From the Liveblog of
Thursday, March 16, 2023
Ra’am leader Abbas: Judiciary the ‘primary protection’ for Arab society
Carrie Keller-Lynn is a former political and legal correspondent for The Times of Israel
Ra’am party leader Mansour Abbas says the judicial system is the “primary protection” for Israel’s Arab minority and that its independence cannot be harmed.
“Arab society is in the minority and to this point, the primary protection for this society has been the judicial system. And thus a reform that hurts the judicial system’s independence, its ability to balance the bulldozing of the Knesset and government, will definitely hurt the standing and rights, and the future of Arab society,” the Islamist party chief says, in Abbas’s most public Hebrew-language remarks on the judicial overhaul.
Abbas, who in 2021 made Ra’am the first independent Arab party to join an Israeli coalition, asks the right-religious government to “sit around a discussion table on the basis of the president’s framework, which is a good and accepted base that’s possible to start from.”
