Ra’am leader says PM ‘trying to steal elections’ after apparent hint at barring Arab party

Ra’am party leader Mansour Abbas accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of “trying to steal the election” on Monday, after the premier appeared to threaten to outlaw the Arab political party on the grounds that it is connected to the Muslim Brotherhood.

The Islamist party is the political wing of the Southern Islamic Movement, a group inspired by the Muslim Brotherhood, a global Islamist organization that has been outlawed in around a dozen countries for alleged links to terrorism.

Abbas has repeatedly denied that his party is connected to the Brotherhood.

Ra’am, which joined the coalition led by prime ministers Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid in 2021, takes a conciliatory stance toward Israel and is focused more on socioeconomic issues than its parent movement’s more radical sister branch, the Northern Islamic Movement, which is already outlawed.

Ra’am holds five seats in the Knesset, and polls indicate it will likely retain that number in the next elections.

Abbas on Monday told the Ynet news site Monday that his party is “examining the matter from a political and legal perspective, and evaluating the situation and the information we have.”

Later in the day, at the start of a Ra’am faction meeting, Abbas stepped up his rhetoric.

“This approach by Netanyahu has a very clear goal — trying to steal the election and to predetermine their outcome,” he said.

He accused the premier of “inciting against our legitimacy” and called on law enforcement authorities to object to plans to “harm the Arab citizens’ right to representation in the upcoming election.”

Abbas noted, as he has many times in the past, that it was Netanyahu himself who first broke the longstanding taboo on considering having an Arab party be part of a ruling coalition, when the two met several times for coalition negotiations after the 2021 elections. Abbas ended up teaming with the bloc opposed to Netanyahu and ousting him, and the premier has since switched back to opposing and ruling out any political partnership with the Arab parties, denying ever having considered this.

“I owe Benjamin Netanyahu the political legitimacy I received in the previous Knesset,” Abbas said.

On Sunday night, Netanyahu pledged that Israel will complete the process of outlawing the Muslim Brotherhood and praised President Donald Trump for his reported decision to make final preparations for outlawing the organization in the US and declaring it a terrorist group.

Trump had told the US outlet Just the News that he is moving to classify the Brotherhood as a foreign terrorist organization “in the strongest and most powerful terms.

“Final documents are being drawn,” he said in an interview.

After Trump’s comments were reported, Netanyahu took to social media, posting on his office’s official X account: “I want to praise President Trump for his decision to outlaw and define the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization. This is an organization that endangers stability throughout the Middle East and beyond.”

“Therefore, the State of Israel has already outlawed part of the organization, and we are working to complete this action soon,” Netanyahu said.

On this occasion, I also want to commend President @realDonaldTrump on his decision to outlaw and designate the 'Muslim Brotherhood' organization as a terrorist organization. This is an organization that endangers stability throughout the Middle East and beyond the Middle East.

— Prime Minister of Israel (@IsraeliPM) November 23, 2025

Hebrew news outlets, along with the Ra’am party itself, appeared to take Netanyahu’s vow to “complete” the ban on the Muslim Brotherhood in Israel as meaning that he is moving to outlaw the Southern Islamic Movement.

If the premier does move to ban the movement, its political wing, Ra’am, could also be outlawed.

Critics of Netanyahu and his hardline right-wing government have warned that they may attempt to disenfranchise Arab voters ahead of the elections — set to be held by the end of October 2026 — including by making it easier to disqualify Arab candidates.

Also Monday, Ayman Odeh, the head of fellow Arab party Hadash-Ta’al, called on Ra’am to join a united electoral list of Arab parties.

“Join a joint list! United as one, we will command 17 mandates and remove Netanyahu,” Odeh said, speaking before a faction meeting at the Knesset.

Opinion polls indicate that a single unified Arab list is expected to perform better than the parties would if they ran separately. Arab parties have run together in past elections.

The Arab parties have for months been in talks to revive the list, which, at its peak in 2020, commanded the third-largest bloc in the Knesset.