Will he come or will he go?

On the face of it, nothing unusual happened to MK Azmi Bishara (Balad) this week. He spent Easter with his family in Jordan and then flew to Europe. He did not resign from the Knesset, did not emigrate from Israel, was not questioned by the police and is not suspected of anything, at least not openly. He did not even do the thing we are most accustomed to seeing him do: He did not give an interview. Apart from a few quotes in a Jordanian newspaper, Bishara kept silent. But all around him a storm raged. And as in a storm, people heard thunder but could not be sure of where it came from or where it was headed.

Nevertheless, it is hard to find any Arab public figure who believes this story will have a happy ending, from their perspective. At best, they say, the affair will be recalled as an assault on the country's Arab leaders, but no worse than any in the past and the Arab public will not be overly affected. The more pessimistic view says this will mark the beginning of an organized campaign to restrict the political freedoms of Israeli Arabs. And in the worst case, "It will be a blow to the desire for us to have a voice, a reckless act [by Bishara - M.R.] for which we all, Arabs and Jews, will pay a heavy price," as one Arab public figure who prefers to remain anonymous put it.

The rumors had been flying for weeks. Then, last Sunday, the Web site of the Israeli Arab newspaper A-Sinara reported that Bishara planned to remain abroad, in an Arab state, and resign from the Knesset. The storm erupted. There is little love lost between A- Sinara and Bishara. Harsh recriminations followed between Balad and the newspaper, with both sides hurling the ultimate epithet and calling the other a "Shin Bet agent."

Party officials insisted that the report that Bishara had reasons not to return was fabricated and planted by his enemies, but there was no outright denial of its content from either Bishara or Balad. The party issued a statement message saying that Bishara was considering resigning from the Knesset, while on Wednesday a Jordanian newspaper quoted the MK as saying: "I will return home to wage a cultural and human battle for the sake of the expression of my ideas, despite all the warnings I've received from my many supporters both in and out of Israel. I will not be a refugee in any country." Bishara did not say when he would return. His wife and their two children returned to Israel Wednesday night.

Celebrity

Bishara is the most recognizable Arab politician in Israel, and is certainly the best known Israeli Arab politician in the Arab world. "He appears on the Arab television channels more than your average Arab king," Faiz Abbas, an A-Sinara editor says. But this week many less-than-supportive remarks about Bishara were voiced by Israeli Arabs, some gloating over the difficulties of a political rival, but many genuinely concerned over what this episode could mean for the Arab public. Bishara's own silence about his position since the affair became public has certainly not earned him any points.

Haneen Zuabi of Balad's political bureau is convinced that this is a case of political persecution of the person who changed the political discourse of Arabs in Israel, who taught the country's Arab citizens not to stop at demanding equal individual rights but also to demand recognition of their national identity, the Palestinian identity. When Bishara spoke of "a state of all its citizens," Zuabi says, he denied the principle that the state of Israel must be defined as a Jewish state. "Israel could have tolerated such ideas in books," she says, "but Azmi combined these ideas with political activity. To Israel, that was a lethal combination."

Zuabi sees two reasons for the timing of this affair. The first is the Second Lebanon War and the great identification of Israeli Arabs with Hezbollah. "Every Israeli should be glad that Israel was defeated in the war," she says. "Because only if Israel feels that it is not omnipotent will it consent to a peace deal. I think that's what Bishara meant when he said Hezbollah taught Israel a lesson."

An attack on the Arab leadership, Zuabi maintains, is a natural response to this defeat. The second cause that she sees is "the vision papers" published in recent months by several Arab organizations, documents that spoke, among other things, about altering the definition of Israel as a Jewish state. "This is a political culture that Balad introduced, and now it's become dominant in Arab society," says Zuabi. She believes this is why someone in power decided to get rid of Balad, because "only it is capable of nurturing the idea of rejecting the Jewish state."

The Shin Bet apparently took these papers quite seriously. About a month ago, the Israeli daily Maariv reported that Shin Bet chief Avi Diskin told the cabinet that these "vision papers" indicate that Israeli Arabs are a "strategic danger." It's unclear if he was referring to Bishara specifically but to the vast majority of Israeli Jews Bishara is undeniably the symbol of the threat to the state's Jewish character. This week, Education Minister Yuli Tamir said that "Bishara has crossed the red line," and Meretz Chairman MK Yossi Beilin made similar comments.

