Nadene Goldfoot
The shock of it all was when this political Israeli lawmakers invited Mansour Abbas's party into the political arena. Mansour Abbas, 48, born 22 April 1974) is an Israeli Arab politician. He is currently the leader of the United Arab List and represents the party in the Knesset. He was appointed as the chair of Special Committee on Arab Society Affairs in the Knesset on 27 April 2021. Abbas is married with three children.
This was the first time that Arab parties in Israel have been invited to join a ruling government. It's also the first time a party has not represented themselves as the opposition to any Israeli government. There are many Arab-Israeli parties in Israel's Knesset and they have generally participated in Israel's political system as a hostile force, seeming to protest Israel's very existence, which they really have been doing just that. Abbas has taken a difference path; one that is noticed.
Abbas was born in the town of Maghar, where he began delivering sermons at the Peace Mosque at the age of 17.
Maghar is a Druze city of mixed population of Muslims, Christians, and Druze in Israel's Northern District with an area of 19,810 dunams. Maghar was given the status of a local council in 1956, and of a city in 2021. In 2019 it had a population of 22,957. It's 112 miles north from Jerusalem. He lives here still. The majority of residents are Druze (57.9%), with Arab Christians (21%) and Muslim (21.1%) minorities. Many of the Druze residents serve in the IDF and Israel Police. The Christian population is mostly Melkite Catholic.
He attended the Hebrew University of Jerusalem to study dentistry, where he was elected chair of the Arab Students Committee between 1997 and 1998. While at university he met Abdullah Nimar Darwish, the founder of the Islamic Movement. He also studied political science at the University of Haifa.
On 21 April 2020, Abbas delivered a historic speech on the Holocaust in the Knesset in which he spoke of the suffering of the Jewish people at the hands of the Nazis. Abbas stated: "As a religious Palestinian Muslim Arab, who was raised on the legacy of Sheikh Abdallah Nimr Darwish who founded the Islamic Movement, I have empathy for the pain and suffering over the years of Holocaust survivors and the families of the murdered." He added, "I stand here to show solidarity with the Jewish people here and forever."
Then, just a few weeks ago, Abbas said ,"It's time for his countrymen to accept Israel's Jewish identity."
The Globe, a financial newspaper, had a conference that he attended. Abbas broke new ground for an Israeli Arab politician, noting that "TheState of Israel was born as a Jewish state, and the question is this: "Howare we going to integrate Arab society into it?"
This really is a very heavy question with Lebanon as an example as to how Muslim politicians smothered the Christians, and that Jews are the minority of the Middle East. The ratio of 80/20 must be maintained for Israel.
The Abraham Accords have broken the chokehold held on Arab peace concepts by the Palestinian Authority (PA), which denied any possibility ofreconciliation with Israel until the PA's intractable maximalist demands were met; a state with "those unbearable "1967 borders and a capital inJerusalem."
Palestinians in coastal enclave, with which Israel fought bitter 11-day war in May, accuse Islamist leader of being 'opportunist' who is motivated by self-interest and political ambition rather than seeking to represent the Arab community within Israel.
His thinking developed along the way. Abbas had joined the rest of the Joint List in voting against the Abraham Accords. He described his vote as a protest against the lack of a peace treaty with the Palestinians, adding, "If there will be a real agreement with the Palestinians, there will be real agreements with 55 Muslim countries. But what truly matters is that we are Israelis, and our actions are not supposed to be influenced by whether there is peace with Bahrain."
I do not understand this attitude. He knows very well that Israel would love to have peace with 55 countries without losing the 10% left to us of an original promise of a Jewish Homeland. It's the Palestinians who have said, NO NO NO at the Khartoum Conference in 1967 after the war. He voted with the others, against the Abraham Accords. Perhaps this is when he changed his attitude; seeing that this kind of attitude would get him nowhere in life. Now, he is special.
By January 2021, in the buildup to the 2021 elections, the United Arab List split from the Joint List. According to the by-laws of the party, limiting MKs to three terms, Abbas was ineligible to run again for office in the 2021 elections. Abbas stated, "I have to respect the institutions of Ra'am,(his party of United Arab List) if the bylaws are not changed, even though they didn't anticipate four elections in two years when they made the rules."
However, he ran in the election as party leader and the United Arab List won four seats. On 2 June 2021, after holding negotiations with Israeli opposition figures Yair Lapid and Naftali Bennett, Abbas renewed his commitment to backing a non-Netanyahu government after signing a coalition agreement with Lapid.
On 21 December 2021, Abbas said that Israel was born as a Jewish state and will remain so, provoking outrage from members of other Arab parties,
The party supports the two-state solution, and the creation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, with East Jerusalem as its capital (This is not to happen). It also supports equal rights for Arab citizens of Israel.
Its constituency consists mostly of religious or nationalist Israeli Arabs, and enjoys particular popularity among the Negev Bedouin: in the 2009 election, 80% of residents of Bedouin communities voted for the party. The Islamic Movement also operates in poor Arab towns and villages, as well as in Bedouin settlements, to mobilize voters. The southern faction of the Islamic Movement is now the dominant force in the party, whilst other factions include the Arab National Party. (So it's not surprising that Gaza did not respect his party. They want Hamas control, anyway.)
To the credit of the Jewish parties in Israel's ruling coalition, they've shown admirable willingness to cooperate with Mansour Abbas in supporting significant initiatives to tangibly enhance Arab-Israeli society. The recognition of Israel as a Jewish state was regarded as an exceptional and important statement by an Israeli Arab leader, especially one from an Islamist party.
Abbas added: “The question is how to integrate Arab society into it … there is no doubt that we are on the threshold of a new era, and I say this cautiously and hope that the process will succeed and that the coalition-level partnership will be a trend towards more different partnerships in the industry and more.”
Update: 1/12/2022: Police and military forces have been deployed in the southern Negev as a result of rioting by local Bedouins who are protesting tree planting by the Jewish National Fund on land that belongs to the government that they claim is their territory. The Arab Ra'am party, which is the key member of the fragile 61 seat government coalition, is threatening to leave the coalition if the tree planting efforts are not halted. Housing Minister Ze’ev Elkin of the New Hope party, whose ministry oversees the tree planting, is opposed to halting the work. To read more
Resource:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mansour_Abbas
FLAME- Facts and Logic-About the Middle East , James Sinkinson, Pres.
https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?tab=wm#inbox/FMfcgzGmtNhCSrckSnMVQFgQcPgjbDfn
https://www.ynetnews.com/magazine/article/HkryIH8qO
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Arab_List
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maghar,_Israel
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/united-arab-list-ra-am-political-party
No comments:
Post a Comment