The Joint List’s decision not to participate in the state funeral of Shimon Peres, ninth President of the State of Israel, on September 30, 2016, prompted surprise and anger among the Israeli public and political arena. From the Jewish public’s point of view, the decision exposed the limited ability of Ayman Odeh, head of the Joint List, to conduct a consistent pragmatic policy, and raised questions as to the political direction of the Arab leadership on the central issue of Arab integration into the Israeli social fabric.

The establishment of the Joint List prior to the 2015 elections was perceived by many as a significant step meant not only as a tactical response to the newly raised electoral threshold for Knesset elections, but also as a way to reposition local Arab politics, emphasizing the strategy of integration. Thus, the process was accompanied by a new approach that sought to advance Israel’s Arab sector by adopting a social approach as a leading growth engine.

The social discourse proposed by Odeh since the elections was positioned between two older approaches: the Palestinian national discourse, which took a blow after the 2006-7 publication of the “Arab Future Vision Documents,” which challenged the perception of Israel as a Jewish democratic state; and the Islamic religious discourse led by the Islamic Movement, which suffered a serious blow after the Northern Faction was outlawed, against the background of the escalation on the Temple Mount that began in the fall of 2015.

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