Whoever studies the current Israeli reality can recognize two types of dominant, preeminent discourses. Both are fashioned by elite groups that have hegemony over the public domain, decide on agendas and dictate the government's policy and the way it operates.
The first is the discourse of militarism, security, power and violence, which finds expression every year in the Herzliya Conference dealing with the power balance and national security.
The second is the capitalist, Thatcherite discourse, which also gets a great deal of public attention every year at the Caesarea Conference - an economic gathering at which, its organizers claim, "recommendations become decisions."
At both conferences, senior politicians, heads of the economy, academic figures, journalists, representatives of the defense establishment and public figures get together to discuss issues of economic and security importance. These two types of discourses empower each other and, in fact, strengthen the bubble encapsuling them. Thus it is that the current Israeli discourse is imprisoned between Caesarea and Herzliya. It would be desirable to release it from there and to create an alternative civil discourse that would include the country's entire public.
Various groups in the population, particularly the Arab citizens of Israel, are absent and isolated from these two dominant types of discourse. That is why there is a real need to establish an enlightened public discourse, based on the core principles of democratic rule, civil and human rights and social justice; a discourse that ensures all citizens and groups in the country can give express their opinions, realize their rights and participate in the formulation of their lives.
The fact that the Israeli discourse is a captive of the narrow national-security strip has worrisome implications. The racist propaganda campaign of Yisrael Beiteinu was recently launched against the disengagement plan; it starts with ads on billboards calling for disengagement from Umm al-Fahm in the framework of Avigdor Lieberman's plan for an exchange of territories.
What is even worse, a Channel 2 TV survey reveals that 55 percent of the Jewish residents of the country support a move of this kind, while 28 percent express readiness to vote for a party that will support transferring Umm al-Fahm to the Palestinian Authority.
On the other hand, an index of Arab-Jewish relations in Israel 2004, carried out by Prof. Sammy Smooha of Haifa University and published last week, reveals that a vast majority of Arab citizens (81 percent) are afraid of a serious assault on their civil rights. The majority (63.6 percent) also fear a transfer of Arab citizens and 63.5 percent fear the Triangle region will be annexed to the Palestinian state against its residents' wishes.
What raises even more concern is that more than 80 percent of the Jews in Israel believe an Arab citizen who defines himself as a Palestinian-Arab cannot be faithful to the state and its laws. A similar percentage believes that decisions about the character of the country and its borders require a Jewish majority, and that it is not sufficient to have a majority from among all the citizens.
Another survey, conducted by Dahaf on behalf of Madar, the Palestinian Center for Israeli Studies, reveals that most of the Jews in Israel support the idea that the state should encourage Arab citizens to leave. According to the results of the survey, carried out in mid-March, 42 percent of Israelis agree the state should encourage the migration of Israeli Arabs, 17 percent are inclined to agree, and only 40 percent oppose or tend to oppose this.
A study of the data leads to the conclusion that there is a process of growing extremism and racism among the Jewish public, along with a process of growing contempt in Jewish eyes for the status and civic significance of the Arab citizens. The Arab citizens, for their part, have been in a continuous state of anxiety since the events of October 2000.
It is up to the enlightened sections of the Jewish public to state loud and clear their opposition to these developing trends, which could lead to a civil war or a painful conflict between two publics. It is up to the prime minister to put the issue of the Arab citizens of Israel at the top of his agenda, as he was asked to do by the Or Commission, and to show commitment and dedication to establishing equality between the two national groups in the country. In addition, the organized civil society groups must rescue the dialogue from the impasse between Caesarea and Herzliya, act immediately to set up a joint civil dialogue open to all citizens, and to cast new meanings for citizenship. Had there been a strong civil dialogue in Israel, Lieberman's moves and the dangerous findings presented here would not have met with such silence.
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The writer, an attorney, is co-executive director of Sikkuy: The Association for the Advancement of Civic Equality.
Temple Beth Shalom, Napa, CA
