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2021-01-28 Israel-Palestine-Jordan
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Joint List of Arab parties partly disintegrating as talks with Ra’am founder
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Watch the sausage making. How on earth does Bibi Netanyahu always manage to trip up his enemies, just when they’re sure that this time they’ve finally got him nailed firmly to the wall? They’ve got a week to figure it out, but if they have less than 3.25% of the vote, whatever that means, they’ll be off the ballot altogether. [IsraelTimes] Representatives of three of the four Arab parties which compose the Joint List
...Barack Obama’s plan to nail that uppity Bibi to the wall by sending his political organizers to buy unity among Israel’s Arabs and connect them in a Democratic Party-style bloc with the labour socialists. That was the first time he tripped them up — and now Labour may not even make the cut... said on Wednesday night that negotiations to maintain the unity of the bloc have failed, making it likely that they will not run together in the coming March elections.
"We’ve failed, unfortunately. The Joint List will not continue in its current lineup," said Balad MK Mtanes Shehadeh, adding later: "At this point, we cannot continue as the Joint List because of our fundamental political differences."
Ethnicity when not supported by copious outside funding is not enough to sustain joint effort from philosophical opposites? I’m shocked. Former president Barack Obama would no doubt be livid about seeing another chunk of his legacy torn away, were it not for the quality of the weed he can score now that it’s legal almost everywhere. Tensions among the four Arab parties had been rising steadily over the past few months, stoked by renegade Ra’am party chief Mansour Abbas. Abbas has publicly pursued closer ties with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a move seen by his Joint List colleagues as beyond the pale.
Continued from Page 2
Hadash party secretary Mansour Dahamsheh, who participated in the talks on Wednesday night, said that "there will be no Joint List with four parties. The negotiations are over."
"The Joint List is continuing without Mansour Abbas, who has chosen the side of Bibi, not the Arab community," Balad party chief Sami Abu Shehadeh said, using Netanyahu’s nickname. "Those defying the Arab consensus will pay a heavy price."
A week remains before the February 4 deadline to submit final lists of candidates to the Central Elections Committee, however, leaving some room for negotiations to continue.
Abbas has said that in order to advance legislative priorities for the Arab community, he would even consider voting in favor of a law providing Netanyahu with immunity from prosecution in his corruption cases, or serve as a minister in a Likud-led government.
His Joint List colleagues see him as providing aid and comfort to a prime minister who they say has conducted a campaign of racist incitement against Arab Israelis.
"Joining, aiding or abetting the right-wing government, annexation, or settlements is a red line from our perspective. We won’t allow a branch of the Likud party in the Joint List," Hadash said in a statement on Monday.
The Joint List, an alliance of four Arab-led factions, is united mainly by a desire to avoid falling below the Knesset’s electoral threshold of 3.25 percent of the vote. The parties span the gamut of political opinion, ranging from Hadash’s committed communists to Ra’am’s conservative Islamists.
Last March, high turnout among Arab Israelis swept the Joint List to the strongest-ever showing in the Knesset for their constituency — a record 15 seats. But after a year of successive political blows, internal division and precious few policy achievements, they face rising voter apathy and widespread frustration among their base.
Three meetings between Joint List representatives have been held over the past few days in an attempt to maintain the bloc’s unity ahead of the March elections. Arab political unity is a popular position among Arab Israelis: past experience shows that when the Arab parties have run together, voter turnout among Arab Israelis generally increases.
But the festivities — both in private and in the media — have only intensified over the past few weeks, as the Arab parties took shots at one another in public.
The tensions have been compounded by an aggressive campaign by Netanyahu to court Arab votes. Netanyahu, previously known more for denouncing Arab voters heading to vote "in droves," has been regularly meeting with Arab mayors in an attempt to gain votes from their constituencies.
Ta’al MK Osama Saadi described the Wednesday night conversation to news hounds only as "a terrible meeting." According to reports in the Israeli Arab press, Ra’am delegate Ibrahim Hijazi arrived more than two hours late for the four-way tête-à-tête on Wednesday night.
Very nearly a cut direct, but certainly a snub. Oh dear. Ra’am has attempted to frame the debate in religious terms, publically demanding that the other parties refrain from voting in support of "perversion." The demand is a thinly veiled reference to Joint List head Ayman Odeh’s (Hadash) decision to vote in favor of a bill that outlawed so-called "conversion therapy" for LGBT people.
"They both refuse to respect the values of religion and society, and also want to cool their heels on the bench of the political arena,” Ra’am chief Abbas said on Wednesday.
If I understand correctly, Mansour Dahamsheh/Hadash (“New”) are the communists, Sami Abu Shehadeh/Balad are the Arab nationalists linked to Hezbollah/Syria/Iran;
Osama Saadi/Ta’al are the PLO in Israel; and Mansour Abbas/Ra’am are the political party of Islamic Movement - Southern Branch, the political arm of the Moslem Brotherhood in Israel. Clearly the Muslim Brotherhood thinksBibi is the strong man in Israel, and they’re willing to ride his train to their station. 
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Posted by trailing wife 2021-01-28 03:00||
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