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Ra am party chairman and Joint List MK Mansour Abbas at the Knesset in Jerusalem on November 11, 2020. (Hadas Parush/ Flash90)
Ra’am party chairman Mansour Abbas reportedly has conveyed a message to New Hope leader Gideon Sa’ar indicating that he is interested in cooperating with the bloc opposing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after the March 23 election, against the backdrop of claims that his Islamist party will grant the Likud leader the support necessary to form a narrow right-wing government.
A Sunday Channel 13 poll predicted a split between the pro- and anti-Netanyahu blocs, with neither having enough to form a coalition on their own. In this scenario, Ra’am with its four seats would have the power to tip the scales in either bloc’s favor. The survey has led to the right-wing, anti-Netanyahu New Hope party warning that Ra’am will back a Likud-led coalition from the outside and keep Netanyahu in power a claim that both parties have denied.
Jacob Magid is The Times of Israel s US correspondent based in New York
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, right, speaks with then Education Minister Naftali Bennett during a plenum session in the Knesset, on December 5, 2016. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Yamina party chairman Naftali Bennett traded barbs on Monday as the two right-wing party leaders competed for a similar pool of voters, with eight days remaining before the election.
Netanyahu called on Bennett to pledge not to join a government with opposition leader and Yesh Atid party chief Yair Lapid after the March 23 election.
While Bennett has not ruled out sitting in a coalition with the center-left Lapid, he has vowed not to allow the Yesh Atid chairman to be prime minister in such a coalition. Netanyahu has for weeks maintained that Bennett will nonetheless agree to serve under Yesh Atid in a power-sharing government in which the Yamina chair will be premier for half a term, arguing th