Arab parties in Israel join hands against Netanyahu

The Arab parties in the Israeli parliament, namely Balad, Hadash and United Arab List, which have decided to run on a joint list for the upcoming election, introduced the new union on Friday and declared their goal: to rid the parliament of “the extreme right” represented by the ruling Netanyahu cabinet, the Qods News Agency reports.

Members of the new united party gathered for a press conference in which they unveiled the make-up of the new list, noting that the union was reached.

Aiman Ouda, who was placed in the number one spot on the new list, predicted that it would receive 15 seats in the elections.

Ouda has told the Israeli Channel 2 News on Friday that "this list will throw [Avigdor] Liberman, [Naftali] Bennett and [Binyamin] Netanyahu to the garbage bin of history, and we will work to remove the extreme right from the Knesset.”

Also, another lawmaker in the group, Ahmed Tibi says that the credit for getting all the Arab parties together should go to the Foreign Minister.

"Liberman and the extreme rightists raised the threshold to push the Arabs out of the Knesset. Today we are closer to the top and closer to the threshold, and we hope that [Liberman] will not have a representative in the Knesset. Our list has no theft suspects like Liberman's party does - this list is clean and pure,” said Tibi.

And, Ramiz Jaraisy, former mayor of Nazareth said at Friday’s conference, "This list represents the entire social fabric in Israel, this really is a democratic list, the only democratic list in the Israeli Knesset."