Why Arab minority in Israel Vote: the case of 2013 Elections

Transcription

1 Mtanes Shihadeh Why Arab minority in Israel Vote: the case of 2013 Elections Abstract This study seeks to provide empirical explanation for electoral participation of Arab minority in Israel. The paper argue that the Arab minority participation in the Israeli election is motivated by the desire to achieve collective political claims and goals, and examines these explanations in compared to other used for the electoral participation of the indigenous people in Canada, and to standards explanations of electoral participate. Analysis of a public opinion survey conducted through face-toface interviews, a few months after the elections to the 19th Knesset, among a representative sample of the adult Arab population found that the collective interest of the Arab population was a statistically significant motivator to vote. Keywords: electoral participation, Arab minority, Israel.

2 1. Introduction Approximately 765,000 Arab minority in Israel were eligible to vote for the 19 th Knesset elections in 2013, according to the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics (ICBS). 1 Arab citizens accounted for about 15 percent of the electoral roll in 2013 and around 18 percent of the total population. About 57 percent of the eligible Arab citizens actually voted in 2013, an increase compared to the less than 54 percent who voted in the elections for the 18 th Knesset in Nevertheless, the turnout rate among Arab citizens remained lower than the national turnout rate (67.7%) and lower than the turnout rate among Arab citizens prior to the late 1990s (almost 77%). 2 In the 2013 election, three Arab parties 3 jointly received 77 percent of the votes of Arab electors, a decrease compared to 82 percent they got in the elections for the 18 th Knesset in In 2013 non-arab parties won 23 percent of the Arab vote, compared to 18 percent in The rise in turnout and the change in the distribution of Arab votes among Arab and non-arab parties between 2009 to 2013 did not take place against the background of major substantive changes in the political landscape. For Arab voters substantial changes that could change voting patterns would include the external political environment (relations between Israel and the neighboring Arab countries); relations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority; domestic Israeli policy and discourse, including the government s attitude toward the Arab population; and the political 1 The figure for the number of Arab citizens eligible to vote is based on the CBS figures: (last accessed September 10, 2013). 2 the Central Elections Committee for the 18 th Knesset 2 and the Elections Committee for the 19 th Knesset. Website of the Central Elections Committee for the 18 th Knesset: Website of the Central Elections Committee for the 19 th Knesset: 3 These parties are: The United Arab List -UAL (Ra am), the National Democratic Assembly (Balad), and the Democratic Front for Peace and Equality (Hadash). We will refer to these parties in this article as the UAL, Balad, and the DFPE, respectively. For the sake of convenience we will use the term Arab parties to include the DFPE, a joint Arab-Jewish party, most of whose voters are Arabs. 4 Results for the 2009 and 2013 elections calculated by the author on the basis of the data of the Central Elections Committee. 2

3 environment within Arab society in Israel, which is considered a key factor shaping patterns of turnout and voting preferences among Arab citizens (Rouhana, Shihadeh & Sabbagh-Khouri, 2010). Lacking these external motivators it is particularly important to provide empirical grounding for the factors that explain individual electoral participation of Arab citizens, an aspect that has been neglected in studies of voting patterns of Arab electors in Israel. The present research draws on and expanded the insights of existing literature and seeks to contribute to the study of the electoral behavior of Arabs citizens in Israel. It provides an empirical examination of the explanations offered for the participation or abstention of Arab voters, and examines these explanations in compared to other used for the electoral participation of the indigenous people in Canada, and to standards explanations of electoral participate. 2. Participation of the Arab minority in Israeli elections Israel is a unique state in that it declares it has a liberal-democratic regime, while it simultaneously implements a de-facto ethnic regime that favors Jews, as reflected in its laws, ideology, structure, and symbols (Ghanem and Rouhana, 2001; Jamal, 2002). Accordingly, several researchers have described Israel as an ethnic state or as having an ethnocratic regime (Yiftachel & Ghanem, 2004). Such a regime thwarts the possibility for Arab minority to enjoy equal and efficient political representation in the state s power bases, a situation that is reflected both in nationalist symbolism and the allocation material resources that are biased in favor of the Jewish population. The emphasis on the ethno-national identity of the State of Israel, together with socioeconomic policy that creates hollow citizenship for the Arab minority, has rendered the representation of Arabs in the state institutions, such as the parliament, meaningless, and has emptied Arab politics of its democratic content (Jamal, 2006; Rouhana & Ghanem, 2001; Rouhana & Sultany, 2003; Jamal, 2007, b; Ghanem, 2000). The marginal status of Arab citizens in Israeli politics and the limited influence they bear over the formulation of government policy in all areas of life, raises the question about the reasons and rational for electoral participation of this population. 3

