Israeli Arab vote in transition: observations on campaign strategies in a mixed town

Abstract

Anthropologists who have observed election campaigns (for example: Bailey 1963; Cohen 1965; Geertz 1965; Maye^r 1966; Deshen 1970, 1972; Curtis 1971; Epstein et al. 1971; Rosen 1972; Aronoff 1974)1 have contributed valuable insights into the structure, culture, and dynamics of change in the studied communities. Their research has also illuminated the strategies and idioms employed by the politicians competing for votes. Although most of these findings about particular communities or certain candidates reflect society at large, anthropologists have generally refrained from making specific deductions about voting behaviour. They tended to leave such analyses to sociologists and political scientists who collect data by more formal methods,either through representative samples or inclusive statistical surveys. Through the situational analysis2 of the election campaign in one urban Israeli Arab community (during the 1973 national and municipal elections), I shall attempt to identify processes of change in the modes of political behaviour and in the political integration of Arabs in Israel. During twenty-five years (since 1948) of co-existence of a Jewish majority and an Arab minority in Israel, both sectors have undergone immense demographic, economic, social, and cultural changes, as well as psychological and conceptual readjustments. For eighteen months (June 1972-December 1973) I did field work in a suburb of an Israeli city which I shall call Mixedtown,3 one of the main Arab centres during the British Mandate in Palestine. Of the more than 100,000 Arabs who resided there before the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, less than 10,000 remain. Most of them now live in a particular suburb. Mixedtown as a whole has had an influx of Jewish immigrants from various Middle Eastern, Balkan, and East European countries since 1948. The predominantly Arab suburb has also been settled by Jews so that, at the time of research, the two populations in this suburb were more or less equal. In its main social characteristics, the Arab community of Mixedtown is probably similar to other Arab communities in mixed towns in Israel. (Excluding Jerusalem, there are five towns where Jewish and Arab societies live side by side.) The Arab society of the suburb, composed of the Moslem community (about two-thirds) and various Christian communities, is structured mainly on individuals and fractions of families that had remained in 1948 and on migrants from other Arab communities in Israel. Except for a minority of professionals, clerks, traders, and craftsmen, most of the residents are either skilled or unskilled labourers. Descriptions of election campaigns in the Arab sector, with particular