Israelis Quarrel Over Arab Legislator
By Lee Hockstader
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, July 16, 1999; Page A15
JERUSALEM, July 15 - Can Hashem Mahameed be trusted?
That is the question politicians here have been debating since Mahameed was named the
first Arab lawmaker to sit on the foreign affairs and defense committee of Israel's
parliament, the Knesset.
But to some Israelis, Jews as well as Arabs, the subtext of the debats is a broader
question: Can any of Israel's Arab citizens be trusted?
This week's appointment of Mahameed, one of 10 Arabs in the 120-seat Knesset, was
pushed by allies of newly installed Prime Minister Ehud Barak. They wanted to throw a bone
to Israeli Arabs, none of whom was given a post in the new government even though they
constitute more than 15 percent of the population and voted heavily for Barak in the May
elections. The consolation prize was to name the 54-year-old Mahameed to the defense
committee, a panel whose workings --until now--were seen as far too sensitive to share
with Arab lawmakers.
The Israeli right wing hit the ceiling. Members of Likud, the main opposition party,
wasted no time in branding Mahameed as unreliable and plumbing his record for evidence to
prove it.
Predictably, they found statements of support for the intifada, Palestinian uprising
against Israeli rule in the late 1980s and early '90s, and for Hezbollah, the Lebanese
party whose militia is fighting Israeli troops in southern Lebanon. They also found that
he paid a condolence call last year on the family of a pair of Palestinian brothers, top
activists in the militant Islamic Resistance Movement, or Hamas, who were assassinated by
Israeli commandos.
Hard-liners suggested that Mahameed would transmit committee secrets to Israel's Arab
enemies. Charging that with Mahameed present the committee's work would be valueless
because the government would refuse to share sensitive information, Likud lawmakers
threatened to boycott meetings starting next week.
"It would spell the end of any reporting by the defense establishment to the
committee," said Moshe Arens, who was defense minister in the recently departed
right-wing government under prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu.
Nonsense, said the Israeli left. Liberal lawmakers noted that real secrets are
discussed in subcommittee, and Mahameed will not get a subcommittee assignment. The
attacks on Mahameed are really directed at all Arabs, they said.
"It's a racist sentence, a racist claim," said Haim Ramon, a minister in
Barak's new cabinet. "They would like that we would [exclude Arabs] only because they
are Arabs."
Mahameed, an educator who has served in the Knesset since 1980, was not so thrilled
about the idea of sitting on the defense committee--at first. But after the outburst of
opposition, he said, he became more interested. "When the right wing attacks me so
strongly, I think maybe I'm doing the right thing," he said.
The son of illiterate farmers, Mahameed has a master's degree from Hebrew University in
Jerusalem. He is fluent in Arabic, Hebrew and English and spent six years before he was
elected to the Knesset as mayor of the Israeli Arab town of Umm el-Fahm.
He acknowledges a close relationship with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and other
top Palestinians and sympathy for their cause. But he resents the suggestion that he is
disloyal to Israel and says he has never questioned Israel's right to exist. Satisfying
the Palestinians' political demands can only defuse a tense situation and therefore help
Israel, he says.
"I'm 100 percent a member of the Knesset and 100 percent a member of the
committee," Mahameed said. "But I want to be recognized as an equal citizen in
Israel. It's the state that does not recognize me as its legal son."
(c) Copyright 1999 The Washington Post Company
Source:
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