What did Mansour Abbas mean? | Israel today

Michael Milstein has been mapping the Islamic movements in Israel for years, and now he believes in Mansour Abbas.

"He is one of the only Arab leaders who has an almost complete match between his statements in Arabic and his statements in Hebrew," said Milstein, a former head of the Palestinian arena in the IDF's intelligence division and now head of the Palestinian Studies Forum at the Moshe Dayan Center.

"Abbas," Milstein clarifies, "threw his bomb for the first time on an Arab media stage, about a month ago, at Kol al-Arab studios. His two interviewers there almost fell off the chair. He managed to drive them crazy. There was a big mess in the studio, but for that event almost "There were no echoes in the Israeli media, which does not regularly follow the Arab media."

In the same broadcast, Abbas said that whether we like it or not, Israel is a Jewish state, because that is how it was born.

"The earthquake was created," Milstein says, "when last week, at the Globes conference, Abbas added 'and so it will remain' - it has become a hurricane that has been raging since the USSR and the southern tributary.

Abbas snatches from all directions.

Many consider him a traitor who has adopted the Zionist narrative and he is seriously threatened. "

Abbas' move is a move against me not only in front of elements such as Hamas, the Palestinian Authority or members of the joint list, but also in front of some of the MKs and key figures in his own party, and in front of the leaders of the Southern faction and the Shura Council of Ra'am.

They remember another Abbas, who supports the right of return;

Calling Israel an "apartheid state" and the Israeli police the "occupation police";

Who met with released terrorists and their families;

And who defines himself as "Muslim, Palestinian and Israeli - in this order."

Some of Abbas' colleagues have only in recent weeks embraced Raed Salah, the head of the Islamic Movement's northern faction - an instigator and supporter of convicted terrorism - after his release from prison.

They met another instigator, Sheikh Akram Sabri, head of the Supreme Muslim Council;

The man who indirectly supported the suicide bombings and explained that "the Muslim loves death and the Shahada, as the Jews love life."

Cartoon against Abbas of Muhammad Sabana from Ramallah, Photo: From Twitter

The silence of Abu Deabs

Ibrahim Hajazi, one of the most powerful people in the USSR today who heads the Southern Bureau's Political Bureau, recently described the current political reality as a "fate" and Israel as a "circumstantial state." The world ", and until then, proposes to cling to the land of the rebate and the Waqf and strive to free it from all secrecy over it. The Taliban in Afghanistan, "Mansour Abbas said.

Milstein is aware of all this. "Everything is true," he says, "there is an internal tension in the Rama and the southern faction, but it must be understood - we are now witnessing a developing event. What Abbas is doing is shaking the table, in a way that causes all the objects that need to be rearranged, and perhaps some of them will fall to the floor during the shaking. I do not know. He creates a kind of drama in a place that until now has been quite fixed in his perceptions. There are opposites in his movement, and I do not know how it will end. "He may succeed, he may fail."

Is it possible that there is a division of labor between the extremists and the moderates, that everything is coordinated?

Milstein: "No. There is a real and bitter debate there. RAAM is a democratic body, with many dimensions and quite a few contradictions. It has a wide and vibrant area that includes a large civic array of charities, mosques and youth and women’s clubs, and at the same time is a body subject to the orders of halakhic arbitrators. "Even among the MKs, even within the Shura, there are sharp opponents of Abbas, but in the end, it is not a body that washes the dirty laundry outside. Decisions are made there by majority and minority and then show a uniform front."

The public is trying to understand whether, in the bottom line, Abbas recognized the State of Israel as a Jewish state, or simply stated that this was the reality.

Whether it's an essence or a tactic.

Milstein: "I can not get into the depths of Abbas' soul, but I clearly know that there has never been an Arab politician in Israel who expressed himself in this way. I have been listening to him and reading him, in Arabic and Hebrew, for years. "He is very intent on him. This is a statement that mainly reflects realism. He says to the Arab public: 'Recognize. Is this the reality. A state of all its citizens? - It is unrealistic.'

Michael Milstein // Photo: Tomer Shalom,

Like Moses and Pharaoh

Milstein also refers to the heavy price that Abbas pays for his journey, on both sides of the Green Line. "The discourse against him is very sharp. The Palestinian Authority sees him as a traitor and defines him as actually a member of the Zionist project. From Abu Mazen's point of view, Mansour Abbas gave Israel what the PA insisted on not giving it during Netanyahu's recognition of the State of Israel as a Jewish state.

" The joint list and Hadash, paints the words of Abbas is hugely occupied: Odeh explains that all over the world the immigrant seeks equality from the country he came to, while Abbas not only gives up equality on behalf of the natives (Arabs), but accepts the narrative of the immigrants (Jews). Their state, and withdrew from the Palestinian narrative. "

Is Abbas conducted within the religious boundaries and rules of halakhah outlined by the Shura Council of Ra'am?

Milstein:

In this context, rulings have already been published that allow Muslims in Western countries to integrate into local governments, as long as the purpose of the move is to improve the conditions of the Muslim community.

