This week, the Israeli government came close to falling when the United Arab List, led by MK Mansour Abbas, threatened to withdraw its support, in response to the forestation work undertaken by the Jewish National Fund on agricultural land used by Negev Bedouin.
The government backed down and promised to negotiate the future of the planting work and other land-related issues with the Bedouin, ending this crisis for the time being.
But for readers wondering how the issue of Negev forestation could lead to a crisis and, more generally, where the Islamic Movement and its two branches fit into the larger political picture, Haaretz responds to a number of questions you may have on the subject…
What was the drama all about?
The planting of trees by the Jewish National Fund may sound like something no one could object to. However, it’s part of the struggle the state has been waging with the Negev Bedouin since the state’s birth. In this case, the trees were being planted (something that required a special rabbinical allowance, since this is a shmita year, when the soil of the Land of Israel is supposed to be left fallow) to forestall Bedouin from Sawa village from cultivating the wheat they planted on the same site last month. The JNF efforts, accompanied by large numbers of security personnel, were met with violent protests by local Bedouin, with many injuries and arrests.
The United Arab List, whose leader Mansour Abbas just last month made international headlines when he acknowledged in an interview that “the State of Israel was born as a Jewish state,” made the strategic decision to be the first Arab party to join a governing coalition on the assumption that being in power would allow it to address some of the biggest challenges facing Israel’s Arab population.
That includes recognition of more of the 30-plus Bedouin villages in the Negev that today do not have legal status, and thus suffer from a near-total lack of the most basic of services and infrastructure – including electricity, roads and connection to the water system. Most critically, it includes an end to the wholesale house demolitions that have continued in the area despite the presence of the Islamist UAL in the coalition.
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At the same time, the Yamina party of Prime Minister Naftali Bennett ran on a platform promising a return to “governability” in the Negev, and continues to view the Bedouin community as lawless and a threat to the Zionist vision, no less.
The tract of land on which the JNF began planting trees this week is claimed by the Bedouin of the Al-Atrash tribe as their own. The 75 acres that were cleared and planted this week are part of a larger tract of 1,250 acres adjacent to the Anim stream, east of Be’er Sheva, whose ownership is in dispute. It is just one of a number of points over which Abbas’ party appears ready to go to the mat with the coalition, including threatening to topple the government if its demands are not met. The JNF plan is seen as temporary and meant to prevent the Bedouin from using the land for either agricultural or residential purposes.
MK Mansour Abbas visiting the Bedouin village of Sawd earlier this week.Eliyahu Hershkovitz
How is Mansour Abass’ party connected to Israel’s Islamic Movement?
The Islamic Movement in Israel has two branches: southern and northern. The northern branch was declared illegal in 2015 and is led by Sheikh Raed Salah, considered a radical figure and recently released from Israeli prison after serving 17 months for inciting terrorism.
The UAL is affiliated with the Islamic Movement’s southern branch, of whom the Negev Bedouin constitute a major source of support.
Wait, so the same movement has two branches – one of them affiliated with a party currently sitting in the Israeli coalition, the other led by a man recently sitting in an Israeli jail? How did that happen?
The two branches had their origins in the “Islamic Movement in ’48 Palestine,” whose founder in 1971 was Sheikh Abdallah Nimr Darwish, an Arab Israeli citizen. Like other expressions of Islamic revival in the Middle East and elsewhere during that period, the Islamic Movement was inspired by the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Unlike other Islamist movements, the Israeli incarnation had a distinct Palestinian-nationalist character (as opposed to a pan-Islamist approach), and initially was dedicated to violent struggle against Israel.
After the militant underground group organized by Sheikh Darwish carried out several failed terror attacks, the authorities cracked down on it and several of its leaders were sentenced to prison. During his incarceration, Sheikh Darwish rethought his ideology, adopting a conciliatory approach toward Israel.
Basing himself on a particular interpretation of Islamic law related to Muslims living as a minority among a non-Muslim host population, Darwish now called for Israel’s Arabs to defend their rights and interests by peaceful participation in the country’s political process.
Darwish was succeeded as head of the Islamic Movement in 1998 by Ibrahim Zarzur, but he continued as spiritual leader of what became known as its southern branch until his death in 2017, at age 69. Despite his early hostility toward Israel, he became known for his ecumenical outreach to non-Muslims and for his acceptance of Israel’s legitimacy.
The split in the movement, which became official in 1996, revolved around the general question of recognition of Israel, and specifically the issue of participation in elections. The southern branch is so called because of its home base in Kafr Qasem, which is situated in the southern part of the “Triangle” (a section of central Israel where a large number of Arab towns can be found). The northern branch has its stronghold in Umm al-Fahm, the hometown of its firebrand leader Salah. Geographically it is only some 60 kilometers to the north of Kafr Qasem.
