The positions of the
Progressive List for Peace that is willing to go along with any government so long as they get a share of the spoils. There is even a small dovish wing The breakaway of the Morasha [Tradition] Party is a further stage in the degeneration of this current. In the 1950s, it had a strong left wing. For example, in the 1954 party congress, there was strong pressure for a resolution calling for Israeli neutrality between East and West.
The most alarming thing about the rise of Kahane is not just that he got into the
The following interview was given to Gerry Foley in Tel Aviv on August
22 by Adam Keller, a spokesperson of the Progressive List for Peace and
Other Israel, the bulletin of the Israeli Council for also editor
Israeli-Palestinian Peace (P. O. Box 956, Tel Aviv, Israel, 61008).
has not been able to review the edited text of the interview, interviewee which has had to be shortened for space reasons.
Question. What is your assessment of big parties. A victory for Labor would the general election results?
Answer. From my own corner of the seats, which is a good showing for a new list; one that was set up only two months before the elections. I think it is important, moreover, that we did not get these seats at the expense of the Communist
Party but at the expense of Labor.
Therefore, the vote that we got represents a substantial shift to the left.
I think the Labor Party deserved this lesson because they are responsible for much of the discrimination against the
Arabs in Israel. Even in this election they showed contempt for the Arab voters.
They had promised to have three Arab candidates on their slate, and then because of demands from other sections of the party pushing their own candidates, they cut this down to one. I'm glad that the Arab voters showed contempt in re-
Moreover, I think our success is having a big impact on the Arabs who remain in the Labor Party.
The one Arab Knesset member who did get elected has already made some demands. He has said that his vote for a Labor government is not
He's making some demands for more equality for the Arabs.
a real revolution because the Arabs of the
Labor Party used to be the most subservient quislings imaginable.
The shift of votes away from Labor to the two small liberal parties, the Civil
Rights Movement and Shinui [Change] also represents a definite shift to the left.
In conventional terms you would say that a shift from a Social Democratic Party to a center party was a shift to the right.
But in Israeli terms, a shift from the
Labor Party to Shinui and much more to the Civil Rights Movement is definitely a shift to the left or a more dovish line and a protest against the right-wing line
Labor put forward in these elections.
Q. Does that mean that you think the relative defeat of the Labor Party was a good thing?
No. I hoped that the Labor Party
A.
would get a clear majortiy for creating a government. Of course, I'm not in love with Labor but everyone but the most dogmatic people have to admit that there is a definite difference between the two
14 have been a definite shift in the right direction and opened up the possibility the Labor Party to go further than its intentions.
What's your evaluation of the vote
A. It lost about 15% of its vote, seven seats. About half of the lost votes went to the extreme right. The Thiya [Renaissance] Party increased its seats from three to five. There was also a qualitative change within the party. With all their chauvinism, the former leaders of the Thiya tried at least to maintain some respectability, to stay within the rules of the parliamentary game. But the new leader Rafael Eitan, or "Raful," as he is called, displays an open contempt for any notion of restraint.
You might say that the T'hiya is just taking the mask off. But in politics, is better if there is a political climate that forces extreme right people to put on masks. If they feel free to unmask, the climate is obviously changing in an unfavorable direction.
Q. What about the vote for Rabbi
That represents a big escalation of the turn to the right. This is the first party represented in the What I said about Raful goes ten times more for Kahane. election slogans was "Kahane says what thinking but not saying." The truth is that he has a big electoral potential. I would guess that if everyone who thinks like him had voted for him, he would have got about ten seats or even
Up until now, it has not been the thing to do even for extreme right-wing people to say the sort of things Kahane did. For example, Neman, the minister of science
2225
what he thought about Kahane's idea of that there are some things that should be done but should not be talked about.
The vote for the Morasha Party also represents a shift to the right. This is a splitoff from the National Religious Party. The NRP is a right-wing party, but it still has a very big opportunist wing
Knesset but the kind of support he has got. It is quite obvious that most of his voters are oriental Jews, a large part of either unemployed workers or workers afraid of losing their jobs. is a textbook example of the rise of
You have the unemployed thinking that the Arabs are taking their jobs and so the solution is to expel the
Kahane is playing to this and it So, we have not just a fascist in the Knesset but the beginnings of a
Q. If you characterize Kahane's vote as fascist, what about the oriental Jews who voted for Likud and its satellite parties?
