After a long period of research, Meir Ettinger seeks to explain what Mansour Abbas actually wants, and what made him suddenly announce his willingness to support a right-wing government, and what the practical implications of a government relying on the Islamic Movement's voices will be.
Mansour Abbas made headlines following his decision to place his party - the Islamic Movement Party, as the "balance sheet" between the left and the right, and the Likud-led Likud's great desire to train him in public to help him form a government, but in fact very few Jews know about the PM In particular and on the Islamic movement.
For the past year and a half, I have been working with Dr. Michael Ben-Ari on writing a comprehensive book on the trends among Israeli Arabs. Among Israeli Arabs in the coming years, many of the findings we have collected have been published on social media in recent weeks in order to open the eyes of the public to the great danger posed by this movement.
On the roots of the Islamic movement in the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and its religious perception, Dr. Michael expanded on a podcast he posted on the Jewish Voice website. In this short series of articles I will try to touch briefly, on the more practical sides, explaining what Mansour Abbas actually wants, and what made him suddenly Announce a willingness to support a right-wing government, and what the practical implications of a government relying on the Islamic Movement's voices will be.
Different circles of identity, welfare and terrorism - this is how the Islamic movement was established
As an introduction, I will give a brief overview of the Islamic movement in Israel, a supplement to the history and roots of the Muslim Brotherhood, can be found in a podcast by Dr. Michael Ben-Ari. The Islamic movement in Israel was founded about 50 years ago in the early 1970s by Abdullah Nimer Darwish And his friends, who came to study in the post-Six Day War at the Islamic colleges in Hebron and Nablus, which were suddenly opened to Israeli Arabs. From there, they brought the idea of the "Muslim Brotherhood" "Islam is the solution" to Israeli Arabs who were in a difficult political and social situation, after the loss of Arab countries in the Six Day War.
The Islamic movement in Israel, like the other fraternity movements in the world, and as Hamas began in Judea and Samaria began social activity, and established associations that dealt with education, welfare, and more in the spirit of Islam, at the same time the movement worked to establish a "forbidden" branch of jihad. "It collected weapons, and carried out property attacks, until members of the movement, including Nimer Darwish, were arrested in 1981 (1941). When Nimer Darwish was released, he stated that in his opinion the movement should now operate only within the framework of the law in order to fulfill its vision, and that the Arabs of Israel should not engage in armed struggle.
I will point out a point that is generally incomprehensible - the perception that Israeli Arabs should act within the framework of the law and not within the framework of the armed struggle, is the central position in the PLO and the Arab parties (including the common one). The reason is practical, the Arabs see the role of Israeli Arabs. During the second intifada, Abu Mazen himself asked the Israeli Arabs not to participate in the intifada, and according to various testimonies of PA representatives (whose credibility is not entirely clear), Nimer Darwish himself said that Abu Jihad of the PLO leaders (who was assassinated by Israel in Tunis) approached him and asked him that the Arabs within the State of Israel not engage in terrorism, so that they could help "prisoners."
The Islamic movement in Israel has defined itself as three circles of identity: Muslim - the vision, the goal, the establishment of an Islamic caliphate from Morocco to Indonesia and within it Palestine, as expressed by the movement's current chairman Hamad Abu Deabs Rahat. Palestinian - the movement regretted strengthening the Palestinian identity of Arabs Israel, the preservation of ties between the Arabs of Israel and the Arabs of the Palestinian Authority, and the role of mediator between the factions - Fatah and Hamas, and finally an Israeli citizen - the demand for full civil rights.
Welfare associations to run in elections
The movement has set up a network of dozens of associations including schools, day care centers, higher education, charities, sports teams and more, in order to provide Islamic education in the spirit of the Muslim Brotherhood, in addition to establishing associations designed to help financially disadvantaged Judea and Samaria Arabs since the first intifada. When the central and largest organization, Al-Aqsa, is responsible for the central role that the Islamic movement in Israel sees for itself.
In 1999, Abdullah Darwish decides to run in the Knesset elections (at the same time the northern faction also participated in the municipal elections, and even won in several cities). Participated in the democratic elections in Egypt, the decision to join the election was opposed by a small number of Shura council members led by Raed Saleh and Kamel Khatib who retired and formed the "Northern faction", which advocates the establishment of an "independent community" based on state budgets.
Abdullah Nimer Darwish resigned from the movement's actual leadership in 1998 and was replaced by Ibrahim Tsarzur, who later served as a member of the Knesset in Israel. The first chairman of the Ra'am party - the political wing that ran for the Knesset on behalf of the movement - was' Abd al-Malek Dahmasha, his lawyer. Of Hamas founder Ahmad Yassin, which is important to understand that Damascus, who was supposedly the representative of the "moderate faction", openly supported incitement in the second intifada when he said in Syria: Ready to stand "at the head of the martyrs for al-Aqsa", and this is the representative of the southern faction, which the "scholars" call - the "integrator" and the "pragmatic".
This point is important because in the recent training campaign of the RAAM party, both on behalf of the Likud and its spokespersons in the media, said for example Muhammad Majdala - an Arab political commentator who recently became a darling of the Israeli media and a "specialist" on behalf of Raem, who himself was a security prisoner From the support of the armed struggle. This is of course a complete lie, part of the lie about the "moderate approach" of the southern faction and the RAAM party that I want to refute in this series of articles.
Ibrahim Knesset member Ibrahim Tsarzur replaced him as chairman of the Ra'am party, and also served as chairman of the movement and chairman of the party, until 2011, when Hamad Abu Dabas from Rahat replaced Ibrahim Tsarzur as chairman of the movement, and Mansour Abbas was appointed his deputy. , Until he was elected chairman of the party in 2018 and replaced MK Massoud Ganaim.
In the next article in the series, we will talk about the activities of the Islamic Movement and the Ra'am party in the last decade, and the question "What does Mansour Abbas want" when he suddenly decided to cooperate with the right-wing government.