Elections as an Arab Civic Responsibility
- Loui Haj
- 1 day ago
- 5 min read
Time and again, I encounter public discourse about “the Arab vote” as if it were a deviation from the rules, some anomaly that requires explanation. It is astonishing to me how quickly people erase and ignore the most basic principle: a citizen is a citizen. A vote is a vote. Democracy is not the granting of rights only to those who think like you and align with your opinions. Democracy is a structure that grants every citizen the same power. From my perspective as a Jewish citizen, I would say that anyone who truly believes in a democratic regime is obligated to defend the voting rights even of those who think differently; and the perspective of a Palestinian Arab citizen is brought here by Loui Haj.
Ayala Shalev, Editor, That’s About Us
Elections as an Arab Civic Responsibility
Loui Haj
The upcoming elections are not merely another cyclical political event. They are a civic moment in which not only the question of justice is tested, but above all the question of responsibility: who is considered a full partner in the democratic space, and who remains a conditional citizen. Since October 7, this question has become especially acute for Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel, for us. An existential, almost primordial fear has been elevated into an organizing political principle, and a discourse of exclusion has been reframed as “realism.” Citizenship has been narrowed, partnership portrayed as a risk, and the political possibility of Arab representation once again defined as a problem to be managed rather than a civic force to be activated.
Within this context, the elections function as a battle over consciousness: do we accept a systematic contraction of political legitimacy in the name of fear, or do we insist on expanding it in the name of responsibility? For Palestinian Arab society, this is a formative moment. It is not an abstract identity debate, but a decision that touches on personal security, rampant violence, virtual equality, deep discrimination, and the place of one-fifth of the state’s citizens within decision-making centres. From this stems, among other things, the clear call for broad participation at the ballot box. Not as an expression of trust in the system, but as a sober understanding that abstention is not neutral, but a disastrous position. Those who do not vote relinquish in advance any influence, however small, and leave the continued shaping of Arab citizens’ reality exclusively in Jewish hands. Voting is a minimal condition for civic responsibility, but it is far from sufficient.
The Arab parties, across their various shades, operate within a structure that sets clear limits for them. Again and again, they are required to justify not only their positions, but their very presence and existence. Here, in my view, a “disruptive” leap forward is required: every Arab political framework – whether an independent Arab party, a left-wing party with Arab representation, or a joint Jewish-Arab framework – can no longer suffice with representation as a protest, outside support, or eternal opposition. It must explicitly strive to be a full partner in the governing coalition that is formed. Not as tactical annexation, not as a democratic decoration, and not as an emergency safety net, but as a legitimate civic objective. Participation in government is not a reward for “good behavior”; it is the full realization of citizenship. As long as Arab representation is perceived as semi-legitimate, confined to the benches of perpetual opposition, democracy itself remains partial and fractured.
Here lies the deeper problem within the current electoral discourse. Large segments of the centre-left bloc have focused their goal on forming a “Zionist-only government.” This is not a technical formula, but a mechanism of exclusion: the establishment of an ideological threshold as a condition for political legitimacy. The question is no longer what Arab parties propose, but whether they meet an identity-based criterion that is irrelevant to citizenship in any meaningful sense, and by definition irrelevant to the Arab public.
Zionism is not a neutral concept. For many Jews, it is a story of return and redemption; for Palestinians, it is a story of historical rupture – the Nakba. To demand that an Arab elected representative adopt this ideology as a condition for governmental partnership is problematic because it conflates citizenship with national consciousness. Citizenship is a legal framework of rights, duties, and shared responsibility; Zionism is a particular national-ethnic worldview, personal to each individual. Blurring the two inserts a condition into a basic right and creates graded citizenship.
Paradoxically, recognizing that Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel are not Zionists – and are not meant to be – opens the possibility for deeper civic partnership. A partnership not based on erasing identity or enforcing loyalty, but on a shared commitment to governing the state and building a shared future. The call for political integration is not a call to relinquish Palestinian-Arab identity or forget the burdens of the past, but to search for a horizon for the future – a civic common ground within which different identities operate together, even within the government. In this context, Jewish votes for Arab parties also carry deep significance. Not as a moral gesture, but as recognition that Arab representation is not a tolerable anomaly, but a legitimate actor in the arena of power. It is inconceivable that one-fifth of the state’s citizens be labeled “illegitimate,” stigmatized, and pushed outside the political field. Such voting challenges an entrenched hierarchy of “inside” and “outside” and lays the foundation for genuine governing partnership.
Since October 7, it has been repeatedly claimed, like a hypnotic mantra, that there is no mandate for such partnership. The thing is that this is not a factual observation, but a political choice: to manage fear rather than to govern the state together. Civic responsibility sometimes requires complex and conditional cooperation, not out of naivety, but out of the understanding that governing partnerships manage risks better than permanent exclusion.
Ultimately, elections are not a test of hope, faith, or ideological purity. They are a test of mature and responsible citizenship, for us, the Arabs. Not only in the question of whether we vote at all, but in the question of whether we demand that our political representation, in whatever format we choose, strive to be a full partner in governmental decision-making and in greater control over our own fate. Democracy is not preserved through slogans about “mandates,” but through civic courage: expanding partnership, entering the difficult decision-making room, and refusing to settle for symbolic presence in the back benches of the Knesset. The time has come, and it is now!
Loui Haj is a humanist and pacifist, active in peace initiatives and Jewish-Arab partnership, and a resident of Acre.
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