(Times of Israel) Haviv Rettig Gur - While Israel seeks "normalization" with the UAE, Bahrain and Sudan, all of which are 1,000 miles from Israel, a "normalization" process is already well underway closer to home. MK Mansour Abbas of the Ra'am faction of the Arab Joint List party wrote Saturday on Facebook that Israel's Arabs were ill-served by the belief that their political role was limited to being the "reserve force" propping up the Israeli left. "I'm not afraid to say I'm introducing a pragmatic new political style." The post received over 4,300 "likes" and 700 comments, nearly all positive. Ra'am, founded in 1996, emerged as the political home of the conservative Muslim impulse within Israel's Arab population. It is the political vehicle for the southern branch of the Islamic movement. Islamism in Israel is divided into two branches: the anti-Israel northern branch headquartered in the Galilee town of Umm al-Fahm, and the pro-integration southern branch which draws much of its support from the Bedouin of the Negev. Both branches support Palestinian independence, but only the northern branch, declared illegal in 2015, openly supported violence and extolled terrorism. Sheikh Abdullah Nimr Darwish, who led the southern branch for three decades until his death in 2017, urged Israel's Arab community to reject terrorism and integrate into Israeli society. Mansour Abbas, a student of Darwish, is deputy chairman of the southern branch. As the Palestinian cause fades throughout the Arab world, it fades among Israeli Arabs as well. And the demand to integrate, to gain acceptance, to have a say in the affairs of a country they have come to accept as their own, has overwhelmed the old ideologies.
2020-11-02 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive