Arab-Israelis hold key to Labour power

In a house between two mosques in the Arab hill town of Umm al- Fahm in northern Israel, Jamal, a nurse, is trying to decide how to vote next week. His decision is of acute interest to the Israeli government which needs the support of the Israeli-Arabs if it is to stay in power.

Jamal says that in Umm al-Fahm, a town of 30,000 people, there is "still a lot of anger about the Israeli attack on Lebanon. Many people will stay at home." On the other hand "if people do not go to vote then they will automatically be helping Bibi Netanyahu [the right wing Likud candidate]."

He thought he would vote for Shimon Peres, the Prime Minister, but he was not sure. Events in Lebanon were important but "what we want is equality with the Jewish population". Most of the Arabs in Umm al-Fahm are labourers working in Tel Aviv and Jamal wanted a decent bus system, better schools and industry close to the town.

These are the perennial complaints of the 850,000 Israeli-Arabs, but in the last week the government has been listening to them closely. For the first time the Israeli Prime Minister is being elected directly in polls later this month and this has unexpectedly strengthened the leverage of Israeli-Arab voters, whose representatives in the Knesset (parliament) were shunned and marginalised by Israeli Jewish parties.

At first the ruling Labour party took Israeli-Arabs for granted in the election campaign. The Labour party programme was not even printed in Arabic, though Arabs are 12 per cent of the electorate. Marwan Darwish, a Palestinian political scientist, says this changed after Lebanon. He says: "The Labour party was in an absolute panic. Their activists went from Galilee to the Negev, giving promises of money for development."

It is a good moment to be a wild card in Israeli politics. Suddenly Israeli- Arabs, Russian immigrants and ultra-orthodox Jews are being wooed as never before. Mr Peres himself was in Umm al-Fahm last night, trying to win last minute votes by pledging to remedy grievances. The polls give him a five per cent lead over Mr Netanyahu but an internal Labour party study has reportedly concluded they are dead even.

Israeli-Arabs are in an ambiguous position. Sympathising with the national demands of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza it is their own interest to insist on equality of political, civil and economic rights with Jewish Israelis. Even Sheikh Nimer Abdullah Darwish, the leader of the Islamic movement, recognised this year that it is unrealistic to stay outside the Israeli political system.

The prime motive of the Islamists to enter the election was to avoid an Israeli crackdown in the wake of the suicide bombings. The deputy mayor of Umm al-Fahm is still under arrest, accused of running a charity which helped the families of Hamas members. At the same time Islamists are distancing themselves further from Yasser Arafat, whose Israeli-Arab adviser, Ahmed Tibi, was forced to withdraw from the election last week for lack of support.

Nobody expected that direct election for the prime minister would benefit the Israeli-Arabs, but it is. In future they will be too important a building block of any Labour bid for the prime minister's office to be disregarded.