Odeh refuses to back down despite outrage over comments

Ayman Odeh is doubling down on comments he made in a video that calls for Arab police to quit, rather than serve in East Jerusalem or the West Bank, now calling on Jews to do the same.

“I want to speak not only to Arab citizens who I spoke to in the video, but also Jewish citizens. Don’t serve in the occupation forces. Don’t kill,” he tells Channel 12.

Another Joint List MK, Sami Abu Shehada, backs Odeh in an interview with the same channel.

“Anyone in the occupation army should be ashamed,” he tells Channel 12. “This is an embarrassment. Israel has an apartheid regime and is committing war crimes.”

Mansour Abbas, head of the Islamist Ra’am party, says Odeh’s comments are “inciting.”

Abbas says Odeh only made the comments to avoid having to choose whether to help bring down the current government by making his party too unpalatable to partner with. Toppling the government was suddenly a possibility with the defection of a Yamina lawmaker to the opposition, but the Joint List has refused to cooperate with opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu.

“They are a power that always goes in the direction of bringing down the government,” Abbas says of his former partners, according to Ynet. “So there is no point to their politics. Odeh is running away from needing to give an answer about his responsibility to topple the government and coalition and so is pushing extreme positions for the Joint List.”

He adds that unlike Ra’am, which made history by joining the government, the Joint List is pushing the mainstream Israeli public away.

“You cannot want to be a partner and then go out and make outrageous, inciting comments,” he says.

In an interview with Channel 13, Bennett accuses Odeh and the Joint List of “dividing” society.