"Netanyahu, Trump, and Bin Salman are trying to light up the territory and stick a spoke in the wheels of a return to the [Iran] nuclear deal," Joint Arab List MK Aida Touma-Sliman tweeted Monday in response to reports that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was in Saudi Arabia.
"They could drag the entire region into escalation and war," she continued. It's hard to understand how a representative of a party that makes a pretense of promoting peace and co-existence could respond so bitterly and sharply to what appears to be another step toward relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia, which is of special importance to devout Muslims.
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It's hard to understand – but it's not surprising. For 72 years, Israeli Arabs have been participating in Israeli democracy as an independent, isolationist unit, and their parties represent people who didn't vote for them in Libya, Syria, Iran, Yemen, Lebanon, Nablus, and the Gaza Strip. They formed alliances with the Israeli Left, but voted against peace accords, refused to recognize Israel as a Jewish, democratic state, and missed every opportunity to enlist on behalf of Israel's Arab citizens. Instead of forming connections, they glorified isolationism, sanctified divisiveness, embraces those who wished Israel ill, kissed the terrorists who murdered innocent people, and are standing at the front of the campaign to delegitimize Israel, which they define as an apartheid state to be boycotted.
But now, given the expanding regional peace, the need for a far-reaching, deep-seated change is becoming clearer than ever. We need an Arab-Jewish party that will operate as a centrist party. A party that won't be the mouthpiece for haters of Israel and will aspire to an egalitarian Israel obligated to righting historic wrongs in the Arab sector and making immediate improvements to its life: personal safety, infrastructure, employment, education, higher education, and yes – integrating into Israeli society by serving in the military or through civilian national service.
There should be no more votes wasted on people who call themselves leaders of the sector but whose accomplishments are limited to radical declarations, provocations, and concern for the welfare of terrorists in Israeli prisons. There should be no more alliances with the fringes of society and marginalized ideologies.
Israel needs a Jewish-Arab party that sees the Arabs of Israel and the Jews of Israel as equal partners in a single purpose: ensuring that Israel develops, flourishes, and grows, as a Jewish democratic state that protects the national identity and culture of every sector. Both sides are sick of the preaching, of those who try to torpedo Jewish-Arab normalization, of the people who spread hatred and enmity, of those who champion isolationism and division.
A Jewish-Arab centrist party would bring hope to our shared lives in the country we love and whose economy, society, and military we want to strengthen. A country where what its Jewish and Arab citizens have in common is greater than what keeps them apart. A party whose platform is based on national interests and universal values, a party that sends a message of hope. Now is the time for a party for both Jewish and Arab citizens.
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