These are no easy days for the head of the predominantly Arab Joint List, Knesset member Ayman Odeh. It seems as if every step he takes and every statement he makes manages to infuriate some group of people or other.

It began on Oct. 11, when TV viewers were shocked to see the first ever live broadcast of the bitter dispute among Israeli Arabs over the wave of violence currently plaguing the country. As my colleague Ben Caspit wrote, Nazareth Mayor Ali Salam's attack on Odeh testifies to the split within the Arab community and the serious dilemma it faces.

Odeh and his colleagues from the Joint List suffered another blow the very next day, this time from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. During his speech in the Knesset, Netanyahu called the members of the Joint List part of a “leadership which incites.” He described members of the Balad faction, which makes up part of the Joint List, as standing in front of “a trail of Islamic State flags.” Under normal circumstances, Odeh is uncomfortable with the actions and opinions of the Balad members of his coalition. In a July interview with Al-Monitor, he even admitted that he does not agree with some of the things said by the members of the Joint List. Now, however, he was quick to defend them, even calling on the attorney general to charge Netanyahu with incitement.

Odeh was given the impossible task of uniting all the different factions and streams in the Israeli Arab sector into a single list, even though they have almost nothing in common apart from being Israeli citizens. Odeh tried to present a very different side of the Palestinian population in Israel. He tried to bring the sides together and heal the fissures and rifts that have emerged between Jews and Arabs over the past few years.