Likud said in talks with Ra’am to halt Negev demolitions in exchange for support on media bill

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud is reportedly negotiating with Mansour Abbas’s Ra’am party in an effort to secure support for Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi’s controversial broadcast media overhaul, offering to halt home demolitions in Bedouin communities in the Negev in exchange for the party’s absence from key committee votes.

According to a Channel 12 report, coalition officials are in talks with Ra’am MK Walid Alhwashla, the only Arab lawmaker serving on the special committee preparing the bill, after previous efforts to persuade him to support or abstain from voting on the legislation failed.

The report says Alhwashla told senior Likud officials he would only consider abstaining from the vote if the government agreed to a complete halt to the demolition of Bedouin homes in the Negev, who make up Ra’am’s core constituency.

Likud reportedly did not reject the demand, leaving the door open to further negotiations, though the party has publicly denied the report, calling it “another spin by the Arab parties.”

National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, who boasts of having overseen the demolition of more than 5,700 Bedouin structures including homes in the last year, condemns the report, calling it a “disgrace and shame for Likud.”

He says he will disregard any such agreement, rejects any “negotiations with supporters of terrorism” — an accusation the right has often lobbed at Ra’am, despite its frequent condemnation of terror acts — and vows to continue demolitions “with even greater intensity.”

The coalition has struggled to secure support to advance Karhi’s media overhaul. Earlier reports indicated Likud had reached an agreement with the ultra-Orthodox Shas party to back the legislation in exchange for advancing a bill reversing the previous government’s kosher certification reform.