Now’s the time for Jewish-Arab government!

31/05/21

Over 5,000 Zazim members supported Zazim member Merav Mazeh’s petition, launched on “My Zazim,” our community campaign platform, wherein she demanded that Yair Lapid and the bloc of parties seeking to form a new government, establish a government together with the Arab parties. Now, with a war on Gaza raging and with a rising tide of violence on Israeli streets, is the time such a government is needed most. She wrote:

‘Security’ depends on walls, on separation, segregation, and use of force. The events of these past days have proven that fences won’t work. True safety and resilience come from a network of stable connections, enabling every individual’s needs to be met and their positive attributes to be expressed. As we speak, there are countless NGOs and groups creating these ties, between people and communities on-the-ground. It’s high time that the government stopped being the agent of conflict, division, and violence, and began laying the groundwork for building beneficial interpersonal networks...

Shutter all the obsolete government Ministries that were established before, and 

open the most important government office - the Ministry of Conflict Resolution and Reconciliation.

 An agency that can act at all levels and in all spheres - political, national, religious, local, civil - to develop connections amongst all those who reside between the river and the sea. Real solutions will be found through partnership and gradual but  persistent trust-building. Let’s direct our resources towards that horizon, because that is where a new reality can take root. Those who have sown the seeds of partnership in tears, shall reap them in joy.

partnership in tears, shall reap them in joy. 

The zero-sum game that we have played too long brings us inevitably, obviously, over and over, back to zero.

 We need a new game, a new politics, with which all of us will grow.