4 A question which has not received adequate research response at the individual level so far. 2.1 Participation in election as collective interest There is considerable agreement in the existing literature about the Palestinians in Israel that structural factors and political context play an important role in shaping of Arab citizens decisions about whether to vote or not (Jamal 2006, 2007; Rouhana & Ghanem, 2001; Rouhana & Sultany, 2003; Shihadeh 2015). Eli Rekhess summarized 10 key explanations that have been offered in the relevant research literature in order to explain the participation of Arab citizens of Israel in the elections (Rekhess, 2008: ): 1) traditional loyalty to the extended family or tribe; 2) local loyalty to a resident of the same village; 3) political party loyalty; 4) loyalty to the regime; 5) belief in the democratic process; 6) identity voting; 7) belief in Arab representation in the Knesset and in its effectiveness as a platform for protest; 8) aspiration for integration; 9) perception of citizenship; 10) fear of the implications of abstention. These explanations are based on three key models in the study of the behavior of Arab voters: the modernization theory, the institutional structure theory, and the mobilization agents theory (see Rouhana, Al-Salah, and Sultany, 2004). Rouhana, Al-Salah, and Sultany (2004) criticized these models, arguing that they do not offer a satisfactory explanation for Arab participation in parliamentary elections in Israel, and that in some cases the theories are indeed contrary to reality. They claim the theories ignore those central aspects of Israel's ethnic structure that prevent effective representation of the minority s interests. Instead, Rouhana et al. (2004) propose three explanations for the participation of Arab voters in Knesset elections: A) participation reflects a bridge between citizenship and national identity; B) participation reinforces collective ideological identity; C) participation builds internal strength through modern civil organizations. In other words, participation in the elections seeks to meet the collective needs and goals of the Arab population and is perceived as a tool in the Arab population s struggle against government policy and the character of the regime. Similarly, Rouhana, Shihadeh, and Sabbagh- Khoury (2010) suggested that the electoral behavior of Arabs in Israel is connected to 4

5 collective goals and reflects their status and their relations with the state and with the Jewish majority. Despite its contribution to understanding the behavior of Arab voters, these literature focuses mainly on collective behavior, the explanations it offers are essentially structural and constitutional, and there is little attention paid to testing the proposed explanations on the empirical, individual level. In addition, existing literature did not attempt to explain the electoral behavior of the Arab minority through theoretical modal proposed to explain electoral behavior of ethnic minorities in other countries. The current study adapt the argument that the motives for electoral participation of the Arab minority is related to the question of achieving collective interest of the minority group, and aims to refine the findings of previous studies by examining the individual level by the hypothesis that (H1): The more the Arab citizen believes that participation in the elections will benefit the collective civilian and national interest of the Arab minority, the greater the chance of participation in the elections. This explanations will be tested compared to other explanations derived from the literature concerning the participation of Aboriginal peoples in Canadian elections, and explanations derived from the individual characteristics. 3. The rationale for participation of Aboriginal peoples in Canadian elections Despite plentiful research and data about electoral participation of the general population and of minority groups in Western democracies (for example: Bevelander & Pendakur, 2009; lien, 2004; Ramakrishnan & Espenshade, 2001; Togeby 1999), empirical studies on electoral turnouts of native indigenous minority groups, have been limited and do not address deeply the features of electoral participation. A partial answer to these lacunae can be found in literature that studies the low electoral participation of Aboriginal peoples in Canadian elections. Three explanation have been proposed to the low participation of Aboriginal peoples in Canadian elections: the nationalist explanation, the alienation explanation, and the "postcolonial thesis" (Harell et all 2009: p 14). 5

