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Unification of Arab parties bad news for Netanyahu

The Israeli-Arab public is tired of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s campaign against them, tired of Israeli politics and tired of unfulfilled promises.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu chats with Ayman Odeh, head of the Joint Arab List, in the plenum at the knesset, Israel's parliament, in Jerusalem December 26, 2018. REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun - RC1BD157DCB0
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The September elections are drawing closer and opposition leader Benny Gantz is no closer to embracing the country’s Arab voters. His Blue and White Party slate for the 22nd Knesset does not include a single Muslim or Christian Arab among its dozens of candidates. The former army chief, who formed his centrist, liberal party in February in the runup to the April 9 Knesset elections, has still not realized that adopting an ‘’in between’’ approach (of avoiding significant decisions) and ignoring the state’s 21% Arab minority is not a recipe for election victory. That is certainly true when your rival is Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who will stop at nothing to achieve his goals, including the disbanding of a just-elected Knesset and scheduling new elections at a cost of billions of shekels to taxpayers — even as a cloud of potential corruption indictments hangs over his head.

Two important reinforcements for the repeat elections are bad news for Netanyahu. The first is former Prime Minister Ehud Barak, probably the only politician who can truly rile Netanyahu, make him sweat and send him continuously to Twitter's front lines. The second new/old actor is the Joint Arab List — an alliance of four Arab parties (Hadash, Ta’al, Ra’am and Balad) planning a soon-to-be-announced comeback as soon as its members finish quarreling over the 11th to 14th slots on their candidate list.

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