The Third Period: 1996–2009

Chapter 6 covers the third period of the Arab Palestinian legislators’ activities, 1996–2009 (the 14th Knesset through the 17th Knesset). Events in Israel continued to challenge the Arab Palestinian legislators in the third period. The October 2000 protests ended with the deaths of 13 Arab Palestinian citizen demonstrators and 1 Jewish citizen. In the Second Lebanon War in 2006, 44 Israeli civilians died, 19 of whom were Arab Palestinian citizens. In addition, Arab municipalities continued to perform poorly relative to their Jewish counterparts. These events prompted the continued attention to the identity of being Arabs within Israel. However, during this period, other identities attracted the policy attention of Arab Palestinian legislators: being Palestinian, Arabs outside Israel and gender. Arab Palestinian legislators paid at least some policy attention to their five identities in their parliamentary talks. The amount of attention they paid to each one varied depending on the individual legislator. While Arab Palestinian legislators continued to pay the most attention to their identity as Arabs within Israel, as they did in the first and second periods, in the third period, their identity as Palestinians received more policy attention than previously, as did issues related to gender.