Joint List MK Mansour Abbas, who chairs the Arab alliance’s Ra’am party (which is now a faction in the Joint List party), tells Channel 12 he does not rule out supporting legislation to protect Netanyahu from criminal proceedings in exchange for legislation benefiting his community.
Rumors have flown in recent days of Abbas growing closer to Netanyahu nad potentially aiding him politically.
“If I get funds and [beneficial] legislation, I don’t mind giving Netanyahu what’s needed,” Abbas tells the network.
Mansour Abbas of the Ra’am party holds a press conference after a meeting with President Reuven Rivlin at the President’s Residence in Jerusalem on April 16, 2019. (Noam Revkin Fenton/Flash90)
Surprise at Abbas’s recent about-face is doubled by the fact that Ra’am, which is connected to the Islamic Movement in Israel, is known to be one of the more hardline factions in the Joint List.
Netanyahu has repeatedly demonized the lawmakers of the Joint List, while accusing his opponents of attempting to cooperate with them against him,
We can't do this work alone.
The war with Iran has been draining for all of us in Israel. But when I heard about a high casualty incident – ballistic missile impacts in Arad and Dimona that left nearly 200 people wounded – I drank a cup of coffee, packed a bag, and headed south.
There, I spoke with Shilgit, the head of an after-school program for underprivileged youth. Standing outside her destroyed center, Shilgit said it was a miracle that no children were hurt and spoke about the community coming together in the hours since.
As a Times of Israel reporter, I’m committed to telling stories of resilience like Shilgit’s. But my colleagues and I can't do this alone. If you value work like this,please consider joining our reader support group, The Times of Israel Community. Your financial support is essential to keep real human reporting like this going.
We’re really pleased that you’ve read X Times of Israel articles in the past month.
That’s why we started the Times of Israel - to provide discerning readers like you with must-read coverage of Israel and the Jewish world.
So now we have a request. Unlike other news outlets, we haven’t put up a paywall. But as the journalism we do is costly, we invite readers for whom The Times of Israel has become important to help support our work by joining The Times of Israel Community.
For as little as $6 a month you can help support our quality journalism while enjoying The Times of Israel AD-FREE, as well as accessing exclusive content available only to Times of Israel Community members.
Thank you, David Horovitz, Founding Editor of The Times of Israel
From the Liveblog of
Thursday, November 12, 2020
