MK Mansour Abbas, chairman of the Ra’am (United Arab List) party, announced Saturday night at an activists’ conference that he is willing to revive the Joint List ahead of the 2026 elections.
However, Abbas clarified that this would not be a return to the previous ideological union, but rather a purely tactical move.
According to Abbas, Ra’am’s main condition for the union is that the list be defined as “technical only": The parties will run together to maximize electoral strength and avoid losing votes below the electoral threshold, but split into separate factions immediately after the Knesset is sworn in.
The move aims to prevent Balad, the party which continuously polls below the electoral threshold, from failing to pass and taking a significant portion of the sector's votes with it.
He emphasized that there would be no unified platform, and each party would maintain its own political and ideological stance.
Abbas’ announcement comes amid heavy pressure from the national committee of Arab local authority heads, which earlier on Saturday night issued an ultimatum to the parties (Ra’am, Hadash, Ta’al, and Balad), demanding they reach an agreement on a joint run by the end of May. A decisive meeting between party leaders is expected after Eid al-Adha in an effort to bridge the gaps.