Religion, geography remain key to Arab politics

Composng a list of candidates for the Knesset is no small matter and especially when it comes to an Arab list. For example, it is not considered politically correct to talk about this in public and certainly no one from the Arab parties is eager to reveal the matter to the media, but a piece of information of supreme importance in this delicate work is the candidate's religion. Even if he is secular or a Communist, he will be classified by his religion, or more precisely, the religion of the community in which he lives. No protest will avail.

Even in Hadash they are very particular about this matter, although the movement came into being in order to expand the ranks of the Israel Communist Party, which has a known attitude towards religion. In the term that is now ending, the party had three Knesset members: chairman Mohammed Barakeh who is Muslim by religion, Dr. Hanna Swaid who is Christian and Dov Khenin who is Jewish. In Balad, too, they make a point of variety: The founder of the movement and former Knesset member on its behalf, Dr. Azmi Bishara, is a Christian, the faction chairman Dr. Jamal Zahalka is a Muslim and so is MK Wasal Taha, while MK Said Naffaa is Druze. In the third and largest of the lists, Ra'am-Ta'al, the religious variety is lacking. There all the candidates are Muslims.

The second most important consideration in a candidate's placement on a list is where he lives: The preferred situation for a list is that it have representation from the three places where there are large concentrations of citizens living: the Galilee, the Triangle and the Negev, and if not from all three of them, then at least from the Galilee and the Triangle.

At present, Hadash has two representatives from the Galilee (Barakeh is from Shfar'am and Sweid is from Eilaboun) and one from Tel Aviv (Khenin). On the assumption that this will be the opening troika, it is lacking representation from the Triangle. In about ten days there will probably be a competition for fourth place, which according to the polls could be realistic, between two leading candidates: Dr. Afo Ighbariyeh of Um al Fahm and Dr. Thabet Abu Ras, a geographer who lives in Jaffa and is considering submitting his candidacy. Both, incidentally, are Muslims.

In a conversation with Dr. Abu Ras last week, he enumerated his advantages as a new face on the slate, if he is elected. The first advantage: He is a native of Kalansuwa in the southern Triangle, he lived in Beer Sheva for many years and he is now very active in Jaffa. "I represent three areas," he said, stressing that Hadash has never had a representative in the Knesset on behalf of the southern Triangle: "In my area there are five out of the 11 Arab cities. This region has weight and it should have a representative."

Abu Ras' second advantage is also geographic: This is his academic field - he is a doctor of political geography. In his youth he worked as a laborer in his father's strawberry and flower fields near the village, but insisted on going on to academic studies. He says that he was expelled from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev for political activity at the start of the 1980s, and he later returned there as a lecturer.

Abu Ras is planning to harness geographical matters to his parliamentary work as well. Recently he has been engaged in a comparison between the situation of the Arabs in Israel and the situation of other minorities in the world. He has visited South Africa and the Southern Tyrol, a province in Northern Italy that is home to a German-speaking minority that enjoys nearly full autonomy. "There is a lot to be learned from the situation of other minorities in the world," he said. "For example, Austria is just over the border but no one in Italy accuses the inhabitants of Southern Tyrol of not being Italians."

At the meeting, which was held in the offices of the New Horizon non- profit organization in Jaffa, which he runs, Abu Ras was wearing a shirt from South Africa; a shirt of the sort that became identified with Nelson Mandela. "I get my inspiration for my activities and my thinking from the success stories of other peoples, especially South Africa and Northern Ireland. In Israel there isn't apartheid, but rather a far more sophisticated ethnocratic system. The Arabs are part of the political system and this did not exist there, but if the state doesn't come to its senses we are liable to get there."

In Hadash, incidentally, there are those who are angry when the party is labeled as an Arab party. MK Dov Khenin is not an Arab, nor are several thousand of this party's voters. At the moment they are scratching their heads in the party over how to translate Khenin's success in the Tel Aviv municipal elections into an expansion of the circle of Hadash voters in the general elections. Abu Ras is also promising to contribute here in his circles of acquaintance and in his positions.

He says that he can understand how the Jews feel: "There is too much fear of dividing the land. The Jews have a real fear and so do the Arabs. We, the Arabs, have not tried to deal with the Jewish fear. There is a Jewish majority here that has a siege mentality, and in this way the country could be destroyed. It is a job of the Arab population to deal with this and to declare that we don't have a plan to transform the Jews into a minority, but we are demanding full equality. Everything has to be done by agreement."