Joint List gets defensive as Likud sees ‘great potential’ for Arab votes

The Joint List mocked and derided Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday as Likud continued to pursue its campaign to gain votes from Israel’s Arabs.“I wouldn’t put it past Netanyahu to put on a gallabiyah and call himself Abu Yair until the election,” prominent 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 al-Fahm to try to encourage more of the Arab population to get vaccinated.MK Mansour Abbas of the Islamist UAL faction in the Joint List, 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 al-Fahm.”“I was the first person to change the perspective and agenda of the politicians in the Israeli Right towards the Arab society from an anti-Arab viewpoint to one that puts them at the center of political debate,” Abbas said.However, he said that the Joint List 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 promoting 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.”
On Saturday night, Netanyahu said in a closed meeting of the Likud secretariat: “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.”The prime minister added that he and Public Security Minister Amir Ohana will meet on Sunday to work on a plan to reduce crime among Israeli Arabs.A Likud campaign source said that it was too early in the election cycle to know how many votes Likud could get from Israeli Arabs, but that he sees “great potential” in them.According to the source, the Israeli Arab sector no longer wantsto 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 Israeli Arabs a seat at the table, the source explained.The Likud source also dismissed Yamina MKs talking 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.In addition, Abu Much pointed out that Gideon Sa’ar, who left Likud to form the New Hope party, does not attack Israeli Arabs.
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