6 According to the nationalist explanation (Bedford and Pobihushchy 1995), Aboriginals go through a process of decolonization from a historically oppressive society; they come to see themselves less as Canadians and more as members of a separate nation. The Aboriginal people, according to this explanation, constitute distinctive nations that have a "nation to nation" relationship with the Canadian state. This rise of identity politics leads the Aboriginal peoples to regard Canadian elections as foreign (Howe and Bedford 2009; Bedford and Pobihushchy 1995, Cairns 2003; Silver et al 2005). Consequently, many refuse to participate in an electoral process that they do not consider to be their own. Turnout in federal elections can be considered as incompatible with the desire for autonomy and self-governance (Cairns 2003; Gue'rin 2003; Howe and Bedford 2009; Bedford and Pobihushchy 1995, Cairns 2003). The popularity of the nationalism thesis among Aboriginal peoples explains low levels of Aboriginal turnout (Harell et al 2009). Degrees of confidence in public institutions, levels of trust, and identification with nation were all proposed as indices for the presence of effect of the nationalist explanation at the Aboriginal turnout levels. The alienation explanation refers to a sense of social and political exclusion that makes Aboriginals feel excluded from the democratic representation process in Canada due to alienation from the often racist and oppressive Canadian state and people (Cairns 2003; Ladner 2003; Dalton 2007). Existing institutions are seen as defending the interests of non-aboriginal people and as instruments of Aboriginal oppression. A major obstacle to Aboriginal participation would thus be the lack of trust in the Canadian political system, in the federal government, and in Canadian institutions (Harell et al. 2009). The postcolonial thesis argues that the root cause of Aboriginal subordination and oppression is the Canadian state itself. As Turpel explains, "Aboriginal peoples find themselves caught in the confines of a subsuming and frequently hostile state political apparatus imposed by an immigrant or settler society (Turpel 1992). Moreover, Alfred contends that Native peoples view non-native institutions as transitory and superfluous features of their political existence, going on to conclude that [t]he structures which have been created to colonize Native nations do not 6

7 represent an acceptable framework for co-existence between the indigenous and newcomer societies (Alfred T. 1995, in Harell et all. 2009: 6). As a consequence, adherents of the postcolonial thesis argue that Aboriginal peoples should disengage from the state s institutions and engage instead in a politics of resistance by actively challenging these institutions, and by using alternative venues, e.g. social movements and direct action (Harell et al. 2009). All three explanations described above view the state as a traditional source of oppression for Aboriginal communities, making alternative venues of political participation often appear more legitimate. Drawing on these literatures, one can say that the three theories encapsulate a broad negative relationship between native indigenous minorities and the state, and that these can explain low turnout levels among indigenous minorities. The assumption derived from the combination of Aboriginal peoples in Canadian election participation literature and the political Arab citizens of Israel is that the nationalist explanation, the alienation explanation, and the "postcolonial thesis" have a negative impact on the probability of Arab citizens vote in the Israeli election. The hypothesis derived from the postcolonial explanation assumption is (H2): Participation in alternative channels of political participation such as civil society activities or direct protest through demonstrations is negatively correlated with participation in elections. Because of the similarity between the nationalist explanation" and alienation explanation, I will use one hypothesis for the two explanations. (H3): decrease in the level of trust at government institutions will decrease the likelihood of participation in the election. 4. Traditional explanations There is a wealth of literature on determinants of electoral participation, and many variables have been found to be important predictors of turnout. Many of these studies find that electoral participation is strongly influenced by the individual-level resources at citizens disposal, and by institutional-structural characteristics. 7

