New binational left party launched in Israel

Image shows Rula Daood (at the microphone), along with Ghadir Hani (left) and Alon-Lee Green (right) at the launch of the new party.

Left-wing activists in Israel have launched a new political party, A Place for Us All (Likulina Makan / Makom Lekulanu in Arabic and Hebrew), ahead of parliamentary elections this autumn.

Most of the leading figures, and the party's initial activist base, come from Standing Together, the left-wing social movement founded in 2015, which has grown to over 7,000 members and is Israel's largest grassroots binational (Palestinian-Jewish) movement. Whilst there will be no formal legal or organisational connection between the new party and Standing Together, the party will promote the same perspectives of binational co-resistance for peace and equality, and social justice.

Uri Weltmann, who has taken a leave-of-absence from his role as Standing Together's national field organiser, said:

"The new party has been formed with the aim of radically changing the course of Israeli politics, against the backdrop of the acute polycrisis affecting our society: October 7 and its aftermath, with the genocidal war launched against Gaza, that will scar this land for generations; the growing authoritarianism of the Netanyahu regime, with its rollback of democratic norms and freedoms; the inability of the Israeli polity to continue to sustain the fact that a fifth of its citizens are Arab-Palestinians, subjected to systematic discrimination in all walks of life; and the ongoing cost-of-living crisis, housing crisis, and the crisis of the public services, aggravated by the reality of a Forever War;

"A Place for Us All is a party committed to a vision of an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement, based on ending the Occupation and establishing an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel, with freedom of movement and without separation, checkpoints, or Jewish superiority. Recognising that this land is the home of both peoples, we call this vision 'Two States in a Shared Homeland'.

"Advocating for raising the minimum wage in Israel from 35 NIS an hour to 50 NIS an hour, as well calling for free universal education from birth, A Place for Us All is grounded in Socialist values.

"The party will be co-led by both Jewish as well as Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel. It will speak with the same political message in both Hebrew and Arabic, working to convince, mobilise, organise and politically coalesce both Jewish and Palestinian citizens of Israel, around a shared vision of the future, grounded in principles of social justice that recognise that the vast majority of people at the bottom have shared interests, that are in opposition to the those of the small minority at the top."

Elections must take place in Israel by 27 October, but are widely expected to take place earlier. Under the country's proportional representation system, parties must receive at least 3.25% of the vote in order to win a parliamentary seat. According to internal polling, A Place for Us All is currently just shy of that, which Weltmann called "a great start for a party that has not yet launched its election campaign and is not yet campaigning on the streets and on social media."

The elections are viewed as an opportunity to oust Benjamin Netanyahu's far-right coalition, and some other currents on the left have expressed concern that A Place for Us All could split the left-of-centre anti-Netanyahu vote. Responding to such concerns, Weltmann said, "We don't want to be vote spoilers. We are not going to be on the ballot on election day if we are not certain that the support we have from Arab and Jewish voters will translate into ending Netanyahu's rule."

The main existing left-wing electoral force is Hadash, the electoral front of the Israeli Communist Party. It is nominally binational, but its base is overwhelmingly Arab-Palestinian. It currently has three representatives in the Knesset. The other would-be "left-wing" electoral option is the Democrats, formed via a merger between the Israeli Labor Party and the social-democratic party Meretz. Meretz occasionally made gestures in the direction of binational political organising, and has had Palestinian MKs, but both parties, and the Democrats itself, are ultimately traditional parties of the Zionist left. The Democrats have been timid on the question of the occupation.

Other opposition forces include the parties organising amongst the 20% of Israel's population which is Palestinian, including Balad, Ta'al, and Ra'am. These encompass a range of political approaches, from secular-nationalist to Islamist. Palestinian parties have sometimes run joint slates for Knesset elections. Ta'al, Balad, and Hadash have said they will run jointly in the forthcoming elections.

The mainstream opposition to Netanyahu includes parties which sometimes criticise him from the right on security and military questions. According to current polling, the likeliest candidate to replace Netanyahu as prime minister is Gadi Eisenkot, a former IDF general.

With months still to go before any deadline for registering candidates, much could shift on the electoral terrain. But the launch of a new political initiative that stresses binational co-resistance, equality between Jews and Palestinians, and a left-wing social programme is a welcome development. Socialists and internationalists elsewhere should engage with the new party seek links where possible.