If Abbas Addresses Knesset, Joint List To Boycott Over ‘Normalization’

“To pursue a path of conciliation would be a shameful betrayal of our paths to date.”

Umm el-Fahm, October 21 – Members of the Joint List political alliance of mostly Arab parties voiced concern today over rumors that Palestinian Authority President and PLO Chairman Mahmoud Abbas might make a historic visit to the Israeli parliament, saying that if the Palestinian leader did so, they would feel compelled to shun the speech as an unacceptable demonstration of “normalization” with the Zionist entity.

MKs Haneen Zoabi, Jamal Zahalke, Ayman Odeh – the list chairman – Dov Henin, Ahmad Tibi, and various officials of the four parties composing the faction gathered this afternoon in this city – Zoabi’s hometown – to coordinate a unified response in the event that Abbas accepts Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s invitation to conduct a historic summit reminiscent of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat’s address to the Knesset in November 1977 as part of the process that led to the Camp David Accords, a peace agreement that still stands. The group agreed that while it appears unlikely to happen, a swirl of unconfirmed reports of such a development necessitates a coherent policy on the part of the 13-member Joint List. They agreed unanimously to boycott any Abbas speech to the parliament, as condoning it would send the wrong message to the world.

MK Odeh explained that more than simple international relations was at work. “There’s a personal political element mixed in,” he noted. “A good number of us have staked our political careers on aligning ourselves with some of the most radical anti-Israel factions among the Palestinians, and to abandon those partners and their rejection of normalization with Israel just because the leader of the PLO has decided to pursue a path of conciliation would be a shameful betrayal of our paths to date.”

Odeh himself, often described in the international press as a political moderate, gave a noncommittal answer when asked whether a boycott of Abbas might do irreparable damage to Arab citizens of Israel and the perception among Jewish Israelis that the former represents a Fifth Column within Israeli society. “We cannot decide for the Palestinians how to conduct their resistance, and abandoning the anti-normalization stance would constitute an endorsement of the pro-normalization position, and that is a subject of controversy in Palestinian society,” he asserted. “Remember, at this point Abbas is unelected, since his four-year term expired last decade, so he doesn’t necessarily represent the Palestinians anymore. We, at least, were elected by somebody.”

When pressed on the question of the decision’s impact on the Arab citizenry of Israel who elected the thirteen Joint List legislators in June 2015, MK Zoabi answered, “Who?”