8 Standard models of turnout tend to emphasize education, income, age, gender and religiosity as the main variables that explain differences in participation rates (Blais, 2006; Fornos et al. 2004; Inglehart & Norris, 2000; Lijphart, 1997; Nevitte et al. 2009; Shamir & Arian, 2002; Uhlaner et al. 1989). Socioeconomic indicators such as Income and education reflect ownership of time and knowledge resources, cognitive skills, and access to political information that contributes to social and political involvement (Nevitte et al. 2009), and has been found to have a particularly strong influence on electoral participation (Shamir & Arian, 2002). Age plays an important role in determining participation: young people are less stable socioeconomically, less integrated in society, have a weaker sense of social responsibility, and feel more removed from politics, and as such are less likely to participate in elections than older individuals (Conway 1999; Shamir & Arian, 2002). The hypotheses derived from individual characteristics of voters are as follows (H4): Higher education will raise the likelihood of participation; (H5): Higher income will raise the likelihood of participation; (H6): Men are more involved in politics than women and, accordingly, will be more inclined to participate in elections; (H7): Young people will be less inclined to participate than older people; and (H8): Religiosity is negatively associated with participation in the election. Accordingly, the model employed here will examine the probability of participation in elections and voting for Arabs party as a function of collective interests, trust in government institutions, involvement in civil society and direct protest, besides the individual characteristics of respondents. 5. Data and Definition of Variables The analysis presented in this research is based on the data of a public opinion survey conducted through face-to-face interviews of 1138 adult respondents between March and June 2013, a few months after the elections to the 19th Knesset. The respondents constituted a representative sample of the adult Arab population, with a sampling error of 4 percent. The survey was conducted by Mada al-carmel Arab Center for Applied Social Research. The profile of the respondents was as follows: 55.5 percent male and 44.5 percent female; 83.0 percent Muslim, 9.5 percent Christian, and 7.5 percent Druze;

9 percent were aged 18-24, 29.5 percent were aged 25-34, 32.7 percent were aged 35-54, and 11.4 percent were aged 55 years and above. In terms of education: 14.3 percent of the respondents had up to eight years of education; 57.4 percent had between 9 and 12 years; 15.5 percent had years; and 11 percent had 16 or more years of education. Comparing the profile of the respondents in the sample to the ICBS figures, show that profile is close to the figures for the adult Arab population. 5 According to ICBS 82 percent of the Arab population is Muslim, 10 percent are Christian, and 8 percent are Druze. 6 The results of workforce surveys for 2013, 7 show that 20 percent of the total Arabs adult population is aged 18-24; 21.8 percent are aged 25-34; 33.8 percent are aged 35-54; and 14.5 percent are aged 55 and above. The proportion of those with up to eight years of education is 22 percent; 54 percent have between 9 and 12 years of education; 12 percent have years of education; and 12 percent have 16 or more years of education. The survey included question about five aspects of political participation concerning Palestinians in Israel: parliamentary participation; the issue of Palestinians internally displaced in Israel; participation in protests and demonstrations; the issue of the Arab indigenous minority appealing to Israeli Courts; Arabs civil society and NGOs; and the status of the Supreme Committee of Arab Affairs in Israel. 5.1 The dependent variable: participation in voting was measured by the question Did you vote in the last Knesset elections in January? The respondents were asked to answer yes or no. The second question was For which party did you vote? Those who said they voted for Arabs parties were coded 1, those who voted for non-arab parties were coded with a 2, and those who said else was given a 3. The following analysis refers to all respondents who answered that they had participated in the elections and voted for Arab parties, compared to those who did not vote. The depending variable therefore will be called "Vote-Arabs-Party, VAP." 5 It should be noted that the CBS figures include Arab residents of East Jerusalem and Druze residents of the Golan Heights, who are not included in samples of Arab voters and are not eligible to vote in Knesset elections. The bias may be due in part to this factor. 6 Statistical Abstract of Israel 2013, Table Ibid., Table

10 5.2 Explanatory variables The variables explaining "VAP" are divided into four groups following the theoretical explanation described in the previous section. The first group focuses on personal characteristics; the second reflects the nationalist explanation" and alienation explanation, and the third reflects the postcolonial theses; the fourth contains the collective interest explanation. The following personal characteristics were employed in the analysis: Education (number of years of education, measured from 0 to 25 years); gender (male=1, female=2); age (number of years); religion (Muslim, Christian). 8 In addition, we measured religiosity on a scale from 1 to 10, where 1 represents entirely secular and 10 indicate fully religious. Income was measured by the question: "The average net monthly income per family in Israel is NIS 12,500. Is your family income: 1- Much below the average; 2- Slightly below the average; 3- Similar to the average; 4- Slightly above the average; 5- Much more than the average. The nationalist-alienation explanation" reflects the degrees of confidence and trust in public institutions, and identification with state. The survey did not include many questions that reflect the level of trust and confidence in Israeli public institutions, but had questions concerning the trust in Israeli courts and police. These questions were used as proxy to measure the effect of trust on participation. The two questions were: 1) To what extent you trust the integrity and objectivity of the Israeli courts? The answers were on continuous index from 1- Absolute confidence; to 6- I do not have any confidence (Mean = 2.9; StD= 1.04); 2) To what extent you trust the Israeli police? The answers were on continuous index from 1- Absolute confidence; to 5- I do not have any confidence (Mean = 3.43; StD= 1.17). The postcolonial explanation was measured by two groups of questions reflecting the position of the questioners towards the politics of resistance and using of alternative political tools like social movements and NGOs (Harell et all 2009). The 8 The analysis was only conducted among Muslims and Christians questioner and didn't included Druze surveyed since most of Druze who participants in the elections vote for non-arab parties. 10

