Golan repeats call to work with Arab parties, says undemocratic to discount them out of hand

Yair Golan, chair of the left-wing Democrats party, repeats his call for the Jewish-led opposition parties to work with the Arab-led parties and form a governing coalition, arguing that ignoring their combined 19 seats would be undemocratic.

“There are no conditional citizens in a democratic Israel,” Golan argues in an opinion piece for Haaretz. “A ballot cast on Tuesday by an Arab citizen in Sakhnin or in Rahat is worth exactly as much as a ballot cast by a Jewish citizen in Tel Aviv or Sderot.”

“Every member of Knesset elected in a lawful, democratic election is a legitimate part of our political system,” he writes. “Anyone who believes in democracy cannot fight for it in the morning only to then, in the evening, invalidate the voices of hundreds of thousands of citizens because of their origins or their names.”

Golan is the only head of a Jewish-led opposition party to express willingness to work with Ra’am and the Joint List. Yashar’s Gadi Eisenkot, B’Yachad’s Naftali Bennett, and Yisrael Beytenu’s Avigdor Liberman have all ruled out doing so.

The Democrats chair acknowledges in the opinion piece that working with the Arab-led parties won’t always be simple, but says this does not mean it shouldn’t happen.

“We will present demands, stand firm on our security and national principles, and will conduct tough and practical negotiations — just as we would with any other faction in parliament,” he says. “But we will not disqualify individuals, nor will we accept the rules of the game dictated by the poison machine to keep its grip on power.”

Golan, whose party won eight seats in Tuesday’s election, met yesterday with Eisenkot, B’Yachad No. 2 Yair Lapid, and Ra’am chair Mansour Abbas, as the anti-Netanyahu bloc begins coalition-building talks.