Israel’s Game-Changing Arab Politician Speaks

Mansour Abbas, the deputy speaker of the Knesset, last year made the United Arab List (UAL or Ra’am) the first Arab party to join an Israeli governing coalition—breaking with the other Arab parties and ending a boycott as old as the Jewish state itself. Last week, he was interviewed by Robert Satloff and David Makovsky under the auspices of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a pro-Israel, centrist think tank. While Abbas no doubt calibrated his words to his audience, his statements, delivered in Hebrew, carry great import. (A complete video of the interview can be found at the link below.)