11 first group of questions refers to respondents' participation in protest and demonstrations in three fields: 1) To what extent are you involved in protest activity about local (city/town/village) issues? 2) To what extent are you involved in the protest acts on national collective issues (issues concerning Arabs in Israel)? To what extent you involved in protest activity related Palestinian people in general (issues concerning the 1967 occupation)? The answer in all three questions was scale from 1 to 5, when 1 being a lot and 5 being not at all. Instead of using three variables, one variable from the average of the three variables was produced and called "protest acts." In the second stage the new variable was encoded, 1 for average from 0 to 3.5 (N=475, 46.25%) and average above 3.5 to 5 takes the value 0 (N=516, 50.24%). The second section used to measure the validity of the "postcolonial explanation" was comprised of five questions relating respondents' evaluation of the importance of Arab NGO activity in several areas: political, social, welfare, and social change. Respondents were asked: In your opinion to what extent is the presence of Arab NGOs important in each one of the following areas - The development and cohesion of the Palestinian Arab minority in Israel; - Encouragement to engage in political activities and political participation; - Leading a positive change in the Arab community; - Expression of the concerns of the Arab minority in Israel; - Integration with the Arab parties in the political activity. The answers were scaled from 1-to a great extent, 5- very little. To reduce the number of the variables I used a factor analyses procedure. The analyses showed that all the variables are loaded on a single factor summarizing the attitude of the responding toward NGO activity. All the variables are positively loaded on the factor at a value of above I refer to this factor as the NGO performance evaluation. The total variance explained by the factors is 66.28% (Eigenvalue= 3.314). Collective interest: Since most of the Arabs participants vote for Arab or Arab-Jewish parties, the collective instrumentalist interest was measured by the respondents evaluation of the capacity of Arab political parties to act in the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, in favor of Arab citizens in diverse fields, of both civil and national 11

12 dimensions. The respondents evaluation is considered according to their answers to twelve questions, in each of which they were asked to rank (on a scale from 1: very bad to 5: excellent) the activities of the Arab parties in the Knesset in the following areas: 1. enacting legislation benefiting the Arab population; 2. representing the interests of Arab citizens; 3. acting on the issue of land and housing; 4. solving economic problems of Arab citizens; 5. solving problems in the Arab education system; 6. achieving cultural rights of Arab citizens; 7. solving the problem of violence in the Arab society; 8. improving the situation of Arab local authorities; 9. preventing discriminatory policies against Arab citizens; 10. exposing patterns of racial discrimination in government policy toward the Arab population; 11. contributing towards ending the Israeli occupation in the Territories; 12. improving the situation of Arab women. Due to the large number of variables describing the evaluation of the functioning of Arab parties, a factor analysis was used to reduce the number of variables. The analysis showed that the variables are loaded on two factors summarizing the activities of the Arab parties in the Knesset in the civilian and national dimensions. Eight variables are loaded positive on one factor, called the "collective civilian dimension", and the others loaded positive on second factor called the "collective national dimension" (as presented in table 1). It was interesting to find that the issue of ending the occupation is loaded on the same factor together with the issue of discrimination, in the broad sense, and the issue of land and housing. This means that the Arabs population perceived the issue of discrimination and the land and housing as a national issue and not a purely civilian issue. The two factors will be included in the multivariable analysis in order to further explain participation in the elections. 12

