The potential appointment of Labor MK Raleb Majadele as minister of culture, science and sport is indeed a precedent in the history of Arab politics in Israel, but it is not even the harbinger of a change in Israel's attitude vis-a-vis its Arab citizens. The context and the timing of the appointment weigh heavily on the move, and the breaking of the taboo looks more like a maneuver than a milestone in the citizenship of Israel's Arabs, and the muddy relations between them and the state.

The new ministerial position that will grant to Arab citizens, if the appointment comes to fruition, a place at the government table is no different from similar appointments of deputy ministers or Supreme Court justices. Despite the differences in circumstances, such appointments are not far from the choice of Rana Raslan as Israel's beauty queen or Sakhnin's win of the national soccer trophy three years ago.

The civil status of the Arabs was not advanced by those events, which Israel used as if they were a bouquet of fresh flowers to decorate its table of democracy before the nations of the world. It brings honor neither to the Labor Party, nor to its head, nor to the State of Israel or its Arab sector, to appoint politicians to positions that have the appearance of dominion but lack influence and are divorced from reality.

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How much more so, when we are facing an embarrassing and ridiculous situation in which an Arab citizen is supposed to be taking the place of Labor MK Ophir Pines-Paz, who resigned from the government in protest of the bringing into the government of Yisrael Beiteinu chairman Avigdor Lieberman. Majadele's appointment is far from advancing the cause of a common existence of all of the country's citizens, and is based on an act of deception.

The integration of the Arab citizens of Israel demands a change in the attitude of the authorities toward one-fifth of the country's population, from a paternalistic one to the recognition that they are a national minority and a national collective. This is how the Palestinian Arabs in Israel have determined, albeit very belatedly, their view of their own narrative in the document "The Future Vision," and in a series of other papers, some of which are still in the process of being written.

The current crisis testifies to the collapse of the historical Israeli project of producing "good Arabs." That mission was based on shaky foundations. The effort that was built on the illusion of the Judaization of the Arabs, or their transformation into Zionists, has culminated in bankruptcy, despite six decades of hard work.

Israel's Palestinian Arabs can only be good citizens when their civil and national rights are realized in the framework of the state, as in many countries where national minorities live. The continuation of the attitude that regards the state's non-Jewish citizens as a security risk will only harm the country, since the continuation of the process of alienation and scorn is liable to push some of the Arab citizens into undesirable realms.

The author is a reporter and commentator for the foreign Arab press