Yoav Segalovitz joins Arab party Raam election list

Former Israeli police official Yoav Segalovitz will run on the election list of Raam, a moderate Islamist party, in Israel's October 27 election, party leader Mansour Abbas announced Monday.

AFP reports Segalovitz will be the first Jewish Israeli to stand for an explicitly Arab party. Abbas said Raam was running on an anti-crime platform and had chosen Segalovitz as someone who had worked with the party on that issue.

Segalovitz recently served in the Knesset with Yair Lapid's centrist Yesh Atid party. He had earlier been deputy national security minister in a coalition government led by Lapid and Naftali Bennett.

Abbas joined that coalition in 2021 in an unprecedented agreement that brought Raam into a government made up of parties from the left, right and centre. The deal helped Abbas secure promises of funding for Israel's Arab minority, but it drew criticism from some Arab Israelis and Jewish voters.

Segalovitz said Monday that Arabs and Jews in Israel had a difficult history but also a shared future, and that political cooperation was possible without either side changing the other.

Latest polls cited by AFP show Raam winning five or six seats in the 120-member Knesset. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party criticised the move and said Abbas refused to recognise Hamas and Hezbollah as terrorist organisations and supported creating a Palestinian state. AFP reported that Abbas has repeatedly condemned Hamas's October 7, 2023 attacks on Israel.