Quietly and under the radar of the Israeli media, Knesset member Ahmad Tibi entered the holiest of holies of America’s most important strategic assets Feb. 4: Washington’s White House, State Department and Capitol Hill. As far as anyone can remember, no such meetings have been held in the past with such high echelons and such levels of intimacy between American administration sources and an Israeli Arab Knesset member. Tibi’s international status, his popularity in the Israeli Arab community and the conspicuous estrangement between the White House and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office were probably among the factors that contributed to the setting up of the meetings.
Tibi talked to his American interlocutors about the situation of Israeli Arabs, who constitute a minority of about 20% of the country’s population, and strongly condemned the policies of the Netanyahu government, which he called “Israel’s most extremist government of all times, to the extent that the most moderate person in it is Netanyahu himself.”