13 Table 1: Factor analysis for evaluation of Arab parties functioning Variable Achieving cultural rights of Arab citizens Solving problems in the Arab education system Improving the situation of Arab local authorities Addressing violence in Arab society Improving economic and living problems Representing the interests of Arab citizens Improving the situation of Arab women Enacting legislation benefiting the Arab population Contributing to ending the Israeli occupation Exposing patterns of racial discrimination in government policy toward the Arab Preventing discriminatory policies Addressing the issues of land and housing Loading Loading The total variance explained by the two factors - Eigenvalue is over 1 - is 67.54% of the variance. The first factor is the strongest and explained 39.53% of the variance, the second factor adding 28.01% to the explained variance. 6. Findings 6.1 Who Votes and Who Does Not? Approximately 65 percent of the respondents in the survey stated that they voted in the elections, 32.5 percent said they did not vote, and 2.5 did not answer the question (according to the actual election results, only 57 percent of Arabs eligible to vote actually did so) percent of the respondents who voted, said they voted for Arab parties (according to the actual election results, the Arab parties secured 13

14 approximately 77 percent of Arab votes), 9.0 percent voted for non-arab parties, 20.1 percent said they did not remember, and 0.4 said they used a blank vote. For the purpose of the analysis, a respondent who stated that he or she participated in the election and voted for Arab parties (VAP) received a value 1 (N=472), while respondents who didn't vote received a value of 0 (N=340) Descriptive statistics Before presenting the result of the Logistic regression of the model, I will present first the result of T Test between the two groups: voters for Arabs and Arabs-Jews party compared to non-voters, in all the independent variables, to examine whether there are differences between the two groups. Table 2: T Test the Independent variables VAP Mean (Std Dev) Age (12.93) Sex 1.42 (0.49) Schooling (3.35) Income 2.44 (1.20) Religiosity 3.97 (1.24) Trust in the courts 3.53 (1.15) Trust in the police 3.70 (1.19) NGOs performance (0.946) Protest participation 0.53 (0.49) Civilian dimensions (1.08) National dimensions 0.14 (1.04) ***p<0.001 *p< non-voters Mean (Std Dev) (13.79) 1.47 (0.50) (3.72) 2.25 (1.16) 4.23 (1.20) 3.53 (1.45) 3.59 (1.19) (0.955) 0.46 (0.49) (0.89) (0.93) T Value * -2.37* 3.00*** *** -4.50* Table 2 makes it clear that differences between the two groups exist in the education, income, and religiosity and mainly in evaluation of the Arabs parties functioning in the civic and national dimensions. The level of education and income are higher among "VAP" than non-voters, and they are less religious and they

15 positively assess the performances of the Arab parties in the Knesset, both in the civil and national dimensions, more than the non-voters group. Table 3 Present the results of a 4 step of multivariable logistic regression to identify the influence of the explanatory variables on participation in the elections. The dependent variable is voting for Arabs party (value 1) and 0 for those how did not vote. The first step include only personal characteristics; second step examines the nationalist-alienation explanation; the third step examines the "postcolonial explanation, and the forth step examine the effect of the evaluation of the Arab parties performances as proxy measured for collective interest. Table 3: Logistic Regression for Predicting Participation in the Knesset Elections Step 1 Step 2 Step 3 Step 4 Parameter Estimate Wald Estimate Wald Estimate Wald Estimate Wald Intercept Age Six Schooling Income Muslim Religiosity Muslim* Religiosity Trust in the courts Trust in the police Protest participation NGO performance Civilian *** dimensions National *** dimensions R ***p<0.001 In the first step the model showed no effect of individual characteristics on voting. There was no significant difference in "VAP" between men and women or between 15

