It has a role model in an Israeli politician with whom Netanyahu is quite familiar. Of all the interviews I did on this trip, the one that stays with me most was with Mansour Abbas, who represents the Israeli Arab Islamist party, which became the first Israeli Arab party to become a full-fledged partner in an Israeli Jewish-led ruling coalition, the national unity government formed in June 2021, headed by Yair Lapid and Naftali Bennett, which Netanyahu just toppled.
Mansour Abbas has openly declared, “The State of Israel was born as a Jewish state, and it will remain one.”
Before Lapid and Bennett formed their government, Netanyahu tried to get Abbas to support his coalition, but his ultranationalist partners said they would not serve with an Israeli Arab Muslim in the same cabinet. So, in the latest election, Netanyahu reversed course and used Abbas’s presence in the Bennett-Lapid cabinet to inflame anti-Arab sentiments among Israeli Jews, which helped him win at the ballot box.
Abbas said to me: “I asked Bibi, ‘Why you are accusing me that I am a Muslim Brotherhood and terrorist?” He said Netanyahu told him it was political. He needed to get votes.
Abbas is a keen observer of the Israel scene. He explained that he grew up as part of the Muslim minority in a predominantly Christian-Druze Arab village, where he learned early on that in Israel, “diversity exists not just between Arabs and Jews, but inside the Arab sector and Jewish sector, too.”
As a result, he said, he came to believe that “all of us have a lot of identities — religious and national. We can live together with our identities, if we try. I call it ‘a civil approach’ based on values. … I studied political science at Haifa University. I learned the term ‘how to manage a conflict.’ But there is another term — ‘how to manage a partnership.’ I prefer conflict inside partnership and not outside of it.”
So, he added, “I do partnership — and hope then there will be change.”
I can’t think of a more fitting way to end a piece about the true complexity of the situation in Israel than to quote an Israeli Palestinian Islamist telling Israeli Jews about the spirit of partnership needed to preserve Israel as a Jewish homeland and a democracy for all of its citizens — whether it’s in two states or one.
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