The Knesset activity of the United Arab List (Ra’am), 1996–2020

This article analyses the interaction between Mansour Abbas, leader of the Islamist United Arab List (Ra’am), and the Zionists parties. It explores Ra’am’s legislative activity since its foundation in 1996 and claims that Abbas’s decision to work with the government on advancing civic issues is not a new trend in Arab Israeli politics. Ra’am’s members of Knesset (MKs) have been doing this since 1996, turning the party into a religious-civil political factor. At the same time, Ra’am’s ideology–derived from the Muslim Brotherhood’s vision of a global Islamic Caliphate, built inter alia on the ruins of the State of Israel–has remained intact.