Democrats party leader Yair Golan said Wednesday at the Herzliya Conference that his bloc must 'wake up' and agree to include Mansour Abbas's Ra'am party to prevent the next government from relying on current coalition members, according to N12.
Opposition leader Yair Golan, chair of the Democrats party, called Wednesday at the Herzliya Conference for his political bloc to drop its reservations about cooperating with the Islamist Ra'am party and its leader Mansour Abbas. "I hope all my bloc colleagues will wake up and say a simple thing — the future government must not be based on any of the current coalition parties. If for that we need to recruit Mansour Abbas, then let's recruit him," Golan said, as quoted by N12.
The statement marks Golan's clearest public push yet for an alliance that includes Ra'am, an Islamist Arab party that was part of the Bennett-Lapid coalition in 2021–2022. Golan's bloc — the Democrats and their potential allies — faces a parliamentary arithmetic challenge in unseating the current right-religious coalition, and Abbas's four Knesset seats could prove decisive. The call comes amid ongoing coalition negotiations in the run-up to a potential new government formation.
Golan has previously stated he would sit with Ra'am over Religious Zionism, and has repeatedly argued that the opposition must field a united front to prevent Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from forming the next government. No Ra'am response was immediately reported.
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