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Bibi Should Form a Government With Mansour Abbas: Before you reach for the smelling salts, hear me out
Liel Leibovitz
October 29, 2026

…Let us, then, imagine what might happen if Bibi picked up the phone, called Abbas, and made him an offer he couldn’t refuse. First of all, the move would sucker punch Israel’s other Arab party, the Joint List, a ragtag coalition of Assadists, Communists, and terror enthusiasts. One of its leaders, Sami Abu Shehadeh, was recently instructed by Israel’s Supreme Court to renounce his candidacy rather than risk being disqualified for his repeated support of terrorism, including calling Oct. 7 a historic event. By extending Abbas an invitation, Bibi could send an important message to Israel’s Arab citizens: You must choose between Israel and “Palestine.” One path leads to greater agency, significant political clout, and the power and the budgets to address the issues Israeli Arabs really care about, including subpar infrastructure and rising crime in their communities. The other leads to irrelevance or worse. Second, such an offer would devastate the so-called Change Bloc, the gaggle of boobs who ran a silly campaign offering no other plan or qualification save for not being Bibi. READ MORE

MEDIA LINE Israeli Arabs, Palestinians View Path to Coalition Through Political Clout Together, the opposition and Arab parties would command 67 seats, enough to replace Netanyahu if they could agree on a governing arrangement. But the arithmetic masks deep political divisions. Eisenkot, Naftali Bennett and Avigdor Liberman have previously rejected reliance on Arab parties, while Democrats leader Yair Golan has urged cooperation to remove Netanyahu. For Palestinian citizens of Israel, the results reflect political mobilization fueled by frustration over domestic policies, organized crime and successive wars. For Palestinians in the West Bank, the possibility of change is being viewed more cautiously. Nidal Foqaha, a Palestinian political analyst based in Ramallah, told The Media Line that the Arab parties’ success reflected growing insecurity among their voters.

JNS Fiamma Nirenstein: Democracy as common sense The change bloc did everything it could to destroy Benjamin Netanyahu. In Italy, something similar happened to Silvio Berlusconi, the billionaire media mogul who served four times as Italian prime minister: character assassination. It was carried out with passion and skill. At dawn on Election Day, outside polling stations, pleasant young activists reminiscent of Hashomer Hatzair, the socialist Zionist youth movement founded more than a century ago, would approach you in pairs and explain why Netanyahu simply had to go home. For months, the relentless hammering spared no aspect of the prime minister: his responsibility for Oct. 7, the hostages, his trial, his family. And yet, with 85% of the ballots counted, the Likud-led bloc stood at 53 seats, while Gadi Eisenkot’s camp had 48. The two sides are not so far apart, but Bibi is stronger.