Ra’am leader says party will cut ties with religious council, become ‘completely civic’

Ra’am chair Mansour Abbas said Saturday that his party will separate from the religious council that it is linked to and establish its own institutions, in a move that appeared to be aimed at distancing the Islamist political party from hardline Muslim organizations in order to boost its legitimacy among Zionist Israeli parties.

In the interview with Channel 12’s Meet the Press, Abbas also insisted that his party is not a part of the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood, weeks after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appeared to allude to that connection and to hint that he intended to outlaw the party.

“First of all, we are not a part of the Muslim Brotherhood. If we were part of the Muslim Brotherhood, I wouldn’t be in the Knesset, I wouldn’t even be sitting with you here,” said Abbas, who in 2021, after being courted by Netanyahu to become part of his coalition, decided to partner with Netanyahu’s rivals and become the first Arab party in decades to be part of a ruling coalition, which was led by Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid.

“The second thing is that we have learned lessons from what we had [in the Bennett-Lapid coalition]. Ra’am today is moving in the direction of being a completely civic party, with separate institutions,” he said.

Pressed if that meant his party would be separating from the Shura Council, Abbas responded: “Of course. This is the approach that has been advanced in recent years in Ra’am. Next month we have a conference, and it will approve the changes.”

Currently, 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 has increasingly taken a relatively 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 outlawed.

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

Smotrich responds, calling Abbas a ‘wolf in sheep’s clothing’

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who leads the far-right Religious Zionism party and whose opposition prevented Netanyahu from partnering with Ra’am at the time, responded to Saturday’s interview on X, writing: “Mansour Abbas was and remains a wolf in sheep’s clothing. An enemy who supports terror and leads a sister-movement to Hamas, and tries again and again to disguise himself and fool the Israeli public.”

“Abbas has refused, since the October 7 [2023] massacre, to condemn Hamas, or to describe it as a terror organization, and the right place for him is behind bars, not in the Knesset,” Smotrich said.

Abbas has repeatedly acknowledged and condemned the targeting of civilians during the Hamas-led onslaught that triggered the Gaza war. In the past, he has also called on Palestinian armed groups, including Hamas, to disarm, but his party later walked back those comments, and while Abbas has endorsed the US plan for Gaza, which includes the Strip’s demilitarization, he has declined, when pressed, to say that Hamas should be “destroyed.”

“After his previous deception ploy was exposed, he’s now trying to disguise himself again, as part of the left’s plans to return to power by joining forces with anti-Zionist terror supporters,” Smotrich wrote. The far-right minister vowed to “do everything I can to prevent the State of Israel being sold to its enemies by irresponsible, power-hungry politicians.”