'Without Arab parties there won't be change': Joint List offers outside support to Eisenkot to oust Netanyahu

Veteran Arab lawmaker Ahmad Tibi has offered the Joint List's support to opposition leader Gadi Eisenkot in efforts to replace Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's outgoing coalition, while making it clear that the alliance does not want ministerial positions or a place in the government. Speaking to Channel 12 late Friday, Tibi said Arab lawmakers were prepared to support an alternative administration from outside the coalition. He urged Eisenkot to "be like [the late prime minister Yitzhak] Rabin", referring to the former premier's reliance on Arab lawmakers' support to advance the Oslo Accords with the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO). "We want to help anyone who wants to bring down this awful government... and switch it for a different government. We want to be part of the correction, part of the hope," Tibi said. "We won't be part of the government. I don't want a ministerial post. I don't want to be in the cabinet," he added. "But without the Arab parties there won't be change." The offer comes amid a political stalemate following Israel's latest election, in which neither the Netanyahu-led bloc nor its opponents secured enough seats to form a government independently. Arab parties hold key to anti-Netanyahu majority The Joint List, an alliance of three Arab factions, won 11 seats, while Ra'am secured eight. Together, they hold 19 seats in the 120-member Knesset. Netanyahu's opponents have 67 seats, potentially giving them a parliamentary majority if they secure the support of the Arab parties. However, several opposition groups, including Yashar, B'Yachad and Yisrael Beytenu, have ruled out joining a coalition with them. Tibi said the rise in Arab voter turnout had prevented Netanyahu from securing another government, describing the election as "an act of self-defense". He indicated that the Joint List would recommend to President Isaac Herzog that a candidate from the anti-Netanyahu camp receive the mandate to form a government, presumably Eisenkot. The alliance is also prepared to support moves to remove Likud's Amir Ohana as Knesset Speaker and establish a state commission of inquiry into the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack. Joint List outlines conditions for support Joint List chairman Yousef Jabareen said informal contacts had begun with Eisenkot, Democrats leader Yair Golan and members of Naftali Bennett's B'Yachad party. He said the alliance's conditions included a diplomatic process towards establishing a Palestinian state, a funded plan to tackle violent crime in Arab municipalities and an end to home demolitions. These demands could complicate negotiations with Jewish-led opposition parties that oppose Palestinian statehood. Jabareen attributed the sharp rise in Arab voter turnout, from 38 per cent in 2022 to nearly 80 per cent in the latest election, to the desire to remove Netanyahu and key coalition figures Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich. "The Arab public saw the situation as a state of emergency, an almost existential election," he said. The Joint List also dismissed allegations of foreign interference in the election. Tibi rejected claims of illicit funding from Qatar, while Jabareen described the allegations as "spin" and "dangerous slander".