A True Shared Home

Zionist history does not contain many such moments. Moments when a political home is rebuilt, stone by stone, exactly where it collapsed in the past. MAKI — the Israeli Communist Party — was established in 1948 by Jews and Arabs, and for 17 years was the only political home in Israel where they sat together not as guests and hosts, but as equal partners. However, the house was built on a relatively shaky foundation: not identity, but class. And when the world pushed in directions contrary to class struggle, the walls began to crack, until in 1965 the roof collapsed and the house split in two: a Jewish faction that took the name and an Arab faction that established RAKAH. Since that moment, only individuals crossed the lines as migrants. Until now.

The move led by Yoav Saglovich and Mansour Abbas is the closest thing to a true shared home since MAKI. This is not just an attempt to return to the old ruins, but an intention to build a different shared home on the same infrastructure. A home where national identities are not stored away immediately upon entering it, but are carried with pride within it. Unlike those Jewish communists, Saglovich proudly holds onto his Zionist identity. Abbas also does not hide his Palestinian identity. This is what makes their actions unprecedented. Although it is Abbas and his people who will decide if the house will be built, it is Saglovich who will determine how its rooms will be divided and where the door will be broken in a wall that was considered, for 61 years, impenetrable. Given the fact that there is no class or other common denominator between them, but only hostile national identities, this is an almost desperate step in its courage.

The new home of Abbas and Saglovich may constitute a precedent in another sense. It does not rely on symbols, vague slogans, and provocations, as we are unfortunately accustomed to from such political frameworks. On the contrary, it is based on a desire to bring real results on the ground. In this sense, Saglovich's presence with the receipts for his achievements in working against Arab crime is not intended to attract only votes from the Jewish street, but precisely to bring Arab voters of the type that seeks a real correction to the reality of their bloody lives. Integrating a Jew with real influence (at least in the eyes of the Arabs) helps Abbas strengthen the belief that it is possible. A belief because of which he actually entered the Bennett-Lapid government. That is, the partnership does not produce a designed house that impresses its critics, but a functional house that serves its occupants as much as possible.

This functionality may allow them to bypass the great trap of partnership initiatives over the years — the trap of Zionism. From mandatory societies like "Brit Shalom" and "Ichud" of Magnes to those of today, the script was fixed: the "joint" political movement removes most of the Zionist components to open a door to the Arab voter and immediately loses the Jewish voter. Saglovich, who comes from completely different districts, finally opens an opportunity for an honest joint discourse that does not apologize for the success of Zionism and opposes the clichés of the "weak who is right by virtue of his weakness," a gift of progressive trash culture.

Therefore, if the move succeeds and Saglovich reaches the Knesset on the Ra'am list, he will not only change location in the plenum. He will also prove that the wall that was finally raised in 1965 is not a law of nature and will also give hope for true binational partnerships. As is the nature of precedents, the chances of success are low. But even failure will not erase the glory of the moment. And this time it is a moment that Zionist history is full of similar ones. Who, like us Zionists, are successful in building new houses where their predecessors were destroyed? Success always begins with one moment when a person stands before a ruin and dares to imagine it in his mind covered with a ceiling with flowering pots in its windows.