DUBAI: To govern is to choose, they say. Mansour Abbas, leader of Israel’s United Arab List, is likely to face a few difficult decisions over the coming weeks and months if, as seems likely, he and his party form part of a new governing coalition in Israel. Late on Wednesday, it was announced that Abbas had agreed to join a coalition jointly led by Yair Lapid, of the centrist
Islamist turned Israeli kingmaker offers olive branch to rightist Jews 10 Apr 2021 / 09:00 H.
NAZARETH, Israel, April 1 (Reuters) - A key Israeli Arab politician offered the country s majority Jews an olive branch on Thursday, in what appeared to be a bid to offset ultranationalist misgivings at accommodating him as part of a new coalition under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Mansour Abbas United Arab List (UAL) took four of parliament s 120 seats in last week s inconclusive Israeli election, making its support potentially crucial for the conservative Netanyahu to secure a stable governing majority.
Jewish right-wing and religious parties with allegiance to Netanyahu have given the prime minister 52 seats, while a kindred six-seat party opposed to his leadership has spurned him and another, with seven seats, so far has been non-comittal.
Samah Salima
Apr. 3, 2021 11:02 PM
Zionist Jews are melting these days at the idea of cooperation between the Islamist Arab right and the messianic Jewish right en route to Benjamin Netanyahu’s next government. The royal court’s best pundits are persuading Zionist Jews that such cooperation is the realization of Herzl’s and Jabotinsky’s fondest dreams.
Take some advice from me, an ordinary Palestinian woman who dwells among her people: Don’t wait with baited breath for the speech your Bibi asked Mansour Abbas to deliver to pave the way for a government of “unity among cousins” after decades of occupation, grievance and hostility.
JERUSALEM - The leader of an Arab Islamist party in Israel delivered a prime-time address in Hebrew on Thursday that was carried live by major TV networks, calling for coexistence between Arabs and Jews in a stunning display of the community's newfound political influence.