Historical Perspective
In a meeting held in Tel Aviv on April 22, 1994—to mark ten years since the formation of the PLP—the party's former spokesperson Adam Keller stated:
"When we formed the Progressive List for Peace, we hoped to create a political force composed of Jews and Arabs together, which would become a permanent feature of the Israeli political scene. Unfortunately, this did not happen. But we did achieve something quite important: to make Israel more of a democracy, by letting its Arab citizens have more of a real exercise of the ballot box. (...) In the Israeli political system as designed under Ben Gurion and continued until 1984, Arab citizens had in practice only two electoral options: either to support one of the satellite parties set up by the ruling Mapai party and completely subservient to it, or to support the Israeli Communist Party which did do quite a bit of good things for the Arabs—but its Secretary General was invariably a Jew. Any group of Arabs which tried to set up a party which was neither government-subservient nor Communist got immediately banned, like Al Ard.(...) Now, though the PLP is gone, its legacy remains. We have irrevocably broken the barrier. Now, just as a Jewish nationalist can form a party and get elected to the Knesset, so can an Arab nationalist. Just as a Jewish religious party can be represented in the Knesset (several of them, in fact) so can an Islamic religious party. You don't have to like all the parties which now can get into the Knesset to appreciate that a basic democratic right can now be exercised."
Read more about this topic: Progressive List For Peace
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