The chairman of the Shura, Sheikh Deabs, explained in this context that "Moses spoke at the same time with his people and with Pharaoh."

"Abbas himself was hanged by Sheikh Abdullah Nimer Darwish, the founder of the Islamic Movement in Israel, that Arabs in Israel are 'in the belly of a whale' and therefore they will not preach to any Muslim in the world how to lead his life, but also ask those who do not experience a complex reality ".

Not everyone agrees with Milstein. Orientalist Dr. Mordechai Keidar, a research fellow at the Begin-Sadat Center (Bar-Ilan University), does not believe a single word from the chairman of Ram. "Abbas," Keidar estimates, Of the State of Israel as the state of the Jewish people in Islamic ways - in the way of civil jihad about which he speaks openly, in the way of 'Takiya' - concealment and deception, in the way of 'Khuda' - deception. He merely painted a reality, but did not recognize it. He and his friends are deceiving us and trying to put us to sleep. "

What is Civilian Jihad?

Kedar: "The literal meaning of jihad is effort and endeavor. When you have a weapon or an explosive belt, you carry out the endeavor through them, but when you can not use them, you are doing civilian jihad, a language that Abbas also uses. It is jihad. Where the Muslim does within his framework as much as he can and his possibilities.Imigration to Europe is referred to by many Muslims as 'Immigration Jihad'.

"When the United States investigated the Holyland Foundation, which transferred funds to Hamas there, a document reminiscent of the 'Jihad of Establishment' was seized.

The largest construction company in Lebanon is called 'Construction Jihad' and there is also 'Economic Jihad' of supporting BDS organizations.

And media jihad through media networks such as Al-Jazeera and Hamas' al-Aqsa Channel.

I, as a researcher, have identified 20 types of jihad.

"When Mansour Abbas speaks of civilian jihad, he actually means to say that the Muslim must do his best where he lives, in order to promote Islam for the benefit of his own people at the expense of others. "The laws of the minorities", which allow him to be flexible, deceive and adapt his conduct like a chameleon to a changing environment, depending on the color of the environment, and one of the means is the 'taqiya'. "

Mordechai Keidar // Photo: Yehuda Peretz,

"Disastrous ideology"

Abbas said that the State of Israel is a Jewish state and that it will remain so. Is this a "fraud"?

Kedar: "He talked about reality, he points out a fact. But according to the Islamic movement, the State of Israel as a Jewish state has no right to exist. Abbas did not change that. Israel should not have stood up in the first place, it is a historic accident for them. Mansour Abbas follows the traditional path of "The Muslim Brotherhood, which adapts itself, its words and actions to the changing environment. All its conduct is subject to this perception, which aims to anesthetize the enemy. This is exactly how the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt behaved, and this is how Muhammad Morsi came to power."

Mansour Abbas does not really care about the Arab citizens of Israel?

"Of course he cares for them, so he wants to enter the circle of decision-makers; to make sure the public gives him power, to gain enough political power, then to take over the Jewish state and eliminate it. He's on the way to that. "Outside the law? There they understand the reality and know exactly who they are dealing with."

Kedar calls the integration of Abbas and his movement into the government and the coalition "Lebanonization of the State of Israel."

Lebanon, he recalls, "was born as a state for the Christians and was once a normal state. At some point, the Christians there stopped talking to each other and started fighting. "A terrorist organization but also a Lebanese party. This is how Hezbollah took over the country."

In Israel, Kedar believes, a similar process is taking place. "The state was supposed to be a Jewish state, but since the Jews are unable to get along, every side of the internal Jewish debate turns to the Muslims. Even today, a decision cannot be made without the Islamic movement allowing it. "We have a school. They come to power to realize their ideology, which is disastrous for us."

According to Kedar, Abbas is the "nice face" of the Islamic movement, which has Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. This, he says, is "the nature of the Muslim Brotherhood movements everywhere in the world. "The outlawed northern faction and the southern faction that is flattering us have the same goal," he says. Everyone is fighting in the country in different ways. I prefer Sheikh Raed Salah, who at least tells us the truth face to face. Abbas is lying to us inside. "

Are you not exaggerating?

See the threats to Abbas' lives.

The criticism he absorbs: traitor, lowly, gentile of Shabbat. "

Kedar:" I do not believe his word.

Explain to me why his video with the talk of civil jihad was not distributed in Hebrew as well?

Threats to his life?

You may.

But I would not rule out the possibility that some of it is staged.

The doctrine of the Muslim Brotherhood is an assimilation according to the situation in every arena and arena.

"Since we have had a political crisis for more than two years, they jumped on the bandwagon and are making the most of the situation for them."

"Morsi also 'put the enemy to sleep.'"

Demonstration of Islamic Movement in Support of Muslim Brotherhood, Kfar Kanna, 2013, Photo: Michel Dot Com

When will you still believe Abbas?

Kedar: "On the day he stands on the Knesset podium and calls on his son to enlist in the