Mansour Abbas, who leads Raam, a conservative Islamist party representing Palestinian citizens of Israel, announced this week that Yoav Segalovich, a former Zionist lawmaker and police commander, would run second on the party's electoral slate. The move is unusual: a Jewish politician openly aligned with Zionism and former senior police ranks appearing near the top of an Arab Islamist party's list.
Jewish candidates have appeared on Arab party slates in Israel before. Hadash, another Arab party, has included Jewish lawmakers for decades. What distinguishes the Segalovich arrangement is the kind of Jewish political voice Abbas has selected: someone comfortable inside Israeli mainstream politics, not at its margins. Segalovich is joining the slate and parliamentary faction but will not become a party member, and he is expected to retain the freedom to vote independently on issues where ideological distance is sharp—religion and state, security, and LGBTQ rights.
Abbas's stated goal since breaking with the Joint List in 2021 has been to convert Arab representation into governing power. An August poll suggested a slate including Segalovich could perform somewhat better than Raam in other surveys. Yet Abbas's underlying calculation appears less about vote totals than about coalition viability. Since October 7, Jewish opposition parties that need Arab seats to reach a majority have hesitated to say publicly they would govern with Raam.
Netanyahu has repeatedly warned Jewish voters that his opponents depend on Arab parties to govern. Avigdor Liberman, who served in a coalition with Abbas in 2021, has already ruled out Raam as a coalition partner this time. Abbas's previous experiment in making Raam available to coalitions worked briefly before collapsing. A Zionist former police commander standing second on the slate does not remove ideological objections to the party but makes the charge that Raam stands outside legitimate Israeli politics harder to sustain.
Abbas has resisted rejoining the rebuilt Joint List alliance for the same reason. The Joint List seeks to maximize collective Arab representation and preserve a recognizably Palestinian political address, while Abbas pursues maximum ability for Arab seats to enter government. The Joint List has already criticized him for choosing Segalovich over rejoining the alliance.
