Palestinian Seeks Arab Rights in Israeli System

Hanna Siniora knew his announcement would kick up a political storm. But he said he was in such despair over what appears to be another breakdown of the so-called Middle East peace process that he could not resist.

Siniora, a prominent Palestinian journalist, said he will put forward a slate of Palestinian candidates in the next Jerusalem municipal election, scheduled for November, 1988, in the hope of winning enough seats on the City Council to protect the interests of the city’s Arab minority.

The reaction was predictably hostile. Right-wing Jews called for special measures to block Siniora from being elected; Arab extremists torched his cars and branded him a traitor to the Palestinian nationalist cause.

A seemingly chastened Siniora then said he would reconsider his plan, but the fireworks had accomplished, at least in part, what he set out to do--refocus the discussion of the conflict as a possible first step toward resolving it.

“I think I have been able to get my point across,” he said in an interview.

His point is that there can be either a truly binational Palestinian-Israeli state, or two independent states--but that the time is fast drawing to a close when the Jewish majority can rule at minimal cost over an unwilling Palestinian minority.

Siniora is the first to admit that this notion did not originate with him. Israelis have talked around it for years, referring cryptically to what they call “the demographic problem” of a growing Arab minority in the Jewish state.

Meir Kahane, the right-wing rabbi who wants to expel all Arabs living west of the Jordan River, makes essentially the same point, although his solution is decidedly different.

Sari Nusseibeh, a Palestinian political philosopher, has been arguing for at least the last two years that his people should shift their struggle from trying to achieve an independent state to trying to win political rights within the Israeli system.

But for Siniora to advocate a limited version of the same tactic caused a much bigger stir. As editor of Al Fajr, a prestigious East Jerusalem daily that supports the Palestine Liberation Organization, Siniora’s voice is more influential. Two years ago, when the United States was trying to arrange preparatory peace talks between Israel and a Jordanian-Palestinian delegation, Siniora was chosen as one of two Palestinian representatives.

Since making his election announcement in June, Siniora received unexpected help in driving home his underlying message. Two prominent Israelis have advocated the “transfer” of the Arab population from the West Bank and Gaza.

When Kahane advocates such a move, it is usually dismissed here as the ravings of a “racist” who is on the political fringe of society. But the “transfer” proposal came from people who are much harder to dismiss. One is a retired general, Rehevan Zevi, and the other is Deputy Defense Minister Michael Dekel, who said the United States and other Western countries should pay for the operation as a contribution to regional peace.

Whether Siniora’s announcement directly inspired any of the subsequent debate is not clear. But there is no doubt that it played a role.

What triggered his move, Siniora said, was his “realization that the peace process has finally stopped.” He disclosed his plan just a few days after rightist Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir blocked his main coalition partner, centrist Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, from winning Cabinet approval for pursuing an international Middle East peace conference.

As a result, Siniora contends, “the whole peace process is stalled for at least the next three years,” until after new elections in Israel and the United States. And if Shamir’s Likud Bloc out-polls Peres’ Labor Alignment in the next elections, Siniora said, “it could mean paralysis for another generation.”

So the Palestinian editor decided to take the initiative where he could--in Jerusalem, which he sees as the “focal point” of the Israeli-Palestinian struggle.

East Jerusalem’s 130,000 Arab citizens have a unique status because Israel officially annexed their half of the city after capturing it in the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. They are not Israeli citizens, like the 700,000 Arabs who live within the country’s pre-1967 borders, but neither are they considered to be under military rule, as are the 1.4 million Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

On a practical level, this means that although the Jerusalem Arabs are forbidden to vote in national elections, they may vote in municipal elections. Most of them have not done so--only 12.5% of the eligible Arabs voted in 1983--because of opposition from Palestinian nationalists, who contend that to vote in Israeli elections is to give tacit approval to Israel’s rule over Jerusalem.

Siniora says it is time to change all this to win a fair share of city services for Arab citizens. If Jerusalem Arabs would vote as a bloc for a Palestinian list of candidates, Siniora said in the interview, they could control a third of the City Council, or 10 seats.

“I would be perfectly happy to have four to six seats, and in this way act as a power broker in the same way that the religious parties play that role in the Knesset (Parliament),” he said.

The reaction to his proposal was “emotional and negative on both sides, except for some liberal Israelis,” Siniora said.

Arab opponents of Siniora’s strategy worry that, by focusing on a battle for Palestinian rights within the Israeli system, it will undermine the struggle for full independence.

“This is not the same as the struggle of blacks in America,” an East Jerusalem Palestinian activist said. “The blacks want to be Americans, and they fight for their full rights as Americans. But we don’t want to be Israelis.”

On the other side, Nissim Zeev, the deputy mayor of Jerusalem, said that Siniora’s election to the City Council would be a disaster for the city.

“If he is elected, the council will be forced to answer to PLO demands,” Zeev said.

He has recommended that the City Council ask the Interior Ministry to propose legislation preventing “enemies of Israel” from running for posts in local governments. Mayor Teddy Kollek reportedly told the council that he identified with Zeev’s concerns but not with his proposal. The council agreed for the time being simply to seek an Interior Ministry opinion on whether Siniora can legally run for election.

On Wednesday, Police Minister Chaim Bar-Lev told the Knesset that charges have been prepared against Siniora--three counts of pro-PLO activity in violation of an Israeli law that prohibits aid to terrorist organizations. The complaint was filed by Eliakim Haetzni, a West Bank Jewish settlement leader, several months ago, before Siniora announced his plans to run for the City Council. But if criminal charges are actually brought against him, it could clearly have an impact on his election plans.

Siniora, meanwhile, has sent letters to a dozen international legal experts asking their opinions on whether participating in the Jerusalem elections would mean relinquishing the Palestinian claim to sovereignty over East Jerusalem.

“If the answer is yes, then, like a good soldier, I will shelve my proposal,” he said. “Otherwise, I will try to convince not only the Palestinians in the territories and the residents of Jerusalem, but also the Palestinian leadership outside, to try to realize every possibility open to us.”

He said Jerusalem is the “make-or-break issue” of the whole Palestinian-Israeli conflict, and added, “If we can come to an understanding on Jerusalem, then all other issues will become minor and resolvable.”

On a broader scale, he said, his proposal is meant to “spotlight for Israel that we are becoming a binational state.”

The 2.1 million Arabs living under Israeli rule already constitute 37% of the population of Israel and the occupied territories. And more Arab children are being born than Jewish children. According to population projections, Arabs will become 50% of the population by sometime in the first half of the 21st Century.

The best solution for both sides, Siniora said, is “cooperation on the local level, to keep Jerusalem undivided, but on the national level, two states.”