The Islamist Ra’am Party on Sunday decided to temporarily freeze its membership of both the Knesset and the coalition amid mounting pressure following clashes between Palestinians and police on the Temple Mount.
The decision is largely declarative at this point as parliament is on hiatus, although opposition sources said they saw it as another opportunity to weaken the coalition, encourage exits and topple the government.
According to sources quoted in Hebrew media on Sunday, the measure – which will last two weeks and will be coordinated with Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Foreign Minister Yair Lapid – aims to ease pressure on the party and prevent a permanent break in the Government.
Ra’am condemned the Israeli security forces over the violence at the holy site in Jerusalem, and one of the Islamist party MPs threatened to leave the coalition. However, Ra’am boss Mansour Abbas has downplayed such a prospect and has repeatedly called for calm.
The decision on the temporary freeze was made during a Sunday meeting of the Shura Council of the Southern Islamic Movement – Ra’am’s umbrella organization – to address violence at the holy site in Jerusalem.
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The council can make decisions about the party and also has the power to order members of the Knesset to leave the coalition.
The Islamic Movement, founded in the 1980s, has come under the spotlight over the past year after Ra’am, which has four seats in the Knesset, became the first Arab party to join the coalition government in decades.
High-ranking officials of the Islamic Movement will gather in Kfar Qasim on Saturday, January 22, 2022 to elect a new leadership. (Courtesy: Islamic Movement)
The movement is informally split between its more radical ‘Northern’ branch and what is seen as more moderate ‘Southern’ leadership. Israel banned the northern branch in 2015 over alleged terrorist links.
Unlike some of his hotheaded predecessors, Abbas takes a pragmatic approach.
Earlier Sunday, a senior religious figure in the South Islamic Movement urged Ra’am to steer the coalition past the clashes.
As tensions around the Temple Mount have increased as the Knesset is in the middle of its spring recess, the sources hope Ra’am officials are hoping the situation will calm down by the time Parliament is reconvened on May 9.
Israeli Border Police patrol near the Lion’s Gate in Jerusalem’s Old City April 17, 2022 as Palestinians wait to enter the Temple Mount compound. (Ahmad Gharabli/AFP)
However, some suggested that the opposition would use the freeze on Ra’am’s membership to intensify efforts to overthrow the government.
Walid Taha, Chairman of the Knesset Committee on Internal Affairs and the Environment, chairs a committee session at the Knesset in Jerusalem on November 15, 2021. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)
And Ra’am MK Walid Taha said shortly before announcing the decision that the coalition was “seemingly” headed for collapse. “We thought this government would behave differently,” he said, citing “provocative” visits by Jews to the Temple Mount as the reason for the recent violence. The government, he accused, “allowed a few hundred fascists” to stir up trouble.
The current government has been brought to the brink of collapse in recent days after MK Idit Silman, a member of Bennett’s Yamina party, left the coalition, losing its razor-thin majority. The 120-member Knesset is now deadlocked, with both the coalition and opposition holding 60 seats each.
Some have suggested that the Opposition’s Joint List, a majority Arab party separate from Binyamin Netanyahu’s opposition bloc, could help the coalition pass some votes and prevent its fall into a no-confidence vote. The party itself has made contradictory statements on this.
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