Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud is reportedly negotiating with MK Mansour Abbas’s Ra’am party in an effort to secure support for Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi’s controversial broadcast media overhaul, offering to halt home demolitions in Negev Bedouin communities in exchange for the party’s absence from key committee votes.

According to a Channel 12 report on Monday, coalition officials are in talks with Ra’am MK Waleed Alhawashla, the only Arab lawmaker serving on the special committee preparing the bill, after previous efforts to persuade him to support or abstain from voting on the legislation failed.

The report said Alhawashla told senior Likud officials he would only consider abstaining if the government agreed to a complete halt to the demolition of illegally constructed homes in the Negev’s Bedouin community, which makes up Ra’am’s core constituency.

Likud reportedly did not reject the demand, leaving the door open to further negotiations, though the party has publicly denied the report, calling it “another spin by the Arab parties.”

Far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, who boasts of having overseen the demolition of more than 5,700 Bedouin structures, including homes in the last year, condemned the report, calling it a “disgrace and shame for Likud.”

He said he would disregard any such agreement, rejects any “negotiations with supporters of terrorism” — an accusation the right has often lobbed at Ra’am, despite its frequent condemnation of........

© The Times of Israel