Can Israeli Arabs settle political score with Netanyahu?
The Arab Joint List is ready to cooperate, even with Yisrael Beitenu’s Avigdor Liberman, to pass a law preventing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from forming a new government.
At the Ynet studios on Feb. 27, a week before elections in Israel, Joint List Chairman Ayman Odeh found himself in a heated discussion with Culture Minister Miri Regev over the Likud campaign’s attempt to delegitimize the country’s Arab Knesset members. Amid the hurled accusations, Odeh told her, “You [the Likud] won’t remain in power, and that will be because of the Joint List. You’re all corrupt! We’re sick of you!”
With the votes now tallied, it looks like Odeh might be vindicated. The Joint List won 15 seats, while the right-wing/ultra-Orthodox bloc walked away with 58 seats, three short of the 61 needed for a majority. In other words, for the moment, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu does not have enough seats to form a government that could extricate him from his impending trial on corruption charges.
When it was determined that the Blue and White, Labor-Gesher-Meretz, Yisrael Beitenu and the Joint List held 62 seats among them, compared to Netanyahu’s 58, an old channel of communication between Ofer Shelah (Blue and White) and Ahmad Tibi (Joint List) suddenly sprung to life. The Joint List had been furious at Blue and White leader Benny Gantz for saying that he would only form a government with a Jewish majority. Suddenly, a new initiative by the Joint List to bring down Netanyahu superceded all else.
On the morning of March 4, Tibi lobbed a grenade that sent shockwaves through the prime minister’s residence on Balfour Street, terrorizing its occupants. “A prime minister who has been indicted for bribery would be obliged to resign in any normal country,” Tibi said to the press. “If he refuses to resign and a law is brought before the Knesset to prevent a prime minister under indictment for serious crimes from serving, we will examine it closely and consider supporting it.” Meanwhile, at the same time Shelah was giving an interview at Ynet studios in which he said that such a law seemed “appropriate” to him.
