Israel must stop demanding loyalty confessions from Arab citizens - opinion

For months, the democratic right of Arab Israelis to elect representatives and to be represented in government has been reduced to a superficial, overused, and outdated test: will Mansour Abbas, leader of Ra'am (the United Arab List), and other Arab Israeli politicians state the obvious? Will they condemn Hamas and publicly declare it a terrorist organization?Ra'am has already accepted the principles that Gadi Eisenkot, tasked with forming a government, has laid out for any partner in a future coalition: recognition of Israel as a Jewish, democratic and liberal state, commitment to the Declaration of Independence, and a service framework for all citizens.But despite its acceptance of all of the conditions, supported by the fact that 68% of Arab citizens, a recent survey found, support a national-service framework for Arab youth, their acknowledgment of their lived reality, which certainly is not in Switzerland, but in a Jewish state that reminds its Arab minority by nearly every national emblem that of its minority status, and its neither-here-nor-there chronic condition: the demands Arab Israelis prove loyalty persists and stings.Arab Israeli leaders, from the Jewish-Arab socialists of Hadash and the Palestinian nationalists of Balad to the conservative Islamists of Ra'am, have repeatedly condemned terrorism against civilians, and even against IDF soldiers. That should have ended the conversation long ago.