64 chapter two recent 2013 elections, the United Arab List and the Arab Movement for Change (Ra’am-Ta’al), the National Democratic Assembly (NDA-Balad), and the Democratic Front for Peace and Equality (Al-Jabha/Hadash) are the main Arab political parties (or parties with a majority of Arab members) in the Knesset, holding 11 of the available 120 seats. In the previous eighteenth Knesset, only one of the members, Haneen Zoabi, was an Arab woman representative, and though not the first Arab woman to enter the Knesset, Zoabi is the first to be elected for an Arab political party.35 When it comes to the judiciary, the Israeli Supreme Court is the highestlevel of the court system. Often celebrated as a force of liberal-democracy and rule of law that, in the context of the ‘war on terror’, fights terrorism within the parameters of the law, the rulings of the Supreme Court are binding on every court in Israel. However, this perception of the Supreme Court is rather distanced from the political realities of the multifaceted system of control and expulsion established by the state. In fact, whether it is the depiction of the State of Israel as a democratic system struggling for recognition, survival and coexistence within the framework of the law, the defence of the Israeli military as a governmental force that recognizes and respects the laws of warfare, or the portrayal of the iron-fisted Israeli occupation regime in the Gaza Strip as continuing to provide necessary amounts of fuel, electricity and goods required to satisfy the vital humanitarian needs of the besieged civilian population,36 the Supreme Court has – to a great degree – assumed the official position of the state.37 In other words, the rulings of the Supreme Court espouse the liberal-Zionist belief that Israel is able to maintain a genuine democratic order within its 1948-boundaries while simultaneously (re)producing an oppressive and 35 During the 2013 elections, Zoabi was joined in the election race for the nineteenth Knesset by three other Arab women, Nabila Espanioly of the Hadash party, Asma Aghbarieh-Zahalka of the joint Jewish-Arab Da’am Workers Party, and Nadia Hilou of the Labour Party. The Knesset has lists of its members according to their parliamentary party readily available in English, see http://www.knesset.gov.il/mk/eng/mkindex_current_eng .asp?view=1. 36 Disturbingly, Israel has even gone so far as to consider at an official level to monitor the food consumption of the Gazan population by calculating a minimum number of 2,279 calories required to keep Gazans from starvation. See United Nations News Centre, “UN agencies join in shared call for end to Israeli blockade of Gaza,” June 14, 2012, http://www .un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=42227#.ULN5QU-er-k; Amira Hass, “2,279 calories per person: How Israel made sure Gaza didn’t starve,” Haaretz, October 17, 2012, http:// www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/2-279-calories-per-person-how-israel-made -sure-gaza-didn-t-starve.premium-1.470419?localLinksEnabled=false. 37 For example, see High Court of Justice Lawsuit 9132/07, Jaber al-Bassiouni Ahmed and Others v. The Prime Minister, decision delivered January 30, 2008, Paragraph 21–22, http:// elyon1.court.gov.il/files_eng/07/320/091/n25/07091320.n25.htm.