Mansour Abbas is offering Israel a practical demonstration that Arabs and Jews can share responsibility for their country. Benjamin Netanyahu presents that possibility as a threat. Too many of his opponents still behave as though he is right.

That contradiction could determine whether Israel’s election on 27 October produces a change of government.

At a recent Economist conference in Thessaloniki, where I was also a speaker, former Israeli foreign minister Shlomo Ben-Ami highlighted the dilemma: Netanyahu’s opponents may need Arab parliamentary support to govern, yet remain reluctant to accept that partnership.

Netanyahu does not necessarily need his opponents to lose. He needs them to remain unable to govern together.

The New York Times’ 16 October profile describes Abbas’s partnership with Yoav Segalovitz, a Jewish former senior police officer and centre-left legislator who is second on Ra’am’s electoral list. Their cooperation centres on fighting violent crime in Arab communities: a concrete test of whether shared government can deliver public safety.

The report also recalls Netanyahu’s own negotiations with Abbas in 2021, before Ra’am joined the coalition that removed him from power. Today, his campaign portrays Arab participation as a danger. Partnership apparently becomes intolerable when it threatens his position.

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Yet Associated Press reporting on 16 October describes Gadi Eisenkot’s and Yair Lapid’s public rejection of coalitions with Arab-led parties. Outside parliamentary support remains possible, but requires negotiated commitments.

A Maariv poll published that day, reported by The Jerusalem Post, gave each........

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