Yoav Segalovich’s decision to join Ra’am, led by Mansour Abbas, could have been a defining moment in Israeli politics. Here was a former deputy minister of public security, long identified with Israel’s security establishment, joining an Arab party and forging a new model of Jewish-Arab partnership. Such a move could have carried not only political but historical significance: the possibility that a Jewish Israeli might see Arab politics not as an arena to be monitored, nor as a pool of votes to be courted, but as a legitimate political partner. Precisely for that reason, it is difficult to ignore the sense of disappointment. Not because the partnership is unimportant, and not because it lacks potential, but because the language in which it was presented does not reflect the significance of the event. Instead of a historic declaration about changing relations between Jews and Arabs, we heard statements about fighting crime and about the Arab community’s obligation to share the “burden”; instead of a vision of full partnership, we heard references to Segalovich as an “independent player”; instead of a demand to rethink the meaning of citizenship, we heard hollow and noncommittal statements. An event that could have opened a new chapter in Israeli politics remained trapped in old and disappointing language.

The reason the event failed to generate the excitement it deserved has less to do with the issues of crime and national service themselves, both of which are important, than with the fact that focusing on them reveals Segalovich’s narrow and one-dimensional view of the community whose votes he is seeking. Both questions derive from a much broader political question: Are Arab citizens of Israel recognized as equal citizens in the state in which they live? Are they expected to share not only its obligations but also its rights? Is an Arab party a legitimate partner in government, or will it always remain a conditional partner, expected to support from outside, that – even if it declares its loyalty and recognizes the Jewish character of the state – will still be treated with suspicion, while its representatives are regarded as unfit to sit around the cabinet table? Anyone who fails to place these questions at the center of political discourse misses the significance of the very move he has chosen to make.

Segalovich’s narrow and one-dimensional approach is also evident in the two areas he emphasizes so strongly. Crime in Arab society is not a problem that can be solved through policing alone. It has........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)