At the beginning of last week, the Israeli political system was on the cusp of a revolution.
After four inconclusive elections in which neither the right wing, religious and ultra-Orthodox parties nor the center-left opposition could muster a majority, it appeared that for the first time in almost three decades an Arab party could play a significant role in Israeli politics.
The Islamist Ra’am (UAL) Party of Mansour Abbas appeared ready to back a government of the “bloc for change” group of parties.
The slated government would have spanned the political spectrum from hard-left Meretz to hard-right Yamina and New Hope, with the non-Zionist, Islamist Ra’am propping the whole edifice up either externally or possibly even internally.
The tidings of such a government were that at long last an Arab party was ready to put aside the banner issue of Palestinian statehood and instead advance the interests of Arab citizens of Israel to help bridge socioeconomic gaps and improve the standard of living in the Arab sector.
But the fierce Arab riots of the last six days in Lod, Ramle, Haifa, Acre and beyond have dealt an enormous blow to that goal, after Yamina chairman MK Naftali Bennett said the ethnic violence launched by Arab rioters meant such a government was “off the table.”
The violence has indeed been appalling. Arab residents of the mixed city of Lod have set fire to Jewish property, and stoned, stabbed and shot their Jewish neighbors.
Similar riots and incidents in other parts of the country have also taken place, leading to reprisal attacks by extremist Jewish gangs.
Although the violence cannot in any way be tolerated, condoned or justified, the seething anger of significant parts of Arab society indicates that more lies beneath the surface of these riots than just the immediate triggers that have been ascribed to them, such as the Ramadan tensions, the planned Sheikh Jarrah evictions and the violence in the al-Aqsa Mosque.
Arab society is at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder, with just around 48% of families living in poverty.
Wages are lower, funding in the Arab education system substantially lower than for the Jewish education system and infrastructure in Arab municipalities suffers from severe underinvestment.
Thabet Abu Rass, a co-executive director of the coexistence organization the Abraham Initiative, recently told The Jerusalem Post that the severe economic gap between Jewish and Arab society, the lack of building permits for Arab municipalities and neighborhoods, and the poor municipal services and infrastructure, have all contributed to deep-seated resentment of the government in Arab society.
The 2015-2019 Netanyahu government did pass a massive NIS 16 billion infrastructure program for the Arab sector, but only half has been disbursed with the critical problem of Arab housing construction still unresolved.
Palestinian nationalism and radicalism among Israeli Arabs, abetted by extremist politicians in the Arab sector inciting the community against the Jewish state, can also not be ignored.
This problem was highlighted last week when rioters tore down an Israeli flag in Lod and replaced it with a Palestinian flag, while the Palestinian flag was also flown by other rioters.
Yet the ongoing incitement of hard-right and far-right Jewish politicians against the Arab community is another factor in the alienation of the Arab community from mainstream society.
And Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s infamous comment on election day in 2015 that “Arabs are flocking to the ballot boxes in droves,” as well as his demonization of the Arab parties in the first three of the last four elections has only helped alienate the Arab population politically.
Critics have also pointed to the Nation-State Law of 2018 highlighted Jewish primacy in the country as having “othered” Arabs and other minorities.
The tragedy of the ferocious riots and appalling violence of the last week is that the possibility of political cooperation between Zionist and Arab parties, which could have ameliorated many of these problems and finally appeared attainable has now dealt been a death blow.
Abbas made demands specifically dealing with many of the above mentioned problems including tackling the lack of construction permits in the Arab sector, dealing with violent crime in Arab cities, amending the Nation-State Law, and dealing with other problems affecting Arab society.
Progress on these issues could have helped redress several of the deepest grievances of Arab society, and drawn some of the poison out the extremism and anti-Zionist sentiment in the sector time. The very fact of Jewish-Arab political cooperation would have had a great symbolic impact, demonstrating that the government could work for Arabs as well as Jews.
The bitter tragedy of the Arab riots of the last six days is that they have seemingly confirmed the suspicions of large parts of the Jewish population that all Arab citizens remain implacably opposed to the Jewish state.
This could well stymie Arab-Jewish political cooperation for many years and with it the possibility of remedying the problems in the Arab sector which continue to cause such grievance.