Once Allies, Israeli Arab Voters Are Deserting Barak in Droves

For 40 years, Ghazi Samara has been a Labor Party loyalist. But with just days to go before his country elects a new leader, the Arab citizen of Israel is agonizing: Should he vote for caretaker Prime Minister Ehud Barak, the party’s candidate, or cast a blank protest ballot?

“My father, he sold his cow once to buy votes around here for the Labor Party,” said the 58-year-old Samara. “We were slaves for Labor. We were activists, and we convinced people to vote for Labor no matter who the candidate was. But now, we’re suffering. Really, we are in a dilemma.”

In May 1999, Israeli Arab voters were a key component of Barak’s landslide victory over right-wing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. This time, they are determined to punish Barak, even if it means bringing to power Likud Party leader Ariel Sharon, a hawk long ago branded by Arabs as a warmonger.

Many of them hold Barak responsible for the national police’s heavy-handed response to Israeli Arab protests in October, for his failure to make peace with the Palestinian Authority and for his seeming indifference to their demands for social equality.

Israeli Arab political parties and mass movements--from the Communists to the Islamists--have called on Arabs to stay away from the polls or cast a blank ballot, though the high court ruled Wednesday that blank ballots will not be counted. An Arab boycott committee says it is encouraging supporters to take to the streets and keep people from voting.

“We’re going to shame people who vote,” said Alif Sabagh, a committee member. “We may stand in the streets holding pictures of the martyrs,” a reference to 13 Arabs shot to death by police in October.

The Palestinian Authority’s recent calls for Arabs to vote for Barak are being ignored.

Even here on the southern end of the Triangle--an area of Israel’s narrow northern coastal plain with a large concentration of Arab towns and villages--the anger toward Barak and the Labor Party is intense.

Most of these communities sat out the October protests that were called to express solidarity with the Palestinian uprising. Here, Arabs are as fluent in Hebrew as they are in Arabic, and many work in Jewish towns. Still, the Arabs of the Triangle are deeply alienated from the dominant Jewish society.

“Who is worthwhile to vote for?” asked civil engineer Mohammed Abdul Hi, 25, who intends to boycott the vote. “What disturbs me is that both sides--Palestinians and Israelis--are killing each other without regard. Who is there to blame but Barak?”

For weeks, polls have registered an astonishing crumbling of support among the nation’s Arabs, who had a 76% turnout in 1999, with more than 94% of those voters casting ballots for Barak. The polls indicate that between 60% and 80% of the half a million Israeli Arab voters intend to either boycott the election or cast blank ballots. Only between 6% and 20% say they will vote for Barak.

Even though pollsters warn that surveys of Arab opinion in Israel are notoriously inaccurate, the numbers are dismal for Barak. Arabs make up about 12% of Israel’s 4 million voters.

Many Arabs say the shooting deaths of Arab protesters by riot police underscored for them their second-class citizenship and ignited their anger with Barak. They pointed out that police don’t fire on Jewish protesters.

The government eventually appointed a commission of inquiry, but the move was considered too little, too late. Arabs blamed Barak for the deaths and for his refusal to apologize for the police actions.

Arab voters also say that they hold Barak responsible for his government’s failure to improve their living conditions in the Jewish state. They have long suffered various forms of discrimination, and the poverty and unemployment rates in their communities are among the nation’s highest.

In Tira, a town of 19,000 near Tel Aviv and just five minutes’ drive from Barak’s home in Kochav Yair, there is not a single campaign poster for the prime minister to be seen. In the coffee shops and shawarma restaurants, it is impossible to find a Barak supporter.

Samara feels that he knows Barak personally--the prime minister used to eat in his restaurant, he said. But Barak’s tenure has been a huge disappointment, Samara added.

“I respect Barak, but what did he do?” Samara said. “He turned his back on the Arab citizens.”

Samara and many others interviewed said they are not as concerned with Barak’s failure to make peace with the Palestinians who live in the West Bank and Gaza Strip as they are with his lack of attention to the concerns of the 800,000 Arabs who are Israeli citizens.

“What I want is a better education for my children and a better standard of living,” Samara said. “I have two sons in the law school at Herzliya,” a Jewish town on the coast. “They have discovered that the doors of government are closed to them because they are Arabs.”

Across the street from Samara’s restaurant, Labor Party activist Iyad Mansour, the town’s deputy mayor, is glum about his candidate’s prospects.

“I’m trying to convince people not to settle accounts now with Barak,” Mansour said. “I tell them that Barak was the first prime minister of Israel who raised the essential issues, like Jerusalem and a Palestinian state and borders. We have to recognize this. But people are very angry.”

Arab voters say they do not fear that Sharon, the architect of Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon, will lead the nation once again into war. On the contrary, many of them believe that Sharon may follow in right-wing Prime Minister Menachem Begin’s footsteps and make peace with the Palestinians, just as Begin returned the Sinai Peninsula and dismantled Jewish settlements to achieve peace with Egypt in 1979.

“Besides, the Labor Party has to learn that the Arabs in Israel don’t behave like a herd of cattle,” said Raid Aqfa, a 34-year-old accountant.

Adi Adawi, national director of the Labor Party’s get-out-the-vote effort in the Arab sector, acknowledged that the party has a problem.

“People can’t make a decision between the rational and the emotional,” Adawi said. “What we want on election day is for the rational to emerge and overcome the emotions.”