A. Some of the orientals also voted for Weizman, which is a shift in the opposite direction.
Q. What's your position on the negotiations underway for the formation of the new government?
Our position is that the Likud should be thrown out of power. This is the fundamental thing. It should be thrown out completely; we are against a National Unity Government, which we call a "National Disaster Government."
UTTE
Protest against Israeli occupation of the West Bankund
International Viewpoint 17 September 1984
Does that mean that you are prepared to throw your votes behind a Labor
We want to help the formation of a Labor government. At the same time, we don't want to become a satellite of Labor, because we don't share its political positions. We want a Labor government not because it would be a good thing but because it would be a lesser evil. So, our position is that we would be willing to support a Labor government from the outside but not to join it. Moreover, we would not support such a government without political concessions in return.
It should be emphasized that the very fact of forming a government dependent on the votes of the Progressive List and Hadash [the Democratic Front for Peace and Equality, which is dominated by the CP; in Hebrew the acronym also means "New"] would represent a very radical step to the left for the Labor Party. This is because one of the cardinal principles of Israeli political life until now has been that the Arabs are outsiders. they are citizens and can vote but when they vote for recognizably Arab parties and not for the big Jewish parties their vote shouldn't be allowed to influence big political decisions such as forming a
This policy was instituted by Ben
It is a traditional bipartisan policy, and if the Labor Party were prepared to break it, it would be violating a major taboo in Israeli politics. It would come under fierce attack from the right.
Personally, I have big doubts that the Labor leaders are prepared to take such a radical step, also because they are the inheritors of this racist principle. But I hope it will happen. There are some indications that the Labor Party has been and Golan Heights in June 1984 (DR) International Viewpoint 17 September 1984 changing its traditional attitude.
One was the election of the Israeli president, who is chosen by the Knesset. Labor accepted the votes of the Communist Party in order to get its candidate, attempt to get "Ha-Tikvah," the Zionist anthem officially adopted as the national anthem of Israel, which would be a direct affront to the Arab people. A backbencher introduced a bill calling for this as a way of getting some cheap publicity. It also called for a oneyear prison sentence for anyone showing disrespect to the anthem. I am sure that if this bill had come up five or ten years ago, Labor would have voted for it.
Another factor is Labor's opportunistic motivation. They are willing to do almost anything to get back into power. You have to realize that people like Peres and Rabbin really feel that they have a God-given right to rule. The Labor Party is very much like an old aristocracy that has been overthrown and is waiting for a restoration. [It is the party of the Euro-
Jews who have Zionist institutions from the beginning.]
In the election campaign, they used the most right-wing slogans they could think of, because they thought that the floating vote was rightist, and since they wanted to attract the floating vote, they tried to look as right wing as possible. So, I think that out of the same opportunism they may also be willing to make
What are the perspectives of the Progressive List now after the elections? Do you propose to remain a coalition or try to form a new party?
At present, the inclination is to remain a coalition because there are many political tendencies both among the Arabs and Jews who supported the list. Among the Jews, we have Zionists, anti-Zionists and non-Zionists, arnong whom I include myself. On the Arab side, the support for the list has really become a of popular every Arab who felt nationalist, felt he couldn't possible vote for one of the big parties, and who for one reason or another - and there were a large variety of them - did not want to vote for the Communist Party.
Q. What do you think these reasons
Well, you have some intellectuals who disapprove of Rakakh [the CP] because of its adherence to the Soviet line. They are sort of independent socialists. Then you have a much larger number who object to Rakakh because it is a very bureaucratized party, really sort of a shadow establishment, especially in places like Nazareth [the biggest Arab town in Israel]. It used the municipalities that it controls as power structures in the most conventional way. It puts its people on the payroll. It has set up a considerable apparatus of its own. And it get hundreds of scholarships for Arab students in Moscow and East Germany and so on.
Of course, spreading education among the right is that they use this as sort of a reward for people who are loyal to the party. It is a very strong incentive for a young man to know that if he is loyal to the party, he will get to study in Moscow.
