Former MK Yoav Segalovitz’s decision to run for Knesset with the Islamist Ra’am party came as a complete stunner to Israel’s political establishment.

Segalovitz is a household name in Israel. He founded and commanded Lahav 433 — often dubbed “Israel’s FBI” — the elite police unit responsible for investigating high-level government corruption and organized crime. He later served as deputy public security minister in the 2021–2022 Naftali Bennett-Yair Lapid government, tasked with leading the crackdown on crime in the Arab community.

Now the longtime Yesh Atid politician is the second name on the electoral slate of Ra’am, a conservative Arab-Muslim party that has broken away from other Arab parties by pragmatically seeking a place within a governing coalition.

Ra’am’s trailblazing decision to join the Bennett-Lapid government stretched an already wide tent into an uncommonly capacious one. Now the addition of Segalovitz to the roster is meant to do the same for the party itself, expanding its appeal and acceptability to Israel’s Jewish majority and chipping away at the idea that Arab parties have no place in governing the country.

“Our goal is to influence what happens in the country,” Segalovitz told The Times of Israel in an interview this week. “We want to break down the walls and the right-wing paradigm, and bring an end to this toxic and dangerous discourse.”

When his political move first began taking shape — floated in back-to-back interviews by Ra’am chief Mansour Abbas and Segalovitz on Radio A-Shams, Israel’s premier commercial Arabic-language radio station — it seemed fanciful, perhaps little more than a trial balloon with slim chances of ever becoming reality.

But amid the ensuing criticism and ridicule, Segalovitz remained focused on what he says is his ultimate goal: to serve as a working model and symbol of Jewish-Arab coexistence in Israel. While Jews and Arabs already intersect in medical facilities, shopping centers, offices and academia, Segalovitz wants to expand the partnership to the most complicated arena of all — Israeli politics.

The more pressing issue, however, is tackling crime, which has reached unprecedented levels in the Arab community during Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s latest four-year coalition term. Among ideas Segalovitz proposes is taking young Arab men off the street by drafting them into national civil service.

“As for crime among young people… two years of civilian service are among the things that are supposed to provide an answer to this,” he said.

Since Ra’am’s convention in late August and Segalovitz’s formal announcement that he was joining the Islamist party’s Knesset slate, the move has attracted significant interest far beyond Israel’s borders. “I didn’t realize in advance just how much of a political event this would be for people around the world. I’m being flooded with requests from American and European media outlets,” Segalovitz said.

“At first, I didn’t understand why it interested them, but the nuances of Israeli politics matter to them,” he said.

Segalovitz spoke to The Times of Israel on September 14. The interview has been translated and edited for clarity and concision.

The Times of Israel: Four years have passed since you were directly involved in the effort to curb violence and crime in Arab society. What steps will you have to take if you return to government?

Yoav Segalovitz: What has changed is that, unfortunately, they simply stopped dealing with the issue. Reducing crime in Arab society is no longer a government objective. The prime minister does not deal with it, there is no real ministerial team, and no one is taking a broad view of how to tackle the problem, as I did at the time.

The truth is that I hoped they would continue, regardless of the political situation, but there was no real continuation, and the murder figures skyrocketed. People talk about the murder victims because murder is the most serious offense, but murder is merely the most extreme manifestation of criminal terror. Enforcement has to be broad: firearms, protection rackets, reckless driving, the whole fundamental sense that there is no law and no accountability. That is exactly what is happening today.

But what specifically are you planning to do in terms of action?

The next government needs to........

© The Times of Israel