Ra’am’s guidance letter supports Palestinians’ right of return, calls Zionism racist

The letter that guides Ra’am, the Islamic party being courted by the main parties competing to form Israel’s next government, calls for a right of return for Palestinian refugees, says “there can be no loyalty” to Israel and considers Zionism a “racist, occupation project”, according to a current version of the document provided to The Times of Israel by an important figure in Ra’am.

Ra’am is the political wing of the Southern Islamic Movement, an organization inspired by the Muslim Brotherhood. Updated in 2018 and revised at a 2019 conference in Nazareth, which would have been chaired by leader Ra’am Mansour Abbas, the letter from the Southern Islamic Movement takes on positions considered anathema by most Israeli Jews.

“The State of Israel was born out of the racist and occupying Zionist project; wicked Western and British imperialism; and the degradation and weakness of Arabs and Islamists [nations]. We do not exempt ourselves, the Palestinian people, from our responsibility and our failure to tackle this project, ”says the letter.

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He calls for the so-called right of return for Palestinian refugees who left or were expelled in 1948, widely seen as a red line by most Zionist Israelis, who see an influx of potentially millions of Palestinians into Israel as a sign of the demographic demise of the state Jewish.

The 80-page letter, which covers all aspects of the movement’s positions and activities, from its charitable work to its religious worldview, embraces a two-state solution as a possible structure, declaring that a Palestinian state must be established ” alongside Israel “in the West Bank, Gaza and Jerusalem. But he notes that the right of return for Palestinians must be part of this type of accommodation.

Alternatively, he advocates a single binational state between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

“Take the hands off the Palestinian people to establish their own free and independent state, close to Israel, and for the expelled and displaced to return to their homeland and their homes and lands. Or, accept a state from the river to the sea, in which the two peoples can live under the skies in freedom and equality and security and peace ”, states the letter in this context.

Elsewhere, the letter states: “We are all [united as] a hand until the occupation ends and a Palestinian state is established in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and in noble Jerusalem; when the expelled and displaced return to their homes and their homeland ”.

Ra’am party officials have avoided in recent months discussing how their movement views the controversial issues of final status related to Israel and the Palestinians. Instead, Abbas focused on the needs of Israel’s Arab community and, last week, in a prime-time speech, he called for cooperation and equality between Arabs and Jews. Islamic Movement MPs campaigned in Arab cities ahead of the March 23 elections to improve the quality of life for Israeli Arabs.

“We have positions [on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict], but now is not the time, ”Ra’am MK Walid Taha told The Times of Israel on Saturday.

Asked about the position of the Southern Islamic Movement and Ra’am on the right of return, Taha said it would be a “bad time” to discuss the issue now.

The Islamic Movement signed this letter in 2018. In early 2019, the document was reviewed by senior party officials with prominent academics in Nazareth. According to the Arab-Israeli news website Arab48, Mansour Abbas – who was already the leader of the Ra’am party – chaired the meeting.

The Islamic Movement’s letter compares the status quo in Israel and its territories to the ephemeral crossed kingdoms built by European invaders in the Holy Land in the Middle Ages. However, it does not directly call for Israel’s destruction, instead it asks Israel to seek a two-state solution before it is too late.

“Do you have a warning in the apostates Frank [the Crusaders] who forcibly violated the land for almost two centuries, until they were defeated by Salah al-Din al-Ayyubi and his soldiers, ”according to the letter.

The Islamic Movement of Israel was founded by Sheikh Abdullah Nimr Darwish – a complex and contradictory figure. Although he initially supported the spread of Islam through violence – even serving two years in prison for a series of ideologically motivated attacks – Darwish ended up embracing democracy and peaceful change through da’wa, Islamic proselytism.

The movement ended up spreading widely across Arab cities and towns – especially in southern Israel – operating kindergartens, colleges, health clinics, mosques and even a sports league.

In the 1990s, the Islamic Movement was divided between those who supported and those who opposed the Oslo peace process between Israel and the Palestinians. The most radical northern arm – led by former Darwish pupil Raed Salah – opposed the move. But Darwish, who led the southern branch, embraced it, paving the way for the creation of an Islamic party, the Ra’am, which would seek to work within the political structure of the Knesset.

Ra’am could put Netanyahu or his opponents above the 61-seat mark for a majority in the Knesset, crowning the next prime minister. But some right-wing politicians, both in the pro-Netanyahu bloc and the anti-Netanyahu bloc, have ruled out basing a coalition on party support, due to what they say is an anti-Zionist stance; others accused Ra’am of supporting terrorists.

In a historic prime-time speech to the country last Thursday – broadcast live on all major Israeli television channels – Abbas said his party sought to “respect each person for their humanity” and emphasized the common fate of Arabs and Jews in the State of Israel.

“If the road in Wadi Ara is problematic, it will not distinguish between Arab and Jewish passers-by,” said Abbas. “If a bed is missing at Soroka Hospital, it can harm both people in Beersheba and Rahat.”

Many observers noted that Abbas was careful to omit open mentions of the Palestinian cause in his speech. He spoke of himself as “a man from the Islamic Movement, a proud Arab and Muslim, a citizen of the State of Israel”, choosing not to refer to himself as a Palestinian. The head of the Ra’am party noted, however, that Israeli Arabs had been preventing “collective realization”, in a possible nod to national rights.

Abbas also acknowledged in his speech the chasm that separated him from the Israeli Jewish public, but said that the urgency of Arab-Jewish cooperation overcame disagreements on other burning issues.

“Now is the time to understand each other, each other’s narrative,” said Abbas. “We don’t have to agree on everything and, of course, we will disagree with a lot. But we must give ourselves and our children the opportunity, the right, to understand each other ”.

Supporters saw Abbas’ speech as a courageous commitment to pragmatism, to put aside seemingly insoluble differences in favor of making tangible gains for Israeli Arabs.

The 2018 Islamic Movement letter carries some of the same messages, saying that the “nonviolent civil advance in which we are engaged” would work to benefit both Jews and Arabs.

“[This] it aims to strengthen the values ​​of justice, freedom and dignity for all people, Jews and Arabs, and it aims to remove oppression, prejudice and insult to the oppressed in the world ”, says the letter.

But the movement’s founding document also includes a tougher rhetoric about the relationship between what he calls the “Palestinian people within Israel” and the Israeli state.

“There can be no loyalty to [Israel], nor any identification with his Zionist, racist, occupation thinking, nor any acceptance of any of the various forms of ‘Israelification’, which would strip us of our identity and particularity and rights ”, says the letter.

“Our political participation, at all levels, from the local government to the legislative authority in parliament [i.e., the Knesset], and in the official civilian authorities, it is just an attempt to defend our rights and the interests of our Palestinian Arab community within [Israel], and to help our Palestinian cause, and to conflict with the Zionist project’s proposals, policies and programs from within the heart of state institutions, ”the letter also notes.

“It is, at the very least, a word of truth before a tyrannical despot,” concludes the letter, a reference to a famous saying attributed to the prophet of Islam, Muhammad.

The Islamic Movement indicates in the letter that the advancement of a Palestinian state is not the movement’s first priority. The main objectives are related to the Palestinian community within Israel.

“Our most important objective in relation to the State of Israel, in relation to Palestinian Arab society, is to maintain our presence in our homeland, to preserve our identity and the Arab, Islamic and Christian identities of our country, and to empower our community to achieve their rights. in the civil, national and religious spheres, and in the sphere of daily life, ”says the Charter.