By Mariam Shahin in Ramallah

For years Palestinians have looked at Azmi Bishara, the Arab-Israeli Member of the Knesset (MK) and self-styled leader of the one million or so Arabs with Israeli citizenship, with some suspicion.

Some thought of him as an individualist while others claimed he was only in politics for self-aggrandisement. But the ever increasing assaults on his views and his person, by the Israeli political establishment, have made the Azmi Bishara issue an open and shut case: The man is a hero.
In the eyes of his constituency, the fastest growing in the Jewish state, he is another Nelson Mandela, persecuted for his cultural and ethnic identity and fighting for the collective right of his people to equality in a state, which claims to be democratic, but clearly is not. For Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, as well as the Diaspora, the stripping of Bishara’s parliamentary immunity on charges that amount to treason, make him inviolate, Mr Bishara can’t lose.
As the surface to ground missiles blew up the headquarters of security forces allied to President Yasser Arafat, Azmi Bishara was in Jerusalem slowly but surely working towards winning the war for equality, a victory Palestinians so desperately need in these dark, desperate days.

Read the full story in the January 2002 edition of The Middle East Magazine

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