Israel has a new ’good Arab’ in government
By Rami Younis - June 3, 2021
▻https://www.972mag.com/mansour-abbas-good-arab-israel
After splitting from the Joint List ahead of the last Israeli election, the United Arab List (Ra’am), the Islamist party led by Mansour Abbas, ran a campaign that tried to market the party as “conservative” while concurrently offering a “new approach” to Arab politics in Israel. According to this “approach,” Ra’am could join any new Israeli government, regardless of whether it was left or right wing, even if it meant sitting with Kahanists in the same coalition. Ra’am’s break from the other three Arab parties in the Joint List, Abbas insisted, was set to be “historic.”
In exchange for said partnership and active support for this supposedly groundbreaking moment, the Islamist party promised its constituents several main outcomes. They included an unprecedented package of benefits in the form of large public budgets; a government plan to fight raging crime and murder rates within Palestinian communities in Israel; the recognition of unrecognized Palestinian Bedouin villages in the Naqab/Negev desert; and the abolition of the discriminatory Kaminitz Law, which threatens to demolish thousands of Arab homes for being built without permits that would never be granted in the first place. In other words, Abbas was willing to sell out the united Palestinian political front for the basic rights his community should already be entitled to.
As for Israel’s siege on Gaza, attacks on Al-Aqsa Mosque, the expansion of West Bank settlements, or the Judaization of binational cities in Israel? According to Abbas’ approach, these are not issues he needs to solve. (...)