BY ESER KARAKAS
AKSAM - This week's Israeli elections ended badly both for the country and humanity itself. It's very sad that following the inhumane attacks in Gaza, parties favoring the hard line won a majority in the Knesset, the Israeli parliament. The results are sad in abstract terms for humanity, but there are more concrete dangers for Israel; no nation or country in the world has benefited from harshness and violence in the long term. It's sad that a politician like Avigdor Lieberman, who is a secular fascist, got more votes than Ehud Barak's Labor Party. But today I would like to discuss a completely different aspect of the issue.
Israel's population includes Israeli citizens who are Arabs, and they make up 20 percent of the population, which isn't low. They have all political rights and also the right to elect and be elected. There are six Arab parties in Israel, but only a few are prominent. The National Democracy Party (Balad), the Arab Movement for Renewal (Ta'al), the United Arab List (Ra'am), and Ra'am Ta'al, an alliance of the latter two, win nearly 10 Knesset seats in every election. Naturally, there are also small Arab parties.
In Israel, in the midst of a near-constant state of war, very interesting things may happen both in legal and constitutional decisions. Especially compared to the Kurdish issue in Turkey, Israeli laws are really quite interesting. As I mentioned above, 20 percent of Israel's population are Arabs and if they take a common position, this can tip political balances. In spite of this, Israel has an election threshold of only 2 percent, much lower than our 10 percent. Our threshold was primarily meant to keep reactionary movements out of Parliament, but because it didn't work the system was changed, as there was also the Kurdish issue.
Then Kurds managed to get around the percent threshold and established a group in Parliament, but the threshold remains. The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) rejected an appeal against the threshold. And Israel doesn't seek to increase its 2 percent threshold and keep Arab parties out. In the midst of the violent attacks against Gaza, Israel's Central Elections Committee, the equivalent of our Supreme Board of Elections (YSK), banned two Arab parties (Balad and Ra'am-Ta'al) from taking part in the elections. To justify the ban, they cited the parties' rejection of Israel's right of existence.
If you want to make an extreme comparison, the reason for this decision wasn't separatism, but was like the (pro-Kurdish) Democratic Society Party (DPT) rejecting Turkey's right to exist. The two parties applied to the Israeli Court of Justice, which is like our Constitutional Court, arguing that the ban was based on Jewish racism. (Decisions by the Israeli committed can be appealed in court, unlike in Turkey.)
After examining the case, the court overruled the ban, saying the parties could take part in the elections. With an Arab population of 20 percent and ongoing war with outside Arabs, Israel's election threshold is still 2 percent. More importantly, though there is Benjamin Netanyahu and the killing of children in Gaza, there are also judges in Jerusalem. When someone asks the nonsense question, 'The state, or the law?' the Israelis ask in return, 'What's the meaning of a state without law?' I hope our judges in Ankara will do the same.