Head of the Ra’am party Mansour Abbas addressed Israelis, in a "state-of-the-nation" like speech, on April 1.
It was not a dramatic declaration of war nor a historic announcement of peace. Nonetheless, it was probably one of the greatest political TV moments in modern Israeli history. The person facing the cameras in a live broadcast aired in primetime on all major TV channels was not a prime minister, a defense minister or military chief — he was a politician, rather anonymous until recent months, who heads Israel’s Arab Islamist party.
