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Israel's Other Rio
Arab votes could prove decisive
NECHEMIA MEYERS
Special to The Jewish News
Jerusalem
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26 Detroit Jewish News
here will be
hell to pay if
either Barak
or
Mordechai beat
Netanyahu thanks to Arab votes. And
this is a distinct possibility.
To be sure, no major political party
has ever declared that a would-be prime
minister must be chosen by a "Jewish
majority." But that is the view of many
right-wingers, and should the winner of
the forthcoming elections emerge victo-
rious thanks to gaining the united sup-
port of Arab voters, who make up
some 12% of the electorate, the right-
wingers will not remain silent.
The situation has been further
aggravated by the fact that the Arabs
are becoming increasingly assertive,
even going so far as to demand that
Israel cease being a Jewish state, that
it be a state of all its citizens instead.
This would mean, among other
things, repealing the Law of Return,
which allows any and every Jew the
right to settle in Israel.
That is precisely the desire of
Knesset Member Azmi Bashara, head
of the Balad Party. "As long as the
state is defined as Jewish," Dr.
Bashara stated at a recent party rally,
"an Arab is automatically a second-
class citizen, while a Jew who arrives
here from Brooklyn is immediately
granted full rights."
Even more controversial was what
Bashara had to say about the Hezbollah,
Israel's mortal enemy. He defined it as
"an Arab nationalist movement fighting
bravely against the Israeli occupation."
The broadcasts of Radio 2000, an
independent Arab station in Nazareth,
also throw light on the attitudes of
Israeli Arabs or, as most of them now
prefer to call themselves, Palestinians
resident in Israel. For example, when
Israelis were mourning the death of
King Hussein, Radio 2000 carried on
as usual. Moyan Halabi, manager of
the station, said that his listeners "did-
n't feel sorry about the death of a man
who had murdered 25,000 Palestinians
during the Black September period."
And while other citizens of this
country were celebrating Israel's
Independence Day last year, Moyan
and divisive.
and his colleagues were broadcasting
programs that highlighted "the
tragedy of the Palestinian people, for
whom the 1948 war was a disaster."
Bashara is pleased with the station,
but regrets that it is only heard in the
Central Galilee. He wants to establish
both a national Arab radio station and
a national Arab university as steps
towards cultural autonomy for his peo-
ple. In all probability he will eventually
call for political autonomy as well.
A number of prominent Likud
Party leaders would like to close down
the Nazareth station and to ban the
participation of the Balad Party in the
forthcoming elections, but so far Prime
Minister Netanyahu has not joined the
chorus. He argues that while Bashara's
remarks are very serious, "they express
the views of only an extremist minority
among Israeli Arabs, most of whom
remain loyal to the state."
However, Netanyahu may sing a
different tune if it looks like the votes
of Israeli Arabs are likely to give the
premiership to Ehud Barak or Yitzhak
Mordechai. II
0
0
_0
An Arab woman has been named Miss
Israel for the first time in the nation's
history Rana Raslan, a 21-year-old
Israeli Arab from Haifa was crowned in
Tel Aviv Tuesday, March 9. "I am total-
ly Israeli, and I do not think about
whether I am an Arab or a Jew," she
said. "They wanted a beauty queen, not
apolitical queen." A clay earlier, Abed
el-Rahman Zouabi, 68, became the first
Arab justice on the Israeli Supreme Court.