Moreover, the Rakakh leadership has not changed in more than three decades. Meir Vilner, their No. 1 man, is a signatory to the Israeli declaration of inde-
Their No. 2 man, Taufik Tubi, was involved in the negotiations between the Arab population of Haifa and the Israeli military authorities in 1948. So, it is a completely unchanging structure and many people object to it even for not very ideological reasons. Young men want a young party, not an old, ossified one. Some people were unhappy that Talfik Zayad, the mayor of Nazareth, has remained No. 4. He is the party's most popular figure. people would have like to see him at the head of the slate.
There is also another issue, which personally I don't like very much. of Arabs say that they are not happy with the fact that Rakakh in principle puts a Jew at the head of the slate every time and that their votes go for putting Jews into the Knesset. I don't like this motivation, but such people came to our list. What they really wanted was a pure Arab party. Before our list was formed, there was a strong struggle among the Arab groups and a strong tendency toward establishing a pure Arab party.
If the Arabs in Israel want to establish an Arab nationalist party, I would sup port their right to do so to the best of
But I think that the conditions in Israel require a joint struggle, an Arab-Jewish struggle. There were many Arabs who also thought so, and they prevailed. Some of the Arabs who were for
Arab party withdrew completely. Others accepted the situation and came
Q. Does this Arab nationalist ten-
A. I don't think it is organized as a formal tendency, but there are still such people. I hear of them from time to time. But in general, they accept the present situation, especially since the value of Jewish-Arab partnership proved itself in the survival of the list. You know that there was an attempt to outlaw it. I think it is almost certain that a pure Arab list without Jews would not have gotten through the obstacles. among the Arabs supporting the list?
A. There is an Islamic religious tendency. They have caused us some trouble. For example, they prevented us from putting a point on abortion in the list's pro.
I'm not very much in love with this kind of people. But they are a force that can't be ignored. I think that it is much better that they are part of a list like ours and not forming some quasiKhomeinyist group.
Q. I noticed in the news conference that Talfik Zayad gave on the occasion of the annual work camp in Nazareth that he made a very sharp attack on local supporters of the Progressive List.
The Communist Party's attitude was very hostile from the start, and in Nazareth, this attitude goes back further. One of the major components of our list was the Progressive Movement of Nazareth, which split from the Communist Party-controlled Democratic 1981. It contested the elections and got
On the other hand, the list did not get this vote in Nazareth at the expense of the Communist Party but at the expense of Labor. The former Labor representative was a real quisling. He has now completely disappeared from the political scene. So, there is no good reason for the hostility.
One factor is the history of the split. Another is that the Communist Party re. gards the Arabs in Israel as their fief. It even tends to say that the PLO is the representative of the Palestinian people outside the borders of Israel and the Democratic Front is the sole representative inside the borders.
The CP has the advantage of having the only Arab daily in Israel not controlled by the government, Al-Ittihad. During the elections, it devoted the bulk of its space to attacking us. It attacked us as Zionist agents, war criminals, agents of the local people most hated by the
To be honest, I must say that some of our own people also made attacks, some of which I did not like. But I can honestly say that it was Rakakh that started this type of thing. We were afraid that something like this might happen, and so when we announced the formation of our list, we called on Rakakh to sign a sort of non-aggression pact. They did not accept
Later, we asked them to sign a surplus vote agreement, so that on the basis of the votes over the quota to elect according to the proportional representation system either they or we could get an extra seat. Again they refusec.
You say Al-Ittihad is the only Arabic daily independent of the government. Does the Progressive List have an Arabic publication of its own?
A. We have a publication in Nazareth, a weekly whose name means "Solidarity" in Arabic. Its circulation increased by 200% during the elections, and so it was able to increase its frequency from fortnightly to weekly.
Q. What solution do you propose to the Palestinian problem?
A. The creation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and the Gaza strip with its capital in east Jerusalem and probably headed by the PLO with Yasser Arafat as premier. We are for negotiations with the PLO leading up to this goal. We are for mutual recognition of the state of Israel and the PLO. 16
We regard the mutual part as very important because of the not unjustified fears both peoples have of the other. Now to an outsider it might seem ridiculous to say that the Israeli people fear the Palestinians. An outside observer would say that Israel is the greatest military power in the Middle East, and the Palestinians are a homeless people without any state of their own. So why should the Israelis fear them?