Fed up

It is difficult to find an Arab figure who does not believe this is a case of political persecution. Jafar Farah, director of Mossawa, the Advocacy Center for Arab Citizens in Israel, says that ever since the Oslo Accords passed in the Knesset on the strength of the votes of the Hadash MKs, in 1993, right-wing MKs have targeted the Arab MKs. Farah says the state has enthusiastically joined this campaign. Since Benjamin Netanyahu was elected prime minister in 1996, there have been 30 police investigations against Arab MKs. Five ended with an indictment; there were no convictions. In the last Knesset, Farah points out, all the Arab MKs were questioned by police as possible suspects. MK Ibrahim Sarsour, the head of the southern branch of the Islamic Movement, has no doubt that Bishara is being subjected to political persecution. "We're in the same boat," he says.

But this week it seemed that not everyone was in Bishara's boat. While even some of his harshest critics readily acknowledge his intellectual acumen and his contribution to the political discourse, the admiration is tempered by the sense that Bishara is not exactly a leader.

"Bishara is fed up with the Knesset," Abbas says. "He often says that this place, the Knesset, is disgusting and doesn't interest him. As soon as Azmi leaves the Knesset he won't remain in Israel for one minute. He's decided to embark on a career as a philosopher. For Azmi, the Knesset was just a springboard. Azmi loves only himself."

Abbas is blunt and direct. Others prefer to speak off the record or to employ subtler language. Farah, for one, is not ready to accord Bishara that much importance in the Israeli-Arab discourse. "Bishara formulated a political statement that spoke unabashedly about citizenship," he says. "But we have to remember that the generation that preceded us was much braver than we are. [The late head of Hadash - M.R.] Tawfiq Zayyad was physically thrown out of the Knesset and his daughter lost an eye. The previous generation dealt with the military administration, with Land Day." Farah agrees with Zuabi that the "vision papers" upset the Israeli establishment, but says Balad's ideas were not really central in them. "A state of all its citizens is an idea that isn't suited to the Arabs in Israel," says Farah. "It suits the French Republic. We want collective rights for the Arab minority."

An Arab activist who asked to remain anonymous wonders about the wisdom of Bishara's trips to Syria and Lebanon. "I don't get why he had to grab a photo-op with [President] Bashar Assad in Syria, and at such a sensitive time, right after the war. Sadeq Jalal al-Azem, one of the most prominent Syrian intellectuals, met with an Israeli Arab abroad and said to him: Tell Azmi Bishara I support the idea of 'a state of all its citizens' in Israel, but tell him that we in Syria also want 'a state of all its citizens,' that we want democracy, too."

Bad messages

The question most troubling Israeli Arabs this week was whether Bishara would really remain abroad. For a minority that has made sumud ("steadfastness") an ideal, that could be a serious blow. Many people were reminded this week of Mahmoud Darwish, the Haifa-born poet who left Israel and joined the Palestine Liberation Organization in the 1970s. The feeling on the Arab street is that if Bishara decides to remain abroad it would send two very bad messages: It would tell the Israeli right that Arab politicians will get up and leave if pressed hard enough, and it would tell the Arab public that as soon as the going gets tough, its leaders get going.

Balad officials are aware of these feelings and of the fear that the right will celebrate should Bishara decide not to return. This was the backdrop for Bishara's comments about his plants to return and Balad's claim that the return of his wife and children prove that he will not remain abroad. "Whatever decision Azmi makes, what matters to me are its political implications for the Palestinian struggle," Zuabi says. "Whatever decision we make, we'll take all the risks into account."

Some say that if Bishara does resign from the Knesset it will be a death knell for Balad. Others argue that the party could actually benefit, as it would finally be freed from the autocracy of Bishara and able to develop independently. "It won't be the end of the world," one Arab public figure says. "Azmi is a great political intellectual and he is charismatic, but in his party he commands blind admiration. It's not healthy. Without him, it can be a much broader party."

Regardless of whether Bishara returns to Israel or remains in Jordan, whether he resigns from the Knesset or continues to serve, it is clear to all that serious accusations against him will only hurt the Arab public as a whole. Zuabi says that for now everyone is keeping mum, including Balad's leaders. Some see this as a poor, even cowardly, tactic. "I call on Bishara to return and face all the accusations," Farah says. "As a society, we are taking a beating for this silence. The laborer from Umm al-Fahm has to contend with this atmosphere when he leaves the city. The Arab public is in a very awkward situation."