The chairman of the Knesset's Internal Affairs Committee, MK Waleed Taha (Ra’am), revealed on Wednesday evening that he received an invitation to come to the Prime Minister’s official residence on Balfour Street in Jerusalem as part of the contacts that took place last year between then-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Ra’am chairman MK Mansour Abbas.
In an interview on the Knesset Channel, Taha was asked, "Have you been to Balfour, at the Prime Minister's official residence?", and replied, "Mansour was there more than once, several times, I was invited to Balfour and did not agree to go there, but I was in other places."
"I will keep it private in order to maintain the respect that exists between the people, between the parties, we need a basis of respect in the things that happen between the parties and the people," MK Taha added.
Earlier on Wednesday, Abbas threatened to expose the documents from the negotiations he had with Netanyahu in order to form a narrow right-wing government that would rely on Ra’am.
In a statement in which he announced that Ra’am would give the Bennett coalition another chance, Abbas dismissed Netanyahu's criticism and said, "This is the same Netanyahu we had a relationship with during the previous government. We had coalition negotiations with him, which are documented on my phone, and we'll probably have to publish that documentation. The members of the Likud Central Committee believe us and not Netanyahu."
An hour earlier, Netanyahu had spoken in the Knesset and said, "We never intended to put Mansour Abbas' party in the government or coalition. Never. We told them to support the direct election of the Prime Minister, which would have made our dependence on them and everyone else redundant."
"We have never agreed to be dependent on them and we will never agree to be dependent on them," the former Prime Minister clarified, before attacking coalition members, "But you bow your head, bite your nails and wait for the decisions of the Shura Council."