50
Developing an Israeli Grand Strategy toward
a Peaceful Two-State Solution
Ari Shavit offered a masterful description of Bishara in an
article, “Citizen Azmi,” which appeared in the Israeli daily
Haaretz
: “An astute political philosopher, he has almost
single-handedly shaped public dialogue in Israel by coining
the term ‘a state of all its citizens.’ Bishara is the Arab-Israeli
leader who voiced the demand that Palestinian citizens of
Israel be recognized as members of a national minority
deserving of its own cultural autonomy. Such analytical
faculties are rare among Israeli politicians today.”
37
In her book, Ghanim highlights the relationship between
the intellectual as an agent of change in society, on the one
hand, and the social structure of the Palestinian population
in Israel, on the other. This relationship, which contains
many contradictions, some of which are either unknown or
impossible to precisely define – is a kind of zigzag between
the individual self and the group self. At the same time, in the
background is the entity of the state, which is for the most
part alien, or at the very least opposed to the aspirations
of Palestinian intellectuals in Israel (the third generation),
i.e. to turn Israel into a state of all its citizens. But there are
other ideological currents: communists, Islamists, Israelists,
independents – in the image of Dr. Ahmed Tibi’s coinage,
who called Israel “a state of all its nationalities.” In his view,
“The Arabs in Israel do not demand a “state of all its citizens,”
but rather a “state of all its nationalities,” in the context of
a multicultural democracy with full civic participation. This
not only ensures the rights of individuals, as in a state of all
its citizens (an expression coined by Shulamit Aloni in the
1980s), but also the rights of individuals, on the one hand,
and collective rights, on the other.
38
The diversity or contradictions between the intellectuals, which
in many cases was also translated into political contexts,
points above all to the complexity. However, it also points to
the broad consensus that the status of Palestinians in Israel
is unique, with the Israeli citizenship being the broadest
common denominator shared by all. It is also a testament
to the internal social and political pluralism of Palestinian
society, and the multiple ways it has devised to contend with
the challenges that the state and the Jewish majority pose
to the Palestinian minority in Israel. In fact, the intellectual
discourse among Palestinians in Israel is rich and filled
with social and political insights and strategies aimed at
both the present and future. The vision documents written
by Palestinian intellectuals, scholars and social activists on
how they visualize the future of Palestinians in Israel are an
example of this development, as well as a representation
37 Ari Shavit, “Citizen Azmi,” Haaretz, November 25, 2002.
38 Ahmed Tibi, “A State of all its Nationalities,” Maariv, May 10, 2005.
of all the intellectual currents that participated in designing
and writing these documents.
39
In the drafting of these documents, the Arab-Palestinian
citizens of Israel reflected the consensus that has taken shape
in recent years – that it is no longer possible to put off the
debate on the entire complex of painful issues facing Arab
society until the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is resolved, as well
as their will to see themselves as separate from other parts
of the Palestinian people, and be active in Israeli politics.
According to Mary Totry, “The documents are a response to
the urgent need to deal with the internal crisis Arab society
has found itself facing for many years. Recent years have
seen an increasingly worsening of the internal social situation.
The crisis is reflected in the disintegration of social solidarity,
the absence of a uniform national identity, a rise in affiliation
with tribal, family and clan extremism, which from time to
time erupts in physical violence, a general lack of tolerance,
corruption in local government and improper governance
by the local authorities, a crisis of leadership, a lack of civil-
society organizations whose role is to provide services to
the population, a return to religion and a strengthening of
conservative values and norms, a significant decrease in the
level of education in schools and universities, an increase in
cases of violence in schools and in society in general, the
continued barbaric murder of women in the context of what
is cynically termed ‘honor killings,’ the exclusion of women
from the economic and political spheres and discrimination
against them, the exclusion of the elderly, children and those
with special needs, and the violation of their rights. Over the
years, Arab society has become passive and indifferent to
public welfare. Although many of the phenomena enumerated
here are prevalent in Jewish society too, their presence in
Arab society further weakens it as a minority group. Instead
of developing norms and values that would strengthen the
Arab community in its struggle against the discriminatory
policies of the state, and improve its status, these negative
aspects eat away at Arab society and paralyze it.”
40
Whether the vision documents reflect the maturity and
self-confidence of Palestinians in Israel or that they are
contending with an internal crisis, there is no doubt that these
documents constitute an important step in the experience of
the Arab-Palestinian s in Israel, who are forced to deal with
the challenges the state and the Jewish majority present to
them. The national elections in 2015 presented Arab society
with yet another challenge when the minimum threshold for
election of a party to the Knesset was raised to 3.25%, placing
39 In 2006 and 2007, a number of different groups in Arab society
in Israel published four vision documents: “An Equal Constitution
for All?” by Mossawa, the Advocacy Center for Palestinian Arab
citizens in Israel, (2006); “The Future Vision of the Palestinian Arabs
in Israel,” (2006); “The Democratic Constitution,” Adalaah, The
Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel (2007); “The Haifa
Declaration,” sponsored by Mada al-Carmel, by a group of Israeli-
Arab intellectuals and academics, including Muslims, Christians
and Druze.
40 Mary Totry, “The Vision Documents: Coping with an Internal Crisis,”
in Between Vision and Reality: The Vision Papers of the Arabs in
Israel, 2006-2007, (eds.) Sarah Ozacky-Lazar and Mustafa Kabha,
