After an electoral breakthrough, Israel’s Arab parties face renewed pressure to confine themselves to local issues and remain silent about the occupation, the killing in Gaza and violence in the West Bank.

Arab citizens of Israel have been told they can address crime, schools and sewage, but must remain silent about the occupation, pogroms in the West Bank and the killing in Gaza. Their electoral success has only made the demand more explicit.

Gideon Levy

Imagine a Jewish community abroad that is subjected to pogroms that include acts of murder, looting and arson. Imagine that no Israeli is allowed to protest, express solidarity or come to the aid of the victims.

Now imagine that you are an Arab citizen of Israel, that your brothers and relatives are being slaughtered in Gaza and attacked in the West Bank, and that if you dare to express your pain or to cry out in anguish, you will be arrested. If you were to consider offering aid, you will be considered a fifth column.

The impressive accomplishment of Arab citizens of Israel in the election may yet cost them. While the Arab parties are in the spotlight as never before, Mansour Abbas and Ahmad Tibi are constantly on screen; nearly everyone knows Yousef Jabareen and Benjamin Netanyahu’s verbal attacks have added to their power; in the background, the Israeli Jews are drawing new boundaries. The Arabs have been too successful.

Zionism has always acted to fragment the Palestinian people into separate nations: divide and conquer. The Nakba divided the Arabs of 1948, who remained in their land, from the hundreds of thousands of refugees who were expelled.

After the 1967 occupation, Israel hastened to divide Arab citizens of Israel within the 1967 borders from the Palestinians in the territories, lest they unite into what they once were: one nation.

Later, Israel divided the residents of Jerusalem who were annexed from the residents of the territories, who remained under occupation. Then came the separation of Gaza from the West Bank, even before the rise of Hamas. To Israelis, there is no connection between the Palestinians and the Arab citizens of Israel; they are two separate peoples.

Now the fifth blow has struck, precisely at the moment of great opportunity for Israel’s Arabs.

The separation this time is neither territorial nor physical, but rather mental. It requires neither checkpoints nor separate systems of rights and civil status. Both the right and the so-called change bloc declare that Israel’s Arab citizens must not concern themselves with the fate of their brethren.

The first to obey was Abbas. He barely makes a sound about the genocide in Gaza and the pogroms in the West Bank, especially in Hebrew. But the prohibition does not apply only to him.

In the past three years, the excellent members of Military Intelligence Unit 8200, the Shin Bet security service and their ilk have hunted down any expression of compassion, humanity, pain or solidarity from Israeli Arabs on social media towards their brothers living half an hour from their homes. Just try being an Arab and posting about the children who were killed in Gaza on Tuesday or the floods that engulfed the tent camps in Muwasi last weekend.

A Lod resident must not cry over the pogroms in al-Mughayyir; a Taibeh resident must not protest the destruction in the Tulkarm refugee camps. Members of his family or the family of his neighbour live there. It is forbidden to show any interest in them, much less to express solidarity or provide assistance.

From 1993–99, Ahmad Tibi, who has served in the Knesset since 1993, was an adviser to Yasser Arafat: a complex position in an insane situation. Today he would be arrested for less. Dual loyalty is reserved for American Jews. Divided emotional loyalty, between your people and your country, is also reserved for Jews. Global ‘Let My People Go’ campaigns calling for the release of Soviet Jews: only for Jews.

During the years of war in the Gaza Strip, Israel succeeded in stifling any expression of solidarity on the part of Arab citizens of Israel, and fear took hold of Palestinian society in Israel.

After the success of the Arab parties in the election, intimidation also became a political tool. On a good day, we’ll accept an Arab politician only if they operate within the new boundaries: they can address crime, sewerage and the schools within Arab communities.

The condition for “external support” – another grotesque term, coined specifically to describe a situation in which the Arab parties support a governing coalition in the Knesset without being included in it – is that they dare not utter a word about the occupation, the pogroms or the genocide. They are a nation that has been divided.

https://johnmenadue.com/post/2026/11/israels-latest-assault-on-arab-citizens-severing-their-ties-to-palestinians/ 

Republished from Haaretz

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