Mahmoud Abbas
Mahmoud AbbasIssam Rimawi/Flash 90

Palestinian Authority (PA) chairman Mahmoud Abbas on Tuesday evening hosted a delegation of MK elects from the Joint Arab List in his office in Ramallah, Kol Yisrael radio reported.

The delegation was headed by the chairman of the party, Ayman Odeh, and included Masud Ghnaim, Jamal Zahalka and Osama Saadi.

Abbas congratulated the Joint Arab List, which won 13 seats in last week’s elections, for its achievement in the polls and spoke with the members of the delegation about the developments in the region, according to Kol Yisrael.

The members of the delegation reportedly praised Abbas for his “achievements in the international arena” and for his adherence to the national principles of the Palestinian people.

The Joint Arab List was formed before the election, bringing together the parties of Balad, Hadash and United Arab List, a move that was forced upon the Arab parties due to the raising of the electoral threshold.

Odeh this week divulged in an interview how his radical activism during the first intifada that began in 1987 brought him under investigation, and how he assaulted Israeli police officers.

He admitted that his political outlook growing up was influenced by the growth of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) – internationally recognized as a terrorist organization until the onerous status was removed in the 1993 Oslo Accords – along with the Lebanon War in 1982 and the so-called First Intifada terror war that began in 1987.

Yisrael Beytenu chairman Avigdor Liberman on Tuesday called for a semi-official boycott of the Joint Arab List by the government and Knesset.

Liberman said that Odeh should be blocked from running in the next Knesset because he refuses to denounce extremist statements by members of his party, including MK Hanin Zoabi, who called IDF soldiers "terrorists," and the List's spokesman, who recently said that ISIS takes its inspiration from Zionism.