once again describing the bill as a “watershed moment” and “very, very problematic.”

The message to Palestinians and their candidates is clear: Do not seek full equality and recognition of collective national rights. Demanding equality on matters such as land, immigration and national emblems is perceived as repudiating Israel’s constitutional principles, as it undermines the country’s definition as a Jewish state. Prime Minister Yair Lapid recently spelled out this principle, saying: “Twenty percent of the population are Arabs. We can and should give them civil equality… On the other hand, we will not give them national equality, because this is the only state the Jews have.”

Palestinian citizens who choose to participate in the electoral process have no choice but to enter the political playing field with their hands tied. The parties representing them are barred from challenging the fundamental principles of the regime that is dispossessing and oppressing them. They cannot seek to abolish the laws and systems that harm them, which are considered defining features of the Jewish state. They cannot fight for a core democratic tenet: full equality for all those living under the same regime. This limits political participation exclusively for Palestinian citizens. No matter what they do or how they vote – constitutionally, their vote is worth less.

Clearly, curtailing the right to political participation (of Palestinian citizens) is different from denying it altogether (from Palestinian subjects). Palestinian citizens who choose to participate in the general elections can still take part – although to a lesser extent than Jewish citizens – in fighting Israel’s regime of supremacy, control and oppression, and in promoting full rights and a democracy that is not inherently hollow.