Ra’am chief Mansour Abbas says he won’t run for Knesset beyond the next election
Islamist party head, who was the first Arab party leader to join an Israeli ruling coalition, says it’s ‘better to come and try, [then] give an opportunity’ to others
Mansour Abbas, the head of the Islamist Ra’am party who in 2021 became the first Arab Israeli party chief to join a ruling coalition, said Wednesday that he would likely run in the next Knesset elections but then quit national politics.
“Better to serve, to come and try to do things, and [then] to give an opportunity [for someone else],” he told the Knesset Channel,
The lawmaker said that when he was first elected to the parliament, “I came in with an agenda,” noting that it “evolved” over time.
“I came in with an agenda to deal with crime and violence in Arab society; it evolved into an agenda of influence and values-based civic partnership, and today you can add to that [the goal of] achieving peace and an end to the [Israeli-Palestinian] conflict, etc.
“I have one more chance, and I’ll run — probably — in the next elections, and try to take action to realize the goals I’ve set out for myself in the coming term, and then, I don’t think I should continue to be a Knesset member,” he said.
Israel is next set to hold elections in October 2026, though they could occur before then if the government collapses.
While Abbas framed his decision not to run as a personal one, Ra’am’s party regulations bar him from running again after the next election anyway after he has headed the faction in consecutive races since 2019.
Abbas’s Islamist Ra’am party made a landmark, controversial move to join a ruling Israeli coalition — the 2021-2022 Naftali Bennett-Yair Lapid government, a diverse collection of right-wing, centrist and left-wing parties that temporarily ousted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from power after the latter led the country since 2009.
The government made major investments in the Arab Israeli sector, which has seen a deadly surge in violent crime in recent years, but Bennett came under intense criticism from the right wing for partnering with an Arab faction, and members of his party ended up toppling the government after a year. Netanyahu regained power following the subsequent elections, and Ra’am was sent to the opposition.
Abbas vocally condemned the Hamas terror group’s October 7, 2023, attack on Israel, and demanded that party MK Iman Khatib-Yasin resign following remarks she made a few weeks after the onslaught casting doubt on whether women were raped or babies killed during the onslaught (both phenomena have been documented). Khatib-Yasin apologized and was sanctioned by the Knesset, though she did not resign.
Amid the subsequent war on Hamas in Gaza, Ra’am has accused Israel of committing war crimes in the enclave, and in July Abbas drew condemnation when he claimed from the Knesset rostrum that “50,000 civilians have been murdered in Gaza” — a reference, presumably, to the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry’s casualty figures, which, in addition to being disputed, do not exclude combatants, of which Israel claims to have killed some 20,000.
Fellow Arab Israeli MK Ayman Odeh, the head of the Hadash-Ta’al party, also announced in 2023 that he is set to quit politics after the next election.