16 different religious groups, or between level of education, or income level, or age groups. According to the nationalist-alienation explanation," the second step, increase in the level of trust at government institutions was supposed to increase the likelihood of participation in the election. The result did not support this hypothesis. There was no statistical significance between the level of "trust in the courts" and "trust in the police" and "VAP". The model also did not find any effect of the postcolonial explanation (the third step). There were no statistically significant influence on participation in protest participation, and NGO performance on "VAP." This outcome is particularly important in light of the arguments that participation in alternative political activity constitutes a substitute for parliamentary political activity in the Knesset. The statistical analysis demonstrates that the evaluation of Arab parties performance in areas reflecting the collective interest of the Arab population, the civilian and national dimensions, is a significant factor influencing the probability of participation in the elections (the fourth step). A higher evaluation of performance increases the probability of participation. Thus, the respondents subjective perception of the contributions the Arab parties make to the Arab collective indeed determines electoral participation. 7. Discussion The finding clarifies that standard models of turnout that emphasize the effect of individual-level resources (education, income, age gender, religiosity) as main variables that explain differences in participation rate (Blais, 2006; Fornos et al. 2004; Inglehart & Norris, 2000; Lijphart, 1997; Nevitte et al. 2009; Shamir & Arian, 2002; Uhlaner et al. 1989), do not explain the electoral participation of the Arab indigenous minority in Israel. In addition, the Arabs participation rationale is different from the nationalist-alienation explanation" and "postcolonial" explanation (Harell et all. 2009; Howe and Bedford 2009; Cairns 2003; Silver et al 16

17 2005) that explain participation or abstention of Aboriginal peoples in Canadian elections. The finding underscores the importance of studying the effect of specific contexts that define citizen's goals in electoral participation in their voting behavior, especially among indigenous minorities. The unique political context of Arab citizens in Israel as an indigenous minority creates a rationale for participation that is collective and instrumentalist. The collective interest of Arab citizens reflects a desire to pass legislation serving the interests of the Arab population. The respondents also want the Arab parties to thwart discriminatory policies against them and act to end the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian Territories. All these considerations fall under the collective interest of Arab citizens, although in most of these fields it is impossible to separate between the improvement of the collective situation and improvement on the individual level. Accordingly, Arab voters weigh the collective rationale together with the individual rationale. This results support Jamal concluding that participation as a rational decision is not divorced from the totality of circumstantial factors that influence the individual. Accordingly, participation includes a rationale dimension, but this rationale is not purely individual (Jamal, 2002, p. 65). The activities of Arab parties deviate from typical examples of parliamentary activity in a democratic regime, reflecting, among other aspects, the ideological and institutional organization of Arab society, and the need to raise the demands and claims of the Arab population, and represent the interests of Arab citizens (Rouhana et al., 2004). An additional aspect of this phenomena is the fact that the Arabs voters vote mainly for opposition parties that are excluded from power and the actual decision-making process. 8. Conclusion Drawing on the studies on the political behavior of Arab citizens in Israel and, the theoretical starting point of the study assumed that the electoral behavior of the Arab minority in Israel is shaped by the nature of the regime, the rules of the political game, and the status of Arab citizens in Israel. The character of the State of Israel which defines itself as Jewish and democratic, and which has been defined as ethnocratic by various scholars influences the political and electoral behavior of 17

18 Arab citizens, particularly in terms of participation in elections. As a result of this context, the rationale for individual participation in elections is a collective and instrumentalist one, based on an evaluation of the ability of the Arab parties to secure the collective goals of the Arab minority. This collective interest was found to be statistically significant, in contrast to demographic characteristics that have been found to be valid in various societies, and the nationalist-alienation explanation" and the "postcolonial" explanation that were found valid in Canada. Achieving collective interests is a significant target for the Arabs minority un Israel, in light of the nature and range of native indigenous minorities' political claims, which differ from migrant or social or ethnic minorities groups, and focus on collective rights that challenge the basic legal and political order of the state, raising claims that are beyond the regular claims of distributive justice and policies of allocation. Naturally, the findings of this study do not reveal the whole story regarding the participation of Arab citizens in elections. Additional explanations and factors must also be examined, particularly the efforts of party activists at election time, the influence of election campaigning, the role of the media and so forth. The factors examined here also require further examination in additional election campaigns, including the use of direct indices for comparing individual and collective interests. This study contributes to the research of electoral behavior of Arab minority in Israel by offering a preliminary empirical analysis of electoral participation. Hopefully, this study will encourage further empirical research on the individual level a field of study that has hitherto been limited in the case of Arab voters in Israel. Such investigation is vital if we wish to enhance our understanding of the political behavior of Arab indigenous minority in Israel. 18

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