Mansour Abbas, Kingmaker and Islamic Figure Behind Netanyahu’s Overthrow

JERUSALEM – Support of the United Arab List Party led by Mansour Abbas to the coalition Israel who sought to overthrow the government of Prime Minister (PM) Benjamin Netanyahu is not surprising.

His party emerged as a surprise kingmaker after Israel’s latest general election. Abbas noted in an interview with Anadolu Agency in March at his home in the village of Maghar that the United Arab List is open to negotiations with all parties, whether right-wing or left-wing, to form a new Israeli government.

Less than an hour before the midnight deadline given to Yair Lapid, founder of the Yesh Atid (There’s Future) Party, to secure the votes needed to form a new government, Lapid announced that an agreement had been reached with Abbas.

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“We decided to be the last (party) to sign (the coalition agreement). When we saw this happening, we signed it,” Abbas said.

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On Wednesday evening, the United Arab List Party announced a list of 11 demands from Arab citizens in Israel, who make up 20% of the country’s population of 9 million. The party described such deals as “historic.”

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Abbas, 47, is a dentist who became one of the leaders of the Islamist movement in Israel, which split into two blocs in 1996 due to the decision of its late founder and leader Sheikh Nimr Darwish to participate in Israeli elections and became known as the Islamic Movement in southern Israel.

The northern branch of the Islamic Movement, led by prominent leader Sheikh Raed Salah, refused to participate in Israeli elections and was banned by Israeli authorities in 2015.

Historically, Arab parties in Israel have refused to vote for any Israeli government because it does not recognize the rights of the Palestinian people and still maintains its occupation of the Palestinian territories.

But Abbas’s party has broken this tradition and negotiated with the major Israeli parties to join their efforts to form a new government, in exchange for solving many of the problems that Arabs living in Israel face.

“Our red line is our rights, whether national or civil rights,” Abbas said in an interview with Anadolu Agency after Israel’s elections in March.

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