Arab lawmakers planning to oust Netanyahu and form a new “change” government with Bennett at the helm seek to increase Arab turnout and win over Jewish voters by including Jewish candidates.

By World Israel News Staff

Arab Israeli lawmakers speaking at a conference hosted by the Givat Haviva Center on Tuesday laid out plans to oust Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and replace him with a new “change” government headed by former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and backed by the Knesset’s Arab parties.

MK Ayman Odeh, head of the Hadash-Ta’al party, and MK Mansour Abbas, chairman of the United Arab List (Ra’am), both addressed the conference, which was held at an educational center promoting Jewish-Arab coexistence and cooperation.

Odeh, the chairman of the Communist Hadash faction within the Hadash-Ta’al party, said that Arab MKs must do everything possible “in order to get rid of Netanyahu,” including forming a single united Knesset list.

“I am not running in the next election,” Odeh said. “2026 is an election year. I call on Ra’am, Ta’al and Balad – let’s all unite. Let’s get 17 mandates. We will be certain that we, with our own hands, will be the factors preventing Netanyahu, Ben Gvir and Smotrich’s government from continuing.”

The four major Arab factions – Hadash, Ta’al, UAL (Ra’am), and Balad  – formed a unified ticket for the 2015 elections, receiving 13 seats.

After peaking at 15 seats in the 2020 election, the alliance fractured in 2021, with UAL running separately. A year later, Balad also split from Hadash and Ta’al, leaving it out of the Knesset.

UAL chief MK Mansour Abbas disagreed with Odeh’s push for a return to a single Arab list, arguing that cooperation between factions with differing strategies was a more useful approach.

Expressing confidence that Netanyahu will lose power in this year’s election, Abbas said that a new “change” government would be formed with the backing of Arab MKs, potentially both inside and outside of the government.

Arab lawmakers will form a unified bloc to prevent rightist parties from forming a new government, Abbas said, with some potentially joining the next coalition.

“I am not worried about whether a second ‘change’ government will be formed or not,” Abbas said. “It will be formed. The question is what we will do after it is formed. We were in this situation in the first ‘change’ government, but unfortunately we did not preserve it.”

“Half a million Arab voters did not go out and vote. Now, if we want to persuade people, we must speak honestly and tell them: This is the path; we will fix the mistakes. Therefore, what Ra’am is proposing today is not just to form one list or two lists; we must reach understandings and partnerships among the Arab parties.”

“Whoever aspires to be in the coalition — good luck. Whoever wants to form a blocking bloc [against the right] in the opposition — fine, that is also acceptable. But we need to reach a level of coordination and partnership.”

A day earlier, Abbas revealed that the UAL is also planning a major shift as part of its larger change in orientation, moving the party away from the Islamic Movement and towards the political center, relying less on its Bedouin voting base.

Abbas announced that the UAL plans to actively court Jewish voters and hopes to include Jewish candidates on its Knesset list.

“Every citizen of the State of Israel – Jewish and Arab – can join Ra’am and be among its Knesset candidates,” Abbas told Radio 103. “I want to expand the ranks of the party within Jewish society.”

“There are Jewish Knesset members with whom I see eye to eye, and I would be honored if they joined Ra’am.”

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The visit by Yair Lapid to the UAE capital of Abu Dhabi comes after the two countries opened ties in an agreement brokered by the Trump administration.

By Associated Press

Israel’s new foreign minister has touched down in the United Arab Emirates, starting the first high-level trip by an Israeli official to the Gulf Arab state since the two countries normalized relations last year.

The visit by Foreign Minister Yair Lapid on Tuesday to the UAE capital of Abu Dhabi comes after the two countries opened ties in an agreement brokered by the Trump administration, the first of four similar deals with Arab states that had long shunned Israel over its conflict with the Palestinians.

According to the Israeli foreign ministry, Lapid will be inaugurating Israel’s Embassy in Abu Dhabi, meeting with senior Emirati officials — including Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan — and attending a trade expo where Israeli companies are exhibiting technology. The ministry described it as a “historic visit” to the Gulf kingdom.

The UAE was joined by Bahrain in normalizing ties with Israel, becoming the third and fourth Arab states to sign peace deals with the Jewish state, after Egypt and Jordan.

In the nine months since the two countries signed the normalization agreement at the White House, Israel and the UAE have signed extensive trade and cooperation deals, and bilateral trade is already expected to have exceeded $354 million. More than 200,000 Israeli tourists have traveled to the UAE, the Foreign Ministry said.

Lapid took office as Israel’s foreign minister after Israel’s new government was sworn in earlier this month. The Yesh Atid party leader struck a power-sharing deal with Naftali Bennett, who became Israel’s prime minister at the head of a coalition of eight parties, ranging from Jewish Zionists to an Islamist party.

Former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had repeatedly scheduled and postponed a visit to Abu Dhabi due to the coronavirus pandemic, but ultimately canceled the visit ahead of the March 23 elections due to a diplomatic spat with neighboring Jordan.

Israeli foreign ministry spokesman Lior Haiat told reporters after Lapid had departed for Abu Dhabi that the pace of bilateral cooperation between the two countries has been “unprecedented.”

“There’s been years of under-the-radar relations between Israel and the UAE, and we are now enjoying the fruits of the infrastructure of peace that we’ve built in the last decades,” Haiat said.

Israel and the UAE had long maintained clandestine security ties before normalizing relations last year due to their shared concerns about regional arch-enemy Iran.

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