During his appearances at various parlor meetings, MK Yoav Segalovitz likes to talk about Soroka Medical Center – the sprawling hospital in southern Israel renowned for serving a deeply mixed Jewish and Bedouin population. What happens at the hospital helps him explain the ideological vision he is currently pursuing.

“At Soroka Medical Center, in every department, there is no distinction between Jews and Arabs,” Segalovitz tells his audiences. “The doctors come from both peoples, and so do the patients. No one waves their identity around. Everyone shares the same fate. Everyone is Israeli.”

Segalovitz, a former police assistant commissioner (a rank equivalent to a major general in the IDF), deputy security minister and currently a Knesset member in Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid’s centrist Together alliance, intends to replicate the reality of Israel’s hospitals within Arab Israeli society. He envisions an intercommunal partnership that could grow into a watershed political event, breaking once and for all the paradigm in which an entire population is excluded from the state’s decision-making process.

In other words, Segalovitz is considering joining the Islamist Ra’am party to demonstrate and embody a shared capacity to jointly run the country and the government. The chances of this coming to fruition are indeed slim, but they exist, and Segalovitz intends to pursue the initiative all the way.

Someone suggested to me over the weekend the historical figure Segalovitz may be seeking to emulate: legendary defense minister Moshe Dayan, who sensationally crossed the aisle from the left-wing Labor Party to Menachem Begin’s right-wing Likud after the 1977 election in order to advance the historic peace agreement with Egypt.

For now, no agreement has been signed between Ra’am leader Mansour Abbas and Segalovitz, and the obstacles are immense.

Segalovitz intends to generate a revolution within Ra’am. He will not move forward with his plan, nor will he join a party that does not recognize Israel as a Jewish and democratic state and support national civilian service – an alternative to the military draft – for Arab citizens of Israel. It is safe to assume that these thorny issues came up during the in-depth discussions Segalovitz and Abbas have held in recent months, and they are far from simple.

If Abbas does eventually announce his support for national civilian service for Arab citizens, Segalovitz will be able to chalk up a massive Zionist........

© The Times of Israel