Under pressure, Arab Knesset parties sign agreement to work toward reviving Joint List |
The four Arab parties – Hadash, Ra’am, Ta’al, and Balad – signed an agreement to work toward re-establishing the Joint List bloc on Thursday, a spokesperson for one of the parties told The Times of Israel.
The party heads, Hadash’s Ayaman Odeh, Ra’am’s Mansour Abbas, Ta’al’s Ahmed Tibi, and Balad’s Sami Abu Shehadeh were in Sakhnin, as part of a nationwide general strike over the police’s failure to stem a surging violent crime wave besetting the Arab community.
The agreement was written on a notepad bearing the Sakhnin Municipality’s letterhead and the signatures of the party heads, and footage showed the party heads cheering and holding hands after signing.
The Arab parties have for months been in talks to revive the list, which seemed halted amid internal fights between Ra’am and the other parties, mainly over Abbas’s demand for the bloc to be merely a technical alliance to allow him the option to split after the elections and join a governing coalition separately.
According to the Kan public broadcaster, the other parties acquiesced, enabling an agreement to be signed.
However, a spokesperson for one of the parties told the Times of Israel that the four party heads – principally Abbas – were ambushed into a public agreement, amid widespread pressure from the Arab community to revive the bloc amid the crime epidemic sweeping Arab........