But it has to be emphasized, especially for the readers of International Viewpoint, that these fears are very real and that when a subjective feeling is held by a whole people it becomes a very impor-
First of all there is the memory of the Holocaust, which is deeply rooted in the consciousness of every Israeli, even those who are not from Europe. there is more than the Holocaust; there are two thousand years of persecutions. Most Israelis have heard stories from their parents or grandparents about some kind of anti-Semitic persecution. The kind of story differs according to the parents. For some, it is slights and curses on the streets of the towns where they were
From others it is the story of There is a very strong paranoia, a feeling that everyone is against us, everyone hates us, everyone wants to kill us, and nobody will help us unless we help ourselves, unless we are strong.
This attitude is reinforced by every attack carried out by Palestinians against
I can give you an example. About ten years ago, there was an attack in a town in the north in which a fouryear old girl was kidnapped. When the Palestinians were cornered, they smashed the head of the child against a rock. This story has gone into Israeli consciousness. I have seen it raised in hundreds of argu-
They say, "How can we talk with people like this; they are just like the Nazis, or like the Ukrainians, or a thousand other devils?"
Another fact is the narrowness of Israel in its pre-1967 borders. In the central region, where we are now, the distance between the Jordanian border and the sea was not more than 15 or 20 kilometers.
Moreover, everyone knows that most of the state of Israel was once Arab. So every time when you say you want to return the West Bank, they will say, "Why just the West Bank, why not return this place we're standing on too." The rightwing people can say since everything is Arab land and we can't return everything, then we should not return anything. To the contrary, we have to continue to fight the Arabs and take more land because that's the way things are.
So, to convince the Israeli people that peace is possible and that coexistence with the Palestinians is possible, they have to be convinced that the Palestinians do not want everything back.
What I'm driving at is that while I'm not in love with the pre-1967 borders, they have come to represent the idea of compromise, of coexistence, of Israelis recognizing the national rights of Palestinians and vice versa. I think that under the present conditions, this is the only concrete form that a compromise solu-
Do you have any immediate program for opposing the superexploitation of Arab workers from the West Bank in
We are thinking about devoting more effort to this question. But you run into some contradictions that are hard to untangle. For example, if you want the workers from the occupied territories to enjoy protection, you should demand that they be accepted as full members in the trade unions. But making West Bank workers full members of the Israeli trade unions is an obvious act of
What about the defense of the democratic rights of the Arabs who find themselves under Israeli rule?
Our program makes an absolute distinction between the Arabs in Israel the occupied territories. Arabs in the occupied territories are the future citizens of the Palestinian state. Everything that Israel is doing there is ipso facto wrong, because Israel shouldn't be there at all. Of course our struggle against the occupation includes defending people who in one way or the other being victimized by the occupation.
The Arabs who are citizens of Israel within its pre-1967 borders are in a different category because they are citizens of Israel and by our program should remain citizens of Israel. So, our program is quite detailed on this. for repealing all the laws that discriminate in one way or another against the
Q. What about economic demands?
A. I should make it clear that the left in Israel has no real base among the working class. It is composed mainly of intellectuals, upper-middle-class professional people and Kibbutzniks [collective members who form an elite in For this reason it is very small, because you can't have a mass party without the working class.
The Israeli section of the Fourth International are very optimistic about converting the working class sooner or later. I must say that I am much more pessimistic. I continue to hope. But the fact is that the fight against the occupation, and the struggle before 1967 against the military rule imposed on the Arabs, and all the democratic struggles have been fought by intellectuals, upper-middleclass people, and Kibbutzniks, and the working class has been at best neutral that seemed promising, such as the Black Panthers [a movement of poor oriental Jews] did not live up to their promise. I have a deep appreciation of people like Meir here [an RCL leader] who work in factories. I'm just not optimistic.
International Viewpoint 17 September 1984
easier credit, renumerative prices, etc.; hence the character of demands of the Anandpur Sahib resolution. (2)
There is another class aspect to this situation. Capitalist Sikh farmers have concentrated the surplus that can be invested into their own hands. Part of this has been used to develop agribusiness in