Efforts to suppress the Arab vote by a prime minister who is known as a political wizard appear to have backfired.
“The incitement against the Arabs was very strong provocation from Netanyahu,” said Thabet Abu Rass, co-director of the Abraham Initiatives, a joint Arab-Jewish organization working toward equality in Israel.An Arabic-language election banner displaying a picture of Arab Joint List leader Ayman Odeh with a slogan reading: "one million Arab votes, our unity is our strength," in the Arab Israeli town of Nazareth earlier this week.
According to Abu Rass, Arab votes for the centrist Blue and White party gave Netanyahu’s chief rival Benny Gantz an edge of two seats, depriving Netanyahu of the majority he needed to form a right-wing coalition government.In an interview Wednesday with Israel’s Channel 12, another Joint List member of the Knesset, Ahmad Tibi, credited Netanyahu’s scare tactics with galvanizing Arab voters.“Then a week ago, someone, a magician, set off alarm clocks at the entrances to every Arab town.
Those actions and statements, meant to simultaneously rile up Netanyahu’s base and keep Arab voters home, seem to have had the opposite effect, both turning off more moderate right-wing Israeli voters and energizing Arab voters. A high-ranking member of Netanyahu’s Likud party admitted Wednesday that the party’s pursuit of the so-called camera bill was a mistake.
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