A left wing coalition would lead to a Palestinian state ‘run by Iran’ warned Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu this weekend, vowing that this would never happen if he were in charge.
“The price of a left-wing coalition with the Muslim Brotherhood has been exposed once again,” Netanyahu tweeted in Hebrew, ahead of the Israeli election on October 27.
He was referring to an address delivered by the United Arab List (Ra’am) Party leader Mansour Abbas on Saturday evening in which he called on Israel to recognise a Palestinian state, which was already “a reality.”
“All of the world will acknowledge it – after the United States and Israel fulfil their duty and recognise it [too],” he continued at his party’s convention in the city of Tayibe.
Abbas emphasised, “We want the peace between the State of Israel and a Palestinian state to materialise. We recognise a Palestinian state.”
In his X post, Netanyahu charged opposition leaders Gadi Eisenkot (Yashar), Avigdor Liberman (Yisrael Beiteinu) and Hili Tropper (Zionist Home –The Reservists) of wanting to partner with Abbas’s party while boycotting the Likud Party’s voters.
National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, the leader of the extreme right wing Otzma Yehudit Party, also reacted to Abbas’s speech, referring to him as “the friend” of former IDF chief Eisenkot and former prime ministers Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid. (The latter two head the Yahad Party.)
Abbas’s plan for the next government is “to establish a state of terror and restore all the conditions I cancelled for his friends in the prisons,” Ben-Gvir continued in a Hebrew language tweet.
According to recent polls, the opposition would need to include at least one Arab party to have enough Knesset seats to form a governing coalition. The other Arab parties, Hadash-Ta’al and Balad, refuse to be part of a Zionist governing coalition, which leaves Ra’am as the only alternative.
Ra’am has expressed readiness to become part of an Israeli government, having already participated in the Bennett-Lapid government (June 2021-December 2022).
Abbas has attempted to broaden his party’s appeal. He announced in December 2025 that he would split from the party’s Shura Council, a body associated with the Muslim Brotherhood-inspired Southern Branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel, which guided the party and ultimately made its decisions.
Abbas’s move followed an announcement by Netanyahu a month earlier that he intended to ban the Muslim Brotherhood. His declaration followed a similar announcement by US President Donald Trump.
In 2009 and 2019, the Knesset Central Elections Committee banned Ra’am from running, only to have its ruling reversed by the Israeli Supreme Court.
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