Muslim Politician Holds Key to Netanyahu Retaining Top Office in Israel

[Riaz Haq]

Mansour Abbas, 46-year-old Palestinian leader of an Islamic party, has emerged as the man who can make or break Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's ambition of retaining the top elected office in his country. On Thursday, Abbas quoted from the Holy Quran in a primetime speech on Israeli National Television and said he was "a proud Arab and Muslim". 

Mansour Abbas, Israeli Knesset Member

The recent March 23 vote in Israel was the 4th in 2 years. With no single party or group of allied parties winning a clear majority, this election has also proved inconclusive like the last three. Abbas heads the Raam party that won just four seats in the latest elections for 120-seat Knesset, the Israeli parliament. Netanyahu's Likud party won 30 seats, making it the biggest party -- but a majority of 61 is required to form a government. Netanyahu has urged his former right-wing allies Naftali Bennett and Gideon Saar to "come back home" after the two ran their own lists in the last election. Saar has ruled out joining a Netanyahu government, while Bennett has not yet declared his loyalty, according to an AFP report.

Abbas spoke of crime, racism and poverty faced by Arab Israelis who make up 20% of the country's population of 9.3 million. He demanded equality and partnership with others in Israel. “Citizens of Israel, I stand in front of you in the atmosphere of the Passover and Easter holidays and on the eve of the month of Ramadan, and carry a prayer of hope, and an uncompromising aspiration for shared life on the basis of mutual respect and true equality", he said. 

The Muslim Israeli leader did not list his demands for the coalition negotiations or any concrete positions – he is open to offers. He may have made the headlines because of his speech on Thursday, but now is when he will face the real test. While the Israeli public views the speech as a message of conciliation, in the Arab community the responses were divided, reported Israeli newspaper Haaretz. 

If Abbas chooses to join a coalition with either the right or left bloc, this will be the first time an Arab party becomes a part of the Israeli government. 

Here's a video on Israeli Apartheid targeting Palestinian citizens of Israel:

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[Riaz Haq]

'We Look at Them Like Donkeys': What Israel's First Ruling Party (David Ben Gurion) Thought About Palestinian Citizens
Israel's first ruling party, Mapai, was torn about the status of Arabs who remained in the country after the War of Independence; almost 70 years later, the 'Arab question' has yet to be answered


https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium.MAGAZINE-what-israel-s...


The minutes of the meetings held by Mapai, which are stored in the Labor Party Archive in Beit Berl, outside Kfar Sava, attest to the deep dispute in the party over two conflicting approaches concerning the Arabs in Israel. Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion and his associates – Moshe Dayan (Israel Defense Forces chief of staff 1953-1958) and Shimon Peres, at the time a senior official in the Defense Ministry – urged a policy of segregation and a hard hand against what he argued was a communal threat to national security; while Sharett and other Mapai leaders – Pinhas Lavon, Zalman Aran, David Hacohen and others – promoted a policy of integration.

[Riaz Haq]

Gaza Flare-up: Two Women in Israel Killed as Militants Expand Rocket Fire; Direct Hit to Israeli Homes, School

Israel says it assassinated chief of Islamic Jihad's special rocket unit ■ Twenty-six Gazans, including nine children, reported killed ■ Israel kills three top Islamic Jihad militants, report says ■ Direct hit to Israeli houses, dozens wounded, as Ashkelon residents forced into shelter

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/gaza-clashes-over-200-rockets-f...

Two women were killed in Israel and dozens were wounded as over 250 rockets were fired from Gaza. The Israeli army struck some 140 targets in the Gaza Strip, after Hamas joined the fighting Monday following a weekend of clashes in Jerusalem.

Palestinian media have reported 26 deaths in Israeli strikes, while Gaza's Hamas and Islamic Jihad continued to rain rockets on Israeli communities along the border.

The Israeli military boosted its presence along the border. Authorities called on local residents to remain at home and near bomb shelters until further notice. Violent riots spread across Arab cities inside Israel, with one man shot dead.

[Riaz Haq]

#Palestinian citizens of #Israel rise up against brutal #Israeli occupation of #Palestine and bombing of #Gaza. #GazaUnderAttack #Jerusalem https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/north-south-palestinians-are-...

https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/north-south-palestinians-are-...


