""If Abuham is locked, present it now": Amit Segal on Balad's holiday gift to Netanyahu

September 16, 2022   

Amit Segal, the senior political commentator for News 12, refers in his column in Yedioth Ahronoth - which he updated after Balad's resignation - to the disintegration of the Joint List. Free emergency hotline: Evacuation of the deceased and everything you need to know about burial Segal wrote: "'Lock up Abuham, submit already.'" This WhatsApp message, in the Hadash group at 10:21 PM yesterday, ended the most spectacular self-suicide event since the right-wing's suicide last year. "Take for example Ahmed Tibi, the state right in the Arabic version: he is in the center between the left-wing Hadash and the right-wing Balad. Over the past week, he discovered that they are trying to do to him what both camps did to Handel and Hauser: dilute him on the list, with the option of being thrown out. The surprising agreement between Hadash and Balad presented him with a cruel choice: enter the Knesset alone, or separate from it, and for the first time since the previous millennium, prevent the Likud from using the slogan 'Bibi or Tibi.' No one was surprised when Tibi finally agreed to return to the Joint List." The commentator explains: "The original agreement signed by Hadash and Balad effectively prevented any recommendation for Lapid or Gantz after the upcoming elections. Ahmed Tibi broke into Israeli politics in the 1990s as someone who was ready for parliamentary collaborations. In 2015, Ayman Odeh headed the first Arab list in the country to have a double-digit number of seats, and in 2019 he announced in Yedioth Ahronoth his willingness to enter the game of recommendations to the president. The Ra'am party has generally continued this line, surprising with its willingness to enter a coalition, even under Netanyahu's leadership. Abbas is still interested in it: the surplus agreement between the lists is currently delayed due to his refusal to publicly rule out cooperation with Netanyahu after the elections. "Now all of this has come to a screeching halt, after Balad made a double move: it turned Hadash and Ta'al into separatists, and then withdrew." According to him, "Tibi and Odeh are still interested in staying in the game. Officially, Tibi's Ta'al is not committed to the agreement, and Hadash's MKs have also uttered Talmudic-Jewish babblings that allow them to recommend a candidate despite the commitment, which expired yesterday with the split. The weakening of Arab influence in politics is also felt far beyond its sectoral agenda. In the Zionist lists submitted yesterday to the Central Elections Committee, there is not even a single Muslim or Christian Arab in a realistic position. Ibtisam Marana was pushed far beyond the polls at work, Jedda Rinawi Zoabi was sent into retirement. The only candidate who defines himself as "Arab" is Druze MK Ali Salalha from Meretz. If there is no awakening on a large scale, Arab representation in the Knesset will go back twenty years, and so will its influence. Only in Likud and religious Zionist advertisements are they stronger and more threatening than ever.".