Muhammad Idrees Ahmad

Dr. Azmi Bishara, the Balad MK’s has confirmed his decision to resign his post in the Israeli Knesset (parliament). According to Ha’aretz:

Bishara confirmed his intention to resign from the Knesset on Thursday, telling the Nazareth-based newspaper Hadith A-Nas that he is being persecuted.

“Despite what the mercenaries are writing, it was not the recent developments that pushed me to resign, but just to think again about it and the rules of the game,” he said in an interview that will be published Friday.

“Is it possible for me to be called a Member of Knesset and be persecuted in this way?” he was quoted as saying.

Bishara added that the decision was based on the fact that he has exhausted the parliamentary tools at his disposal. “I did what I could with the tools I had,” he told the paper. “Eleven intense years are enough for me.”…

Bishara addressed reports that he had originally intended to resign in September, but decided to wait until the passage of a law compensating polio victims, which was passed last month…

Bishara’s wife and two children returned to Israel on Wednesday after a several-day visit to Jordan alongside the MK. Balad sources said the Bishara family’s return proves that the party’s chairman does not intend to flee the country or emigrate…

“No doubt the Arab public in Israel and its representatives are under attack and incited [against] beginning with the Shin Bet head’s statements that the Arabs in Israel are a strategic threat,” Barakeh said. “Police and Shin Beth are making cynical usage of legal restrictions in order to defame the Arab population as a whole.”

Dr. Azmi Bashara was born in Nazareth to Christian parents. He is a Palestinian and a citizen of Israel. He represents Israel’s Palestinian minority in the Knesset. In 1999, he became the first Palestinian citizen of Israel to run for Prime Minister. For their position supporting a secular democratic state in Israel, the Central Elections Committee tried to disqualify Azmi Bishara and MK Ahmed Tibi , and Bishara’s party, Balad, from running in the elections to the 16th Knesset. Despite the ban being backed by Attorney General Elyakim Rubinstein, “who went so far as to submit his own petition to the CEC against the party and its leader,” the Supreme Court eventually overturned the CEC decision.

In June 2000, shortly after the Israeli occupation forces were driven out from Lebanon , Bishara said at a party gathering: “Hezbollah is entitled to take pride in its achievement in humiliating Israel,” a statement which he repeated at a memorial for Hafez al-Assad in Damascus. Following these speeches Bishara’s parliamentary immunity was removed and he was indicted for “supporting a terror organization”. Bishara petitioned the Israeli High Court against the indictment, arguing that he had “expressed his opinion on political issues par excellence,” as part of his duties as a Knesset member. The petition was succeeeded in 2006 Bishara’s support for Hezbollah in the given context was accepted as part of his parliamentary duties.

Bishara studied at Humboldt University in Germany, is head of the philosophy department at Bir Zeit University, and is senior researcher at the Van-Leer Institute in Jerusalem. He was one of the founders of the National Democratic Assembly, or Balad. He describes himself as a humanist, a democrat, a liberal, and a neo-nasserite. In this interview Bishara examines turning Israel into a state of all of its citizens, opposing the institutionalized inequality that exists now between Jewish and Palestinian citizens of Israel.

Producer: Ed Sweed (2004)