As of Wednesday afternoon, with 87% of the votes counted, Mansour Abbas’s Islamic Raam party has passed the vote threshold with at least 4 seats, up from its current 3 seats, while the Joint Arab List—abandoned by Mansur ahead of the election—has dropped from 8 to 6 seats. When Mansur quit the List, he announced that for the right price, meaning government project aimed at mainstreaming Arab communities, he was perfectly willing to support a Netanyahu-led right-wing government.
This was a brave statement. A few weeks ago, during a protest rally against violence in Umm al-Fahm, Mansour was attacked physically by protesters who accused him of treason. But he obviously appealed to a sufficient segment of the Arab community to send him back to the Knesset with four or five seats. Meanwhile, his former allies in the List could not turn the rage against his betrayal into votes. Haaretz claimed on Wednesday morning that Arab voters were angry at the breakup of the Joint Arab List, so they stayed home.
Raam officials celebrated the victory of their path and told Israel Hayom that “the Arab public has given the green light to the pragmatic path taken by Mansour Abbas,” suggesting that “the separatist and contrasting path of the joint list has collapsed.”
Maybe. It remains to be seen whether Netanyahu’s right-wing Jewish partners are willing to rely on Raam’s support. On March 11, Religious Zionism chairman Bezalel Smotrich told FM103: “I am waiting for an Arab leadership that will not be ungrateful. We came here when there were malaria and swamps and we conquered the wilderness – the Arabs also enjoyed it, only they are not grateful. More than that, Raam chairman Mansour Abbas makes a pilgrimage to the graves of terrorists who smashed the skulls of little Jewish girls, so take off the table the option of forming a government with the support of Raam, it will not happen, they are not legitimate partners in the government, they deny Judaism and democracy. The end, in this case, does not sanctify the means.”
The Likud party itself appears split on whether or not to give Mansour some kind of seat at the table. On Wednesday morning, Likud Minister Tzachi Hanegbi told News 12 that the option of cooperating with Raam is open. So Likud MK Shlomo Karhi ruled out this possibility outright in a tweet. In response, Hanegbi asked, “Please remind me who he is? I’ll Google him.” To which Karhi tweeted back: “It is better to Google someone you don’t know than to Google and be embarrassed.”
But the chairman of the Likud Knesset faction, MK Miki Zohar, signaled a clear openness to some shidduch with Abbas when he tweeted: “It is our duty to do everything, but everything, to prevent a fifth election. All existing political options must be exhausted to form a government that will work for all Israeli citizens, that’s what’s important for our country at the moment.”
For his part, MK Mansour Abbas said Wednesday morning, “As we estimated, the real results got us past the threshold percentage and we will also reach the fifth mandate. We’ll wait until the vote count is over.” He also noted: “We are not in anyone’s pocket. Not Netanyahu’s and certainly not the left. We will talk to those who want to give more and help Arab society.”
Politics is where strange bedfellows often meet, and Smotrich, who objects to Raam’s anti-Zionist agenda should probably take a look at United Torah Judaism, which also doesn’t hand out copies of Theodor Herzl’s Altneuland in party rallies. Even Itamar Ben Gvir can be persuaded for the right job.
The interesting part will start after Netanyahu becomes the first Israeli prime minister to embrace an Arab party as part of his government: will Ahmad Tibi’s secular party, Taal, follow suit should it recognize that cooperation in exchange for compensation is what their voters want? Fantasy? Today, absolutely. But pragmatism, too, is a great place for strange bedfellows to meet.