The Balad party announced Wednesday that its immediate political efforts will focus on forming a three-party Joint List comprising Hadash, Ta'al, and Balad.
The move was attributed to difficulties in talks aimed at including Ra'am in a four-party alliance, following Ra'am's decision to freeze its participation in the negotiations.
Balad further noted that negotiations to establish a four-party Joint List had reached a dead end. Once the three-party alliance is formed, another attempt will be made to integrate Ra'am, depending on the political climate.
According to Balad, Ra'am's representatives introduced new conditions during the talks, and a dispute arose regarding how seat allocations and roles would be distributed among the various factions.
The Hadash party claimed that the friction in negotiations stems from Ra'am’s desire to join a "change government" after the upcoming elections, pointing to its alleged coordination with Naftali Bennett and Avigdor Liberman.
MK Mansour Abbas, the chairman of Ra'am, explained that his party seeks to maximize its political leverage by joining a change government. He stated that he had hoped Hadash and Ta'al would provide a political safety net for such a coalition as part of a broader division of labor among the Arab parties.