The division came in the wake of the Oslo peace accords between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1993, which were welcomed by Darwish and condemned by Salah. Three years later, Darwish’s organization decided to formally enter political life by running an Islamic slate for the Knesset.
Calling itself the United Arab List (Ra’am in its Hebrew acronym), the party always ran in an alliance with one or more other Arab parties – until the election of March 2021, when its head, Dr. Mansour Abbas, became convinced it would do better going it alone. He was correct: By breaking away from the Joint List, the UAL earned four seats in the Knesset and a place at the government table. The three parties remaining in the Joint List, on the other hand, are relegated to the opposition, where they spend much of their energy working to undermine their former allies in the UAL.
Initially, Salah supported the idea of participating in local government; in fact, he served as mayor of Umm al-Fahm, the country’s second-largest Arab city, from 1989 until 2001. Before it made the strategic decision to abandon political activity, the northern branch took over the leadership of six Arab municipalities. Since 2013, however, it has focused on religious and charitable work. It founded dozens of nonprofit organizations to supplement the publicly funded services supplied to Arab society, which has perpetually lagged behind Jewish society in most indicators. It also has made the protection of the Muslim shrines in Jerusalem its highest concern.
Sheikh Raed Salah, head of the Islamic Movement’s northern branch, outside Haifa District Court in 2019 after being found guilty of inciting terrorism. Amir Levy
When and why was the northern branch outlawed in Israel?
The decision to outlaw the Islamic Movement’s northern branch was many years in the making, and when the executive action was taken, in November 2015 under then-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, it probably had as much to do with internal Israeli politics as it had to do with specific actions by the movement.
That said, the Prime Minister’s Office announced that the northern branch had close connections with Hamas, that it did not recognize the legitimacy of the State of Israel, and that its leaders had made antisemitic remarks. All of those charges were probably true, but many observers say that despite its official banning, it has been permitted to continue operating its many welfare and educational organizations, which simply changed their names.
Until the outlawing of the northern branch, Salah organized large public rallies annually to alert the Arab public to the supposed danger facing Al-Aqsa, by which it means the entire Haram al-Sharif (known to Jews as the Temple Mount). He has also raised large sums of money for improvements on the mount and, for example, some two decades ago for the construction of a new underground prayer space just east of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, in what has been historically known as Solomon’s Stables. That construction was undertaken without coordination with Israel’s Antiquities Authority, and the soil that was removed to create the vast new prayer chamber was dumped in the Kidron Valley to the east. When sifted by Israeli archaeologists, the soil turned up artifacts that they ascribed to the Jewish temples.
This week, as the protests in the Negev threatened to spiral violently out of control, Salah showed up in the area and there was speculation that he was encouraging the demonstrators to keep up their pressure on the authorities. He, too, has an interest in foiling Mansour Abbas.
Yousef Makladeh, chief executive of Statnet polling organization, told Haaretz that his surveys show that Salah is far and away the most popular figure among the Arab public, with 50 to 60 percent ranking him as the top leader. This is in spite of the fact that his northern branch is officially banned and also that only 5 to 7 percent of the Arab public say they identify with the northern branch.
On the other hand, among the part of that public that votes in national elections – and that is only about 50 percent, says Makladeh – there is also overwhelming support for the UAL’s decision to join the coalition. Yet “if Sheikh Raed Salah were to enter politics – and he won’t,” Makladeh adds, “I think that the voting rate among Arab citizens could reach 70 percent.”
Religious Zionism MK Itamar Ben-Gvir planting a tree as part of the JNF forestation stunt in Sawa this week.Eliyahu Hershkovitz
What does all this portend for the future, and is Mansour Abbas serious when he talks about leaving the government?
Abbas claims that he says what he means, and means what he says. Before he agreed to support the Naftali Bennett-Yair Lapid-led government last June, he was ready to take his four-lawmaker party into a coalition led by the then-incumbent, Netanyahu. As a socially conservative, religious party, the UAL would probably have been more comfortable in a Netanyahu-led coalition. It was due to the refusal of the Religious Zionist party, led by MK Bezalel Smotrich, to sit in a government with an Arab party (whose members he claims are “supporters of terror), that Netanyahu was ultimately unsuccessful in returning to the Prime Minister’s Office.
Although Abbas has been straightforward in recognizing Israel as a “Jewish state,” something no other leader of an Arab party has been willing to do explicitly, he has also made it clear that he sees his mandate as delivering for the Arab public – not only in the matter of Bedouin rights, but also in terms of a program to fight the terrible crime wave plaguing the country’s Arab towns.
If Makladeh is right, the UAL only stands to increase its representation in the Knesset if the government falls and the country holds another election. At least as long as it continues to demonstrate that it can deliver for its public. Therefore, we can expect to see the Bennett-led government continuing to go to great lengths to accommodate and appease the UAL – and for the Netanyahu-led opposition to continue its efforts to destabilize the government through any means possible.
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