Mansour Abbas: A Moderate Islamist?

Does participation in the Knesset lead to moderation of extremist views? That is the view of many academics who examine the relations between Islamist parties and the governments of the lands in which they live. Understanding this phenomenon is of growing interest to Israelis given the increased prominence of the Arab parties in Israeli political life, and most especially the recent bursting of Mansour Abbas onto the political stage. In 2015, the Joint List was founded by the consolidation of three Arab parties (Taal, Raam, Balad) and one communist party (Hadash) and it garnered enough support together to form a large contingent in the Knesset. For this most recent election, Raam ran on its own, earning four seats. Now Abbas is even being called the “Kingmaker” and a new political “star” as debate rages among the Israeli public regarding whether or not his party should be invited into the coalition that is very hard to put together without his four seats. Hope beats eternal in the Jewish heart. How many of us were inspired by Ayman Odeh’s performance in the television debate among party leaders back in 2015. He seemed to be speaking for the domestic Arab population and not, as was usual for Arab politicians, for the Palestinians in Judea & Samaria. However this changed very quickly after the Joint List was sworn into the Knesset. We even witnessed yesterday how four members of the Joint List were not content to announce the accepted pledge (I am committed) but added, in the case of Odeh, “to fight the occupation”. It must be said that not all members of the party agreed with adding these provocative words, not that they do not agree with the sentiment, but that the swearing-in ceremony is not the time for such demonstrations. (We have no idea if Mansour Abbas would have joined in the provocative act because he was in the hospital at the time. He should be sent home soon.)

Mansour Abbas’ ‘Historic’ Speech

Speaking in Hebrew from Nazareth (standing beside the Islamist flag with ne’er an Israeli flag in sight), he spoke to the Jewish heart that just wants to live in peace. I would have put up a video of the speech dubbed into English but they mistranslated a very important sentence. The English dubbing suggests that Abbas says he is a proud Israeli but what he really said was that he is a proud Arab and Muslim, a citizen of Israel. So we have to be careful what we attend to when we do not know the language in which speeches are given. While he claimed to see a future in which we all live in mutual respect, security and tolerance, there were two red flags for me:

1. He said we have to respect each other’s narratives. “Narrative” is short-form for revised history by means of which the Palestinian Arabs claim that they are indigenous to this land and that the Jews are colonizers and occupiers.
2. He talked about personal and collective rights. “Collective” rights is short-form for rescinding the Nation State Law and turning Israel into a secular state of all its citizens and no longer a Jewish state.

It is true, as Abbas said, that without proper attention to the problems in the Arab sector the entire country suffers and not just the Arabs. There are serious problems that must be tended to. Perhaps he is saying something similar to what Bennett has been saying after the election (in which he did not win enough seats to claim a sure path to leadership of the coalition): Bennett has been saying that perhaps his party has to termporarily set aside certain ideological goals (such as extending Israeli Law to the communities in Judea & Samaria) in order to deal with immediate problems that affect all of us – namely, the economic situation that has deteriorated due to the Coronavirus pandemic. Could Abbas, therefore, also be saying that he is willing to set aside certain ideological (Islamist) goals of de-Jewifying Israel, for example, in order to deal with the serious problems of lack of law and order in many Arab villages? If that is so, then it does not mean that Abbas is changing his stripes, but just painting over them for the moment, waiting for the most opportune moment to return to the Islamist agenda. Therefore, let us take his speech with a grain of salt.