PM tells skeptical Arab party head he’ll tackle inequality

Two months after he made his controversial election day remarks that Arab voters were “voting in droves,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with a “skeptical” Arab Joint List leader MK Ayman Odeh on Thursday to discuss plans for increasing government investment in the Arab Israeli community.

According to a Prime Minister’s Office statement after the meeting, Netanyahu said he would establish a government committee that would include Arab MKs and would draft a government-wide plan for Arab socio-economic development.

Speaking to Army Radio after the meeting, Odeh confirmed that Netanyahu had expressed a desire to establish the committee, which he promised would begin work as soon as next month.

But Odeh also said he was “skeptical, to say the least, simply because I can’t be sure until I see it in reality.”

Odeh ruled out any serious discussion about West Bank Palestinians or occupation.

“Unfortunately, it seems that with the current government, any attempt to seriously discuss ending the occupation and striving towards peace and justice can be no more than comic relief,” he insisted in a statement after the meeting.

The freshly reelected Netanyahu asked to meet Odeh in April in a bid to reconcile with the Arab community, after facing a massive backlash within Israel and abroad over his comments.

Odeh agreed to take the prime minister up on his offer of a meeting, but charged that Netanyahu was planning to use it as a publicity stunt.

After Thursday’s meeting, Odeh said he had used the opportunity to criticize Netanyahu for his comments on election day, and to advance his plan for equal state funding, land zoning and housing for Israel’s Arab citizens.

“I arrived here today with a great responsibility as the representative of the largest minority in the country, a minority that as part of a contemptible election tactic, the prime minister chose to incite against,” Odeh said.

“A prime minister cannot speak out against citizens practicing their right to vote,” he said.

The two also discussed the high unemployment among young Arabs, increasing funding for Arab municipalities and expanding educational opportunities in the Arab sector, according to a statement from Odeh.

Odeh also raised complaints by Arab Israelis that state discrimination makes it impossible for them to obtain planning authorities’ approval to expand their towns.

As a result, many families resort to building homes without permission, leaving them liable to demolition. Although Arab Israelis make up some 17 percent of the population, only 4.6 percent of new homes are built in Arab areas, according to the Arab advocacy group Adalah.

Odeh said he presented Netanyahu with a detailed planning reform proposal for Arab communities, and demanded an immediate freeze on all home demolition plans.

In a February report, Adalah blamed the housing crisis on a “deliberate, consistent, and systematic government policy” that gives preference to development in Jewish areas over Arab ones.

In 2014, the Israel Land Authority published tenders for construction of 38,261 housing units in Jewish communities compared with only 1,844 in Arab communities, the report said.