Israel is scheduled to hold general elections on October 27, the first since the Palestinian Resistance Movement attack on October 7, 2023, which shook Israel and caused widespread unrest in the Middle East. Palestinians living under Israeli military occupation and genocide in the West Bank and Gaza do not have a vote. But 1948 Palestinians, those who remained in Israel after the 1948 Nakba and are treated as third-class citizens, can vote.
I am fundamentally opposed to participating in the Israeli Knesset elections; our Palestinian people should neither run as candidates nor cast a vote. This "parliament" embodies, on one hand, the abhorrent racism of Zionist ideology, and on the other, serves as a fig leaf concealing the true nature of the genocidal settler-colonial regime in historic Palestine.
Ultimately, the participation of Arab members in this institution grants it a veneer of liberal legitimacy because this then allows the Israeli propaganda machine to promote a narrative which claims that the indigenous people of the land (the Palestinians) are "participating" in the very legislation that orchestrates their own annihilation.
In fact, the crisis facing the current leadership and all Palestinian political parties within the 1948 territories has become so deep that the only justification offered — without any sense of shame — for participating in the system is to "improve the conditions" of the racist oppression endured by 2.1 million Palestinians.
The ruling Ashkenazi establishment views this population either as a "fifth column" or as "slaves" who can be domesticated and then leveraged in the establishment's internal power struggles—such as maneuvering to form governments or recommending one war criminal (Gadi Eisenkot) over another (Benjamin Netanyahu) for the position of prime minister.
The problem with 1948 Palestinians participating in the Israeli elections is that it narrows down the available choices: one can either "embrace" the legitimacy of operating within the existing system – as exemplified by stooge Mansour Abbas and his so-called United Arab List, which ironically has a veteran Israeli police commander, former deputy minister of national security, Yoav Segalovitz, as number two on the list – or conclude that radical change is impossible, while hesitating to propose a truly radical alternative that goes beyond merely calling for "equal citizenship" (a position held, to some extent, by the Joint list consisting of Hadash, Ta'al, and Balad).
Yet, the fundamental issue with working within an inherently illegitimate, racist system is that it conflates the "status quo" with what is actually "possible"—namely, the dismantling of the structures of the settler-colonial regime.
If we wish to highlight the options that are truly available to the Palestinian people, participation in these colonial political structures must not be one. Otherwise, options will remain severely restricted to whatever the colonizer deigns to grant—all while ignoring the right to self-determination for an integral segment of the Palestinian people in historic Palestine.
It is imperative to reject the existing system—along with its racist, colonial, and proto-fascist ideological leanings—and to expose its exploitative and authoritarian nature, rather than bestowing upon it any form of legitimacy.
This necessitates a "disparticipation" in order to restore Palestinian agency within the 1948 territories and link this to Palestinian struggles in the 1967 territories and the diaspora—all while accounting for specific geographical realities. In short, "disparticipation" means putting the legitimacy of the existing regime to the test, while simultaneously working to develop alternative options.
Change is unlikely to emerge from existing political forces, even those that do not participate, whether Stalinist-leftist or right-wing. Some of these groups hold political agendas that reflect the process of "Israelization" or, in some instances, "Zionization" that they have undergone.
Others are parties whose struggle is limited to merely mitigating the racism and oppression imposed by the colonizer. This underscores the need for the emergence of a movement entirely free from the legacy of Israelization and the acceptance of Palestinian inferiority, a movement capable of challenging the status quo.
The Israeli Knesset is not a parliament that represents ALL of the state's citizens, but rather a gang; worse than the mafia, whose customs are merely a pale imitation of its criminal record, as Subhi Hadidi argues in his piece in the Arabic paper AlQuds Alaraby.
Netanyahu holds the title of the entity's longest-serving ruler only because the overwhelming majority of Israeli society relishes wallowing in the ethics of that record, even as it descends from one low point to an even lower one. Notably, the Gaza genocide has become an arena for Israeli electioneering. That should not be legitimized by the colonized victim, the genocided Palestinians, whether those living in the 1948 areas, the 1967 territories, or in the diaspora at all.
Times have changed, and the blood of the tens of thousands shed on the soil of Gaza requires the involvement of all segments of the Palestinian people in confronting the genocidal ideology of apartheid Israel. The least Palestinian political parties in Israel could do is shred the false mask of "liberal democracy" from the face of this genocidal entity.
Let me end with a quote from Ghassan Kanafani, one that captures the dilemma confronting us Palestinians: "If the defenders fail, you change the defenders. You do not change the cause."
