ABSTRACT
One day in 1991 Mr Yitzhak Shamir, the then prime minister of Israel, instructed his Arab affairs adviser to cooperate with the political officer at the US embassy in preparing the annual report on human rights. That was an extraordinary instruction. For the first time ever Israel agreed to act jointly with a US representative preparing a report dealing with what had been hitherto an Israeli domestic affairs issue. Indeed, there was a price tag attached to that Israeli agreement: the American officer had to come to the office of the adviser in East Jerusalem, a rather unusual venue for a US-Israeli policy discussion. The sensitive nature of the meeting and the quid pro quo asked of both sides prevented them both from making it public. However, as of 1991 the US Department of State Report on Human Rights Practices, released by the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, includes a chapter on Israel propre which is not totally without some Israeli input. It also marks the first time that the government of Israel, no less than under the Likud bloc, recognized that the problems associated with the Arab minority in Israel are no longer only domestic. With that the leadership of the Israeli Arabs celebrated yet another political accomplishment. That success along with others, to be detailed later on, is an outstanding example of the use of humanitarian issues for political gain. The term ‘the leadership of the Israeli Arabs’ refers in the following pages to three layers:
1. Arab members of the Israeli parliament (Knesset), who represent at the moment two Arab parties, and Arab members of Zionist parties. Two selfproclaimed Arab bodies:
2. The Monitoring Committee-established in 1982 as a political leadership for the Israeli Arabs; its structure has never been clearly defined, and its members, though elected to other public positions, have never been elected to serve in the committee. It is a fluid body, which usually includes Arab members of Knesset (MKs), leading municipal figures and leading members of the trade unions. However, other participants have often taken part in the committee’s deliberations with no clear criteria for their inclusion.
