Arab party member admits they met with Likud to negotiate in radio prank
Yahya confirmed that Mansour Abbas, Natan Eshel and Miki Zohar met before the dissolving of the Knesset.
By JERUSALEM POST STAFFAbd al Hakim Hajj Yahya of Raam Balad party, April, 2019(photo credit: ESTY DZIUBOV/TPS)
In a prank on live radio, radio presenters pretending to be Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his aide managed to get Ra'am member and outgoing MK Abd al-Hakim Hajj Yahya to admit that Ra'am leader Mansour Abbas had met with Nathan Eshel, part of the Likud Party's coalition negotiation team, and Likud MK Miki Zohar."I'm happy that you didn't recommend Blue and White," said the Netanyahu impersonator, confusing Ra'am with the Balad Party that retracted it's recommendation for Gantz. "I'm ready to promise everything. We'll meet and sit. I said we'll sit on all the regulations of the Arab sector, to deal with them as needed, to give you anything you need. Enough. It's time to stop the extremism of this discrimination." Throughout the conversation, the impersonator promised to give Ra'am whatever they needed.Yahya seemed to consider the offer throughout the discussion, telling the Netanyahu impersonator that, if he's serious, he still has influence in the party, even though he's no longer going to be an MK.The presenter pretending to be Netanyahu's aide asked Yahya if he could really convince the other members of the party to consider it."I still haven't left the field. I'm in the political office of the party. I have my voice in any case," said Yahya.Netanyahu then asked Yahya to promise to support him as he would be the one that Rivlin would choose to form the government. Yahya stated that nothing was sure yet, and he and the presenter pretending to be an aide asked the Netanyahu impersonator, "What about Liberman?"Yahya told the presenters that "Eshel can talk with Mansour Abbas. He was in a meeting with Abbas and apparently there was even chemistry between them even more than with me. We were together at that meeting.""For us, we don't have any preference of Gantz over Netanyahu," said Yahya. "For us, the interests of our people are important. It's time, after 71 years, to change something." He also confirmed that Mansour Abbas, Natan Eshel and Miki Zohar met before the dissolving of the Knesset.
