By Bringing an Arab Party into the Government, Israel Fulfilled Part of Vladimir Jabotinsky’s Vision

On Monday, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Alternate Prime Minister Yair Lapid announced their decision to dissolve the government and call for new elections—the fifth since 2019. Much ink will be spilled about the successes and failures of the unusual coalition led by Bennett and Lapid and why it collapsed after only a year in power. Einat Wilf attends to the fact that, of the eight disparate parties it brought together, one was the Islamist Ra’am, the first Arab party to be included in an Israeli government. Wilf points out that Ra’am’s participation in the outgoing coalition is in fact a realization of the ideas set forth by the great Zionist thinker Vladimir Jabotinsky, in his seminal essay “On the Iron Wall.”