Arab MKs Warn Palestinians: If You Accept Israeli Citizenship We’ll Stop Representing You

Recent polls indicate anywhere from ten percent to one half of Palestinians under Palestinian rule would prefer Israeli citizenship to their current situation.

Umm el-Fahm, June 18 – Legislators from the alliance of several mostly-Arab parties in Israel’s parliament addressed their non-citizen brethren living under Palestinian self-rule since 1993, cautioning them that if Israel does apply its sovereignty to areas it now treats as occupied under military administration, Palestinians living in those areas who insist on becoming citizens of the Jewish State can forget about having the Joint List act on their behalf in the Knesset anymore.

MKs Ahmad Tibi, Mansour Abbas, and Mtanes Shehadeh made separate statements Thursday directed at Palestinians living in portions of the territory Israel claimed from Jordanian occupation in 1967, and warned that whereas until now the four parties in the List made the interests of Palestinians living under Palestinian rule under the Oslo Accords – and who therefore do not vote in Israeli elections, but their own, should they ever choose to hold any – a priority in their legislative and political activities, if significant numbers of those Palestinians opt to become citizens of Israel and vote directly for parliamentary representation, that prioritization will no longer operate. Recent polls indicate anywhere from ten percent to one half of Palestinians under Palestinian rule would prefer Israeli citizenship to their current situation.

“The surveys give us cause for worry,” explained Tibi. “We have spent the last several decades representing what we see as the interests of our fellow Palestinians beyond the Green Line, as opposed to the Arab citizens of Israel who actually voted for us. If those whose interests we have represented for so long decide in large numbers to remove themselves from the group we represent, we will have to reconsider our political relationship with them. That’s the grim reality.”

“There’s been this understanding for years, an unstated arrangement,” added Shehadeh. “Arabs with Israeli citizenship vote for us, and we, in turn, relegate those voters’ needs to secondary status at best, choosing instead to advance the Palestinian nationalist agenda. Our successes have been limited, given our internal divisions, but the vision remains more or less unified. If the Palestinians we represent go and reject that representation by pursuing voting rights that would enable them to actually vote for us, we would have no choice but to treat them as any other Arab citizen who voted for us: ignore them even as we continue using their struggles as a political cudgel. Too many Palestinians choose Israeli citizenship, if it comes to that, and we will have no one left to represent.”

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