Political pundits in Israel are increasingly of the opinion that the Arab party Ra'am, under the leadership of MK Mansour Abbas, will soon announce that it is splitting off from the Joint Arab List, a four-party ticket formed in 2015 that represents Ra'am, Ta'al, Hadash, and Balad.
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Abbas represents a conservative Islamist faction, which puts him at ideological odds with the other parties on the list. However, ideology aside, Abbas claims that he has polling numbers that indicate that if an Arab party under his leadership were to run against the Joint Arab List in an election, it would win six Knesset seats.
In addition, Ra'am has also demanded that the Joint Arab List respect the feelings of religious Muslim voters when it comes to the bills the legislative initiatives the list opts to present and/o support in the Knesset, and that the faction allow its members to vote their consciences rather than adhere to the faction whip.
The Hadash Arab-Jewish communist party responded with outrage to Mansour's demands and put out a statement declaring that Hadash "will not allow a branch of the Likud within the Joint Arab List," a reference to a recent controversy over reports that Abbas was cooperating with Prime Minister and Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu.
Ra'am called the Hadash response "populist" and warned that if similar responses continued, Ra'am would put out its own "populist" statement and provide proof to back it up.
Ra'am also announced that it would be willing to agree to support any candidate other than Netanyahu for prime minister in the next government if the rest of the parties in the Joint Arab List agreed to two conditions. First, that Hadash, Ta'al, and Balad abide by Islamist law and not support any bills that go against it; and second, that members of the list be prepared to name a candidate for prime minister with whom they are prepared to work.
In a formal statement, Ra'am stressed that "We want the voters of the Joint Arab List to not be facing Pandora's Box, but rather know exactly what they will get from us as their elected representatives.
"Our only goal is to increase the political power of Arab voters and see it exercised for their benefit and to secure their rights. We have no other objectives," the party said.
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