Israeli Press
Avraham Burg joins the Jewish-Arab party running in October's election
Image credit: Avraham Burg — David Shankbone / Wikimedia Commons · License
Original Reporting
The Newsdesk gathers reporting from wire services and primary sources and rewrites every story in-house before publication. How our journalism is made →
A former speaker of the Knesset has returned to Israeli politics after twenty-two years, and the list he joined puts Palestinian citizens of Israel in half its places.
Avraham Burg told Ynet that he has joined Makom LeKulanu — A Place for Us All — the party launched in June by Rula Daood and Alon-Lee Green, the two co-directors of the Jewish-Arab movement Standing Together. Its slate is split evenly between Arab and Jewish candidates and evenly between women and men, and it includes the Haifa city councillor Sally Abed and the activist Ghadir Hani.
Burg explained the return by the four years behind it: a constitutional crisis, 7 October, the wars that followed, corruption cases and institutions he describes as collapsing. "After four traumatic years, an alternative is needed," he said.
He rejected the habit of sorting Israeli parties into Jewish ones and Arab ones. "I ask: are all citizens equal in your eyes? If they are — we are partners," he told the site, saying he still believes in a shared life between Jews and Arabs and that it is the political system, not the citizens, that keeps undermining ordinary civic normality.
The arithmetic that decides whether it matters#
The threshold is 3.25 percent of the vote, and a list that misses it takes its supporters' ballots out of the count altogether. When the party launched, commentators on the Israeli left warned that a fourth competitor for the same voters could cost the bloc trying to unseat Netanyahu the seats it needs.
That warning is the Palestinian voter's dilemma in Israeli form. The blocs need those votes on 27 October and neither offers much for them, and every new list changes the odds that any of them convert into seats at all.