Abir Kopty

13 May 2021 11:19 UTC |

As anger sweeps across our homeland, a clear message resounds: we are united in pursuit of one cause and all of Israel's attempts to divide us have failed

In October 2000, just as the Second Intifada was starting, I was in my home city of Nazareth protesting in the streets. I will never forget the anger that coursed through my body as a group of youths passed by carrying a protester who had been shot dead by Israeli forces.

Today, as I see anger sweep across my homeland, Palestine, from north to south, I want to ensure justice for the sacrifices people are making in order for us to live in freedom. This justice begins with putting these sacrifices in the proper context.

When Palestinian citizens of Israel took part in the Second Intifada and protested in their towns and villages, the narrative was that they were protesting the discrimination they faced in Israel as citizens, as opposed to being part of the uprising against the occupation.

This was because these protests came a few years after the signing of the Oslo Accords, which told Palestinian citizens of Israel that they were no longer a part of the Palestinian liberation cause.

This narrative was echoed by the Palestinian leadership and the international community who refused to look at our issues, from institutional discrimination to racism and apartheid, as an integral part of the Israeli settler-colonial regime.

Our problems were framed as “civil rights” issues. No one was interested in listening to the narrative of liberation.

Today, Palestinians are rising up in Akka, Lydd, Ramla, Nazareth, Haifa and dozens of other Palestinian cities and villages across historic Palestine, sending a simple but powerful message: we are all united for one cause, and all attempts to divide us have failed.

Maintaining Jewish superiority
While it might be more comfortable for some to think of Akka or Lydd in a context separate from Jerusalem or Hebron, all are subjected to Israel’s colonial project, which might differ in technicalities, but not in its supreme goal: to maintain a Jewish majority and superiority over Palestinians.

In other words, the goal is to colonise Palestinian lands and drive Palestinians out.

The recent Human Rights Watch (HRW) report A Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution is important not just for its content, but also for its approach.

Finally, human rights advocates are addressing the various policies affecting all the different parts of Palestine. HRW points to several policies inside Israel that are essentially no different from what is happening in Sheikh Jarrah, Jerusalem, or other areas of the occupied West Bank, noting that “Israeli authorities methodically privilege Jewish Israelis and discriminate against Palestinians”.

Palestinian citizens of Israel, who comprise 19 percent of the population, reside on just three percent of the land. Palestinians lost most of their land after the 1948 Nakba, due to confiscation and displacement by Israel. An estimated 200,000 Palestinians are internally displaced, meaning they might live a few kilometres from their original villages, but Israel continues to deny their right of return, as it does to millions of Palestinian refugees.

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Palestinians in “mixed” cities such as Lydd, Akka, Jaffa, and Ramla have been subjected to ethnic cleansing, Judaisation, and the erasure of their Palestinian identity. The village of Dahmash, between Lydd and Ramla, is another Sheikh Jarrah. Its approximately 1,000 Palestinian residents have been fighting against the threat of displacement for two decades.

[Riaz Haq]

History made as #Arab #Israeli Ra’am party joins Bennett-Lapid coalition to oust #Netanyahu. Islamists make good on promise to seek change from inside, winning billions in promised state funding for #Palestinian citizens of #Israel. https://www.timesofisrael.com/arab-israeli-raam-party-makes-history... via @timesofisrael

Ringed by flashing cameras in a luxury hotel in Ramat Gan, conservative Islamist Ra’am chief Mansour Abbas made history on Wednesday night as the first Arab Israeli party leader in half a century to sign a deal to sit in a coalition government.

“This is the first time that an Arab party is part of the process of forming a government. We of course hope that it works and that a government will rise after four rounds of elections,” Abbas said.

Even before Ra’am announced it was signing on, the nascent coalition was widely regarded as the widest in the country’s history, uniting parties from the left to the pro-settlement right aimed at deposing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Likud faction.

To make it happen, Yamina chief Naftali Bennett and centrist Yesh Atid leader Yair Atid agreed to a rotation scheme, with Bennett becoming Prime Minister for the first two years.

Despite the wide spectrum of views in the so-called “change government,” Abbas said that he had agreed on numerous plans and budgets in Arab Israeli society with his counterparts in the constellation of parties seeking to topple Netanyahu.