From the Liveblog of
Monday, November 2, 2026
Joint List leader says he hopes opposition parties will be partners for change, Israel in a ‘historic moment’
Add ToI as a Preferred Source on Google
Joint List leader Yousef Jabareen says Israel is facing a “historic moment” and he hopes the opposition will be partners for changing the country’s leadership, with his party providing external support for a new government.
“The conditions that [Yashar leader Gadi Eisenkot] speaks of are more relevant for parties who would be in the coalition. We are not planning to be in the coalition… for very clear reasons,” Jabareen tells The Guardian. “As long as the occupation of our people in the West Bank continues, we cannot be part of a government.
“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 toward the Arab community and toward 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,” he says.
Jabareen says that the Arab community has suffered over the past four years under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s hardline government.
“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 tells The Guardian. “So this has been really a very dangerous period.”
He says it is “crucially important” that the Knesset speaker be replaced, and one of the priorities should be repealing laws passed under the contentious judicial overhaul.
Jabareen adds that it is time that the inequalities within Israeli society are addressed.
“We have suffered from systemic discrimination for years, so if Eisenkot speaks of change, I believe that the change should come also for our community. We need to be treated equally,” he said. “We also ask for a political horizon. We would like to see the war stopped and the resumption of negotiation with the Palestinian leadership. We would like to see a start of a change.”
The Times of Israel Community.