Yisrael Beytenu leader Avigdor Lieberman has come a long way since his 2016 statement that Arab members of Knesset who meet with the Hamas leadership should be executed "like Nazi war criminals at Nuremberg." In an interview with Channel 12 News, he asked Israeli Arabs to break away from Ra'am-Ta'al MK Mansour Abbas, the current faction chairman of the Joint Arab List, and form a separate party.
His crime, in Lieberman's eyes at least, was graver than meeting with Hamas operative – he met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Arab politicians have been in demand since March 2020 elections. Initially, they were supposed to be part of base on which Blue and White leader Benny Gantz's government was to be formed. More recently, Abbas' Ra'am-Ta'al party has been showing signs that it may become a part of Netanyahu's parliamentary activity.
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As long as the Likud draws a clear line between political activity and the war on terror, and any alliance with Ra'am-Ta'al focuses on the economic integration on Arab Israelis in society and providing them with the same services any other Israeli citizen desrves, then cooperating with Ra'am-Ta'al is legitimate.
The most dominant governing body within the government is the corona cabinet. It would be a historic moment if an Arab lawmaker joined it, even more so if he were to do so as a minister. The bottom line is that, if we fail to mobilize the ultra-Orthodox and Arab secotrs for an all-encompassing fight against the virus, a third lockdown could be called before we fully emerge from the second one.
Lieberman's agenda belongs to a leftist agenda that accuses the prime minister of trying to personaly benefit from every move and decision. But the personal benefit, so to speak, helps the government be more functional, and it may also give Netanyahu an advantage to end the legal-political battale being waged against him.
Abbas said he does not oppose the French Law, a law that would prevent a prime minister from being convicted. If the system does not know how to postpone legal proceedings against a prime minister in cases of a national emergency, such as a global pandemic, then it seems that such a law is, in fact, needed.
Voting for Lieberman means robbing the Knesset of its ability to unite into a functioning coalition. This is the blame that has been on Lieberman since he resigned from the government in 2018 and refused to join the coalition in April 2019.
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