Why Netanyahu and Liberman are boycotting Arab party members

The suggestion was made by Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman, but the sweeping order to members of the governing coalition to boycott members of the Joint List, a unified slate of predominantly Arab parties, was given by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Liberman, who makes no secret of his political agenda advocating the removal of Arab legislators from the Knesset, claimed the boycott decision is a tit for tat following the Joint List’s decision to boycott the September state funeral for former President Shimon Peres.

At an Oct. 9 meeting of the coalition party leaders, Liberman said, “Members of the Joint List had proven there was no longer any point in talking to them or even arguing with them, and that a decision has to be made mandating a boycott of all their Knesset appearances and speeches.” Netanyahu was not far behind. If there’s a move afoot to boycott Arab lawmakers, he can’t let Liberman get all the credit for the move from the right-wing constituency that shares Liberman’s views about the Joint List. Liberman was the one who spearheaded the move to raise the election threshold in the previous Knesset. His intention was to make sure the Arab parties would not have enough votes to make it into the Knesset, but this actually ended up uniting the small Arab parties into one faction, which together garnered 13 Knesset seats, largely passing the threshold. Now Netanyahu, too, is seeking ways to delegitimize these Knesset members.

On orders from the prime minister, coalition whip Knesset member David Bitan instructed the six coalition parties to prepare for retaliatory action over the absence of the Arab lawmakers from the Peres funeral. He went even further and claimed that their decision to boycott the funeral delivered a message of incitement. “Members of the Joint List understood that the Peres funeral was an international event with the participation of presidents from around the world, and they saw an opportunity to convey a message of incitement against Israel,” Bitan said.

But after these declarations were made, it turned out that according to the Knesset by-laws, at least one Cabinet minister must be present at any plenary debate — meaning that the coalition as a whole cannot systematically boycott appearances of Arab Knesset members at the plenum. Hence, a decision was made that the boycott would only last one week. And so at the start of the Knesset’s winter session on Oct. 31, all the lawmakers of the coalition parties (apart from Tourism Minister Yariv Levin who stayed, as the regulation stipulates) walked out of the plenary when Knesset member Taleb Abu Arar of the Joint List got up to speak about a motion of no confidence in the government tabled by his party.