The Joint List mocked and derided Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday as Likud continued to pursue its campaign to gain votes from Arab-Israelis.
“I wouldn’t put it past Netanyahu to put on a gallabiya and call himself Abu Yair until the election,” Joint List MK Ahmed Tibi told Army Radio. “Whoever believes him deserves what he gets.”
The comments came after Netanyahu remarked that he would consider appointing an Arab candidate to the Likud list for the upcoming election and visited the Arab towns of Tira and Umm el-Fahm to try to encourage more of the Arab population to get vaccinated.
MK Mansour Abbas of the Joint List’s Islamist UAL faction, who has taken the relatively unique step of not only working with Netanyahu on areas of concern to Arab voters but of speaking about it publicly and in a positive vein, wrote on Facebook that Netanyahu should “go search for votes in Hadera, not in Umm el-Fahm.”
“I was the first person to change the perspective and agenda of the politicians in the Israeli Right toward Arab society from an anti-Arab viewpoint to one that puts them at the center of political debate,” he said.
However, Abbas said the Joint List MKs are “the sons and delegates of the Arab community, which we proudly represent and handle its burning issues.”
Several other Joint List MKs made similar comments on social media.
Afif Abu Much, an activist who promote Arab voices in Israeli media, wrote on Twitter that he saw Joint List MKs’ reactions as “a kind of panic over Netanyahu’s new policy. If in the past his incitement brought them votes, the question is what will they do now.”
In a closed meeting of the Likud secretariat Saturday night, Netanyahu said: “I believe in [Likud ideological forebear Ze’ev] Jabotinsky’s view that all citizens in Israel must have equal rights. We are asking Arab citizens: Vote for us this time.” He said he would meet with Public Security Minister Amir Ohana on Sunday to work on a plan to reduce crime among Arab-Israelis.
A Likud campaign source said it was too early in the election cycle to know how many votes Likud could get from Arab-Israelis, but he saw “great potential” in them.
According to the source, the Israeli Arab sector no longer wants to be outside of the mainstream Israeli political game, where the Joint List has left them, and many are frustrated with the Joint List’s vote against the Abraham Accords, normalizing ties between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. Likud has been in power in Israel in the past decade and can help give Arab-Israelis a seat at the table, the source said.
The Likud source also dismissed Yamina MKs’ talk about attracting Arab votes, as well, saying they had nothing to do with the Abraham Accords and therefore do not have Likud’s advantage in this area.
Abu Much told 103FM: “I don’t see Arabs flowing to Netanyahu en masse. I don’t see two seats, 70,000 votes, going to Likud after he said [Arabs] were going to the voting booths in their droves and after the Cameras Law,” which would put security cameras in polling places.
Gideon Sa’ar, who left Likud to form the New Hope Party, does not attack Arab-Israelis, Abu Much added.