Sam Adah, Abuja
The leader of Israel’s main Palestinian coalition, which holds the balance of power after Tuesday’s elections, has said the country is facing a historic opportunity to change direction.
Yousef Jabareen, the head of the Joint List, said he was ready to join forces with the “Change” bloc to oust Benjamin Netanyahu and his far-right coalition, and to wrest control of the Knesset.
Turnout among Arab Israelis (Palestinians with Israeli citizenship, 20% of the population) more than doubled to about 80%, transforming the political landscape. Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza had no vote.
Jabareen said the first demand of the roughly 840,000 Palestinian Israeli voters was to get rid of the Netanyahu government, and in particular its most extreme members, Itamar Ben-Gvir, the national security minister, and Bezalel Smotrich, the finance minister.
“This has been an awful four years in all areas of life: in terms of house demolition, criminal gangs within the Arab community without any [intervention] from the police; not allocating the needed resources for our municipalities, for our education, for our youth in general; racism in all areas of life – physical attacks against Arabs, the brutality of the police,” Jabareen told the Guardian in one of his first interviews since the election. “So this has been really a very dangerous period.”
He said the next few days would be critical. Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, is due to summon political leaders as early as Wednesday to canvass their recommendations on who should be given the first chance to form the next government, with no single grouping commanding a clear claim on power.Netanyahu’s coalition lost its majority, dropping from 68 to 53 seats in the 120-seat Knesset. The Change bloc of Zionist parties led by the retired general Gadi Eisenkot has 48 seats, leaving the Arab-Israeli parties as potential kingmakers with a record 19 seats. The Joint List has 11, while the more conservative, Islamist Ra’am has eight.
Eisenkot and his partners have pledged not to form a unity government with Netanyahu, but Eisenkot has also put conditions on any potential coalition with Arab parties: they have to recognise that Israel is a Jewish state, accept compulsory national service – either civil or military – and denounce Hamas as a terrorist organisation.
Ra’am and its leader, Mansour Abbas, have signalled it is ready to join an Eisenkot coalition. The Joint List has no intention of joining such a government, but Jabareen said the coalition was ready to keep it afloat from the outside with tactical voting in the Knesset.
“However, in order to use our political power to get rid of the extreme Netanyahu government, we said that we will consider the possibility of supporting from outside. This is an opportunity to change policies, to change attitudes, including towards the Arab community and towards the Palestinian people.
“This is really a historic moment and I hope that there will be partners within the opposition to go ahead with that. We are thinking that this could be the start of a change.”
The rightwing opposition leader, Avigdor Lieberman, is said to be the most resistant.
The Joint List leader said he was concerned over what Netanyahu might do to keep his grip on power. The prime minister has already made allegations, without evidence, that the Arab parties had used Qatari funds illegally in the election campaign, which Jabareen dismissed as a bid to “delegitimise the political power of the Arab community” and “a dangerous incitement”.
One of Jabareen’s concerns was that the Israeli leader would join Donald Trump in the resumption of war on Iran as a pretext for putting off political transition.
“This is really a critical period,” he said. “There should be a clear voice from the opposition to go against any attempt by him to initiate war or dictate a new military agenda in Israel.”
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