Ameer Fakhoury’s essay is about the far-reaching changes in domestic Israeli Palestinian parliamentary politics in the last year. The split of the United Arab List from the Joint Arab List, its entrance to the 24th Knesset, and the widespread coalition contacts it held culminating in its support for the new government – are all expressions of in-depth changes in Palestinian society in Israel and its relationship with the Jewish (and democratic) state. Fakhoury compares the move by Mansour Abbas to that of Ayman Odeh, with their commonalities and differences. Both wish to advance a politics of influence – Palestinian influence on and in the Israeli regime. But whereas Abbas enters Israeli politics through its dissolution into groups and tribes, Odeh wishes to expand the definition of Israeli citizenship so that it also includes the Palestinian citizens. The essay was written right before the events of May 2021, but the discussed Palestinian politics of influence, which left their mark on Israeli politics, is likely to have created a racist, nationalist counter-effect that was one of the causes of the violent conflagration in May.

https://doi.org/10.70959/tac.54.2021.187202