The Second Period: 1974–1996

Chapter 5 covers the second period of the Arab Palestinian legislators’ activities, 1974–1996 (8th Knesset through the 13th Knesset). The second period was characterized by several challenging events that forced the Arab Palestinian legislators to decide which identity to pay more attention to in their efforts to represent their constituents. The political discourse of the second period featured a focus on Palestinian identity. As a result, there was a conflict between the two political discourses: civil and national. While Arab Palestinian legislators continued to pay the most attention to their identity as Arabs within Israel, as they did in the first period, in the second period, their identity as Palestinians received more policy attention than previously.