MK Ahmad Tibi (Raam Taal) berated Arab citizens of Israel Saturday for their relatively low turnout in the elections and blamed them for the loss of his party's fifth seat in the final vote count.
Early counting gave the party five seats and would have left MK Taleb a-Sana in the parliament. However, upon completion of the counting of the "double envelope" votes, which are mostly those of soldiers, it turned out that Raam-Taal would only have four MKs.
The seat they "lost" went to Bayit Yehudi and allowed Shuli Muallem, widow of Lt. Col. Moshe Muallem, a resident of the town of Neve Daniel in Gush Etzion, Judea and who was in the number 12 spot, to become a member of the next Knesset.
Speaking at Aroar in the Negev, Tibi referred to Arabs who stayed away from the voting booth, and said: "Because of them, Taleb a-Sana's mandate was lost to a settler woman from the Bayit Yehudi."