Veteran Arab MK Tibi pledges Joint List’s support from outside for a potential Eisenkot-led government: ‘I don’t want a ministry; we want change’

Veteran Arab MK Ahmad Tibi, No. 2 on the Joint List, says his party is ready to support the anti-Netanyahu Zionist parties in establishing a government to replace the outgoing coalition, but stresses that it does not want to be part of the government itself. He urges leading opposition candidate Gadi Eisenkot to “be like [the late prime minister Yitzhak] Rabin,” who relied on the votes of Arab MKs to pass the Oslo Accords with the PLO.

Tibi, whose Joint List of three Arab factions won 11 seats in Tuesday’s election, tells Channel 12, “We want to help anyone who wants to bring down this awful government… and switch it for a different government. We want to be part of the correction, part of the hope.”

“We won’t be part of the government. I don’t want a ministerial post. I don’t want to be in the cabinet,” he stresses. “But without the Arab parties there won’t be change,” he adds, referring to the election results which give the anti-Netanyahu parties 67 votes in the 120-member Knesset, 19 of them to the two Arab parties. (Ra’am, the second Arab party, won eight seats.)

Tibi says the unprecedented turnout and resulting Knesset representation from the Arab sector mean Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu cannot form a government. “The heroic vote” of the Arab sector was “an act of self-defense” against the Netanyahu coalition, he says.

He indicates that the Joint List will recommend to President Isaac Herzog that a candidate from the anti-Netanyahu Zionist parties be given the mandate to form a coalition — presumably Gadi Eisenkot. He also says the party will back a vote to oust Likud’s Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana, and indicates it will back a vote to establish a state commission of inquiry into the October 7, 2023, Hamas invasion and massacre. These are two votes that the anti-Netanyahu bloc is planning to prioritize after the Knesset is sworn in on November 10.

Indicating longer-term support, Tibi also says his party will not support a Likud-initiated no-confidence motion in the government he hopes to see established, and will not initiate its own motion to dissolve the Knesset.

Tibi dismisses the notion that the Joint List received illicit election funding from Qatar or any other foreign country. He also claims that Shin Bet chief David Zini “manipulated” Central Elections Committee chair Justice Noam Sohlberg into announcing an investigation into alleged election fraud, and did so after meeting with Netanyahu, a candidate in the election. “Does that sound acceptable to you?” Tibi asks, predicting that the investigation will lead nowhere.