No one doubts the Arabness of the Palestinian Arabs of the interior, nor their Palestinian identity, and no reasonable person could condemn them for living in the occupied land, under an occupation authority that controls everything from education to the market to the holy sites. Nor does it seem logical for anyone to reject that their voices should have influence over the shape of the occupation government, so that they might remove a war criminal such as Benjamin Netanyahu and his allies in a government of apartheid, settlement, genocide, displacement and ethnic cleansing.
Yet voting in elections under occupation, and directing that vote against the worst option for the Palestinian Arabs of the interior, is one thing, while entering the formation of a new occupation government is something else entirely. This government, like its predecessor and whoever comes after it, is a government of war against the Arab human being in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria and every Arab land that Zionist expansionist dreams reach. Here there is no meaning to the presence of the Palestinian element from the Arabs of the occupied land other than that it will become part of the Zionist aggression government, which does not hide its pursuit of completing the crime of destroying and then reoccupying Gaza and displacing the Palestinian people from it.
It is good that none of the two Arab lists that won 19 seats, which will be pivotal in the shape of the next government, has announced a desire or readiness to participate in a government with such insistence on dreams of swallowing the entire geography of Palestine, so that Palestinian presence within it remains closer to an extinct ethnic group, as if they were like the Rohingya minority in their country, or the remnants of red Indians in the United States of America.
In such a case, it becomes strange and cause for sorrow that Arab voices should lament that Zionist racism prevents the Palestinians of the 48 Arabs from joining an Israeli war and extermination government that will be formed, whether through Eisenkot or through Netanyahu or through their coalition, to complete settlement activities, land seizure and the killing of all factors that enable the Palestinian people to remain on their land in Gaza, knowing that both contenders for forming the government do not hide their hatred of the Arab race in Palestine and elsewhere.
Mohamed ElBaradei tweets on this subject: "Arab citizens in Israel represent about 18% of the population and won more than 15% of the Knesset (parliament) seats. Yet most Jewish parties refuse their participation in any coalition government… some of them, including the prime minister wanted by the International Criminal Court, consider them a threat to national security! If this is not despicable racism, what is it?! What is funny and sad is that some are still talking about Israel as a democratic state."
Yes, it is despicable racism that does not call for surprise, wonder or questioning from a man of ElBaradei's stature. The reality is that "Israel", which is the occupying Zionist entity according to its correct definition, is a racist entity created by a Western supremacist racist vision that saw Arabs as a human race of a lesser degree. It decided to establish on their land a bastard entity, sponsor and support it, and provide it with the weapons needed to kill, exterminate and expel the original owners of the land, and then when they resist uprooting and erasure it accuses them of terrorism.
Accordingly, the natural relationship between the owners of the land and the invaders is steadfastness and clinging to survival on the part of the natives, and aggression and despicable racism on the part of the occupation. Their integration together into one government thus becomes anomalous, strange and rejected by logic, history, geography, the laws of human existence and humanitarian and moral law. The two Arab lists that won this pivotal share of the parliamentary majority do well when they distance themselves from entering an occupation government whose sole program is completing the Zionist dream in Palestine and the Arab region, where they would be required to participate in drafting policies and decisions that serve "Israel". It is necessarily known that everything beneficial to the Zionist entity is harmful to Palestine, for opposites never meet on a single interest.
The assumption that a Palestinian from the Arabs of the interior would be a minister in a government headed by Netanyahu or Eisenkot remains a heavy nightmare for the Arab and Palestinian self that clings to the land. What the Arabs of the interior, steadfast in occupied Jerusalem, have proven through pivotal stations, foremost among them the Great Jerusalem Intifada and the Sheikh Jarrah epic, is that they are the Arabs of Palestine, not "the Arabs of Israel" as they are called by media immersed in political and economic normalization.
