The Moderation of Mansour Abbas and his Raam Party

Peloni:  Mansour Abbas has sold himself as being a role model for the Arab community in Israel over the years, and yet a fair reading of many of his comments as well as the charter of his Ra’am party certainly provides a distinctly less favorable perspective on this Israeli Muslim Brotherhood affiliate.  There is an important context which must be grasped when dealing with the Arab community. History of the region lacks any form of agreement between the Arabs and their Jewish neighbors, leaving the understanding of a just outcome as being highly divergent between the two groups due to this fact.  Consequently, as Abbas’ Raam party and Abbas in particular have been granted an aura of ‘moderation’ as he speaks about peace and moderation in connection with his Arab neighbors, but the reality is that these words have a fundamentally different context for Abbas and his party than what these terms really mean.

Perhaps someday, the Arabs may come to have an honest appreciation of what the history of the region really is, but until  such an honest awakening takes root, people such as Abbas will use their endorsement of peace with the Jews to pursue ulterior objectives which are altogether misrepresented when publicly endorsing terms of moderation.  As elections are coming, and Abbas is currently calling for Jews to join his party(!), we must all be aware of the reality of what both Abbas and his party honestly represent and the moderation they portend for the Jews in the Jewish state.  Importantly, as Abbas once came to play the ‘moderate’ Arab kingmaker in forming the Bennett-Lapid led govt, he hopes to play a similar role in the coming months.  Perhaps this will be less possible with a fair understanding of the ‘moderation’ which Abbas has in mind as many on the Left like to describes himself to be.

Translation: 

The charter of the Ra’am party under the leadership of Mansour Abbas – “We are all [united] until the occupation ends and a Palestinian state is established; and until the expelled and displaced return to their homes and to their homeland; you will find a warning [regarding your future fate] for the infidels [the Crusaders] who conquered the land by force for nearly two hundred years, until they were defeated by Salah al-Din al-Ayyubi.”

Knesset Member Mansour Abbas (Ra’am, the Islamic Movement – Southern Branch) presents himself as a person who adopts a pragmatic Islamic worldview, advocating for “justice” and striving for “peace, mutual security, partnership and tolerance between the two peoples” (the Israeli and the Palestinian).

Abbas’s vision is “justice,” and “peace” means the practical realization of this “justice.” This is not “justice” based on compromise, but “justice” according to the Palestinian conception that denies the historical and religious connection of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel.

The messages he expressed in the interview with Al-Quds Al-Arabi gain added weight from previous statements and publications by Abbas and the Ra’am party under his leadership, which provide a key to understanding his worldview, his political strategy, and the tactics he has adopted to implement it in stages.

Content of Mansour Abbas’s statements in the Al-Quds Al-Arabi interview: https://x.com/jdhalevi/status/2013270542598443378

The charter of the Ra’am party, formulated in 2018 and re-approved a year later at the party conference in Nazareth under Mansour Abbas’s leadership, expresses a fundamentally hostile approach toward the Zionist movement and the State of Israel, and views the implementation of the “right of return” as the basis for achieving “peace.” Below is a translation of excerpts from the Ra’am charter:

(*) “The State of Israel was born of the racist, conquering Zionist enterprise; hostile Western and British imperialism; and the humiliation and weakness of the Arab and Islamic [nations]. We do not exempt ourselves, the Palestinian people, from our responsibility and our failure to confront this project.”

(*) “Remove your hands from the Palestinian people so that they may establish their own free and independent state alongside Israel, and so that the expelled and displaced may return to their homeland, to their homes and to their land. Or, agree to one state from the river to the sea, in which the two peoples can live under the same sky in freedom, equality, security and peace.”

(*) “We are all [united with one hand] until the occupation ends and a Palestinian state is established in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and noble Jerusalem; and until the expelled and displaced return to their homes and to their homeland.”

(*) “You will find a warning [regarding your future fate] for the infidels [the Crusaders] who conquered the land by force for nearly two hundred years, until they were defeated by Salah al-Din al-Ayyubi and his soldiers.”

“There can be no loyalty nor any identification with the racist, conquering Zionist ideology, nor any acceptance of any of the various forms of ‘Israelization’ that would strip us of our identity, our uniqueness and our rights.”

(*) “Our political participation, on all its levels, from local government to the legislative authority in parliament [the Knesset] and official civilian institutions, is nothing but an attempt to defend our rights and the interests of our Arab-Palestinian community inside [Israel], to assist our Palestinian cause, and to oppose the policy proposals and plans of the Zionist enterprise from within the heart of the state’s institutions… These are, at the very least, words of truth spoken in the face of a tyrannical ruler.”

(*) “Our most important goal in relation to the State of Israel, in relation to Palestinian Arab society, is to preserve our presence in our homeland, to maintain our identity, and the Arab, Islamic and Christian identity of our country, and to enable our community to achieve its rights on the civil, national and religious levels, and in the sphere of everyday life.”

In the view of Abbas and the Islamic Movement, the demand for the implementation of the “right of return” alongside the establishment of a Palestinian state is clear. By implication, even if Abbas does not say it explicitly, this means the arrival of 7 million Palestinians defined as “refugees” and their descendants through the generations to their homes and lands within the territory of the State of Israel.

The practical implementation of the “right of return” entails the transfer of millions of Jews from Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Haifa and many other settlements in order to settle millions of Palestinians in their place, and the meaning of this is the destruction of the State of Israel and its de facto transformation into another Palestinian state.

References: https://tinyurl.com/2fceneer

Previous articles

MK Mansour Abbas (Ra’am, Islamic Movement – Southern Branch) denied that Hamas attacked Ra’am over its decision to join the coalition: “No one can say what Hamas’s position is, since it has left that to us on the basis [of the approach that] the people of Mecca know its narrow paths” [meaning, they trust Ra’am’s discretion].

References: https://x.com/jdhalevi/status/2013270542598443378

Knesset Member Mansour Abbas (Ra’am, Islamic Movement – Southern Branch) views Israel as an “enemy” of the entire Palestinian people, including the Arabs of Israel, because in his view it conquered Palestinian land, and he calls it “the Zionist enemy.”

References: https://x.com/jdhalevi/status/2012949186237342111

The connection between the Ra’am party and the Islamic Movement with Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood.

References: https://x.com/jdhalevi/status/1993416764139430001

Sheikh Ra’ed Badir, a senior figure in the Islamic Movement – Southern Branch, to which the Ra’am party is subordinate, says that the May 2021 uprising (“Guardian of the Walls” – “Sword of al-Quds”) was a “religious war” that may in the future lead to the expulsion of all Jews from Palestine.

References: https://x.com/jdhalevi/status/2007838121212137759

Mansour Abbas. Screenshot from the Knesset Channel

January 25, 2026 | Comments »

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