Last week, after a question of parliamentary procedure sparked fierce debate in the Knesset, something unusual happened: the parliamentarian who chaired the vote in question—a member of the Joint Arab List—broke ranks with the opposition and declared that his Likud opponents were right. Since then, the dissenting MK, Mansour Abbas, has been the target of outrage from his fellow member of the Joint List, and much attention from the Israeli Arab media. Haviv Rettig Gur suggests that Mansour Abbas might be the harbinger of a new kind of Arab politics, less tied to the Palestinian cause, less dogmatically anti-Zionist, and more interested in improving the day-to-day lives of its constituents:
While Israel seeks “normalization” in far-flung Dubai, Manama, and Khartoum—none of which are less than 1,000 miles from the Jewish state—a tectonic shift, a “normalization” process more visceral and vital to Israel’s future, is already well underway closer to home. Inside the home, in fact.
“Does our political discourse begin and end with cursing Netanyahu, do I have to say Netanyahu is a racist and a fascist and so on?” Abbas shot back [at an interviewer on an Arab radio station]. “Or can I engage with political issues? . . . My style isn’t the style of someone who stands at the podium and just mouths populist words.”
[Thereafter, Abbas] published a long post in Arabic on Facebook, arguing that Arabs were ill-served by the belief that their political role was limited to being the “reserve force” propping up the Israeli left. It was time to get “the resources and rights we deserve” from whomever is in power.
In another interview, Abbas went further, saying that he would consider joining a governing coalition—something no Arab party has ever done—even with Likud, if the terms were right.
If Mansour Abbas’s new pragmatism is any indication, it could [be] that Israel’s Arabs are increasingly thinking of themselves not in a narrowly Arab context but in a broader Israeli one, as one community among many vying for resources and attention in the broader political landscape. . . . Mansour Abbas . . . seems to think—and despite the vituperation of some this week, he seems to be right—that the Arab Israeli community is already there, already eager for integration and influence. It’s time, he is arguing, for Israel’s Arab leaders to follow.
Read more on Times of Israel: https://www.timesofisrael.com/when-israels-arabs-began-to-demand-their-own-normalization-deal/