MK Ayman Odeh, chairman of the predominantly Arab Joint List party, on Wednesday responded to Ra’am chairman MK Mansour Abbas, who said at a conference on Tuesday that Israel is a Jewish state and will remain that way.
“Yesterday [Abbas] went too far. He said that the State of Israel, not only was it born as a Jewish state, it would remain Jewish. It will remain Jewish. Why? In his opinion because the Jew decided so,” Odeh said in remarks at the Knesset plenum.
“And what are we? Nothings? Air? Do not exist? Do not decide? Do we not deserve equal rights in our homeland?” he continued.
“Here, this is my position: Jews are a people, they deserve the right to self-determination. Unequivocally. The Palestinian Arab people are also a people who deserve the right to self-determination. And we see that the solution is a state alongside a state and not a state at the expense of a state or at the expense of another people,” stated Odeh.
Abbas raised some eyebrows in his remarks on Tuesday at the Globes Israel Business Conference.
When asked if he could accept the State of Israel as a Jewish state, Abbas replied, "The State of Israel was born as a Jewish state. It is the decision of the people and the question is not about the identity of the state. It was born this way and will remain so."
"I was at a demonstration against the Nationality Law and I do not want to deceive anyone. The question is what is the status of the Arab citizen in the Jewish state of Israel. That is the question. Therefore, the challenge now is not only with Mansour Abbas, but with the Jewish public and citizens. We have to decide whether we want to wage struggles that have a chance to succeed and then we can develop as a society and prosper and have an influence, or whether we want to be in a separatist position and continue to talk about these things for another 100 years."