Mansour Abbas, head of the Ra am party, leads a faction meeting, in the Israeli parliament on April 19, 2021. (Olivier Fitoussi/Flash90)
Ra’am party chief Mansour Abbas implicitly condemned on Monday a recent Palestinian terror attack at Tapuach Junction in the West Bank that left three Israeli yeshiva students injured.
Abbas said that the Israelis who were shot on Sunday were “innocents” and said he hoped to one day live together with them in peace. The three wounded Israelis were studying at a yeshiva in the West Bank settlement of Itamar.
“As one who has formulated Ra’am’s vision, a vision of peace and mutual security, partnership and tolerance between peoples, I unequivocally oppose any harm to innocents and call for the preservation of human life and to give hope that we can live together in peace,” Abbas said.
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Apr. 21, 2021 3:41 PM
The endless conflict between Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem’s Silwan neighborhood and Jewish settlements has taken an unexpectedly visual turn in recent years. Jewish residents started placing bright blue Stars of David, visible from afar, on their roofs. The Palestinians responded by putting up green crescents.
From a distance, the bright colors may look celebratory and benign, but a closer look shows otherwise.
Two weeks ago, in the dead of night, dozens of settlers moved into two new buildings in Silwan. This is part of a broader plan to unite all the Jewish buildings in Silwan into a single neighborhood.
Noam party chairman Avi Maoz (Noam Party)
The extremist Noam faction of the right-wing Religious Zionist party released a series of coalition conditions Thursday, saying it would recommend that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu form the next government but demanding radical reforms including rolling back protections on gender equality.
In a series of tweets posted by the party, Noam which is headed by soon-to-be MK Avi Maoz, number six of the six candidates to make it into the Knesset on the Religious Zionist slate laid out a number of policy demands that touched on what it called the “Jewish identity” of the State of Israel.
(L-R) Avi Maoz, Itamar Ben-Gvir, and Bezalel Smotrich
The big news in the
dati-leumi camp in Israel this week is that for the first time in four decades, only one political party will be exclusively representing the concerns of the Religious-Zionist community in the upcoming March 23 elections: the HaTzionut HaDatit party led by Bezalel Smotrich, along with a technical bloc composed of the Otzma HaYehudit and Noam parties.
In a surprise development Thursday night â just hours before the Knesset Election Committeeâs party-list submission deadline â Bayit Yehudi (the Jewish Home party) dropped out of the race after unity negotiations with Smotrich stalled. Hagit Moshe, the newly-elected head of Bayit Yehudi, accused Smotrich of making impossible demands and working behind her back to first close a deal with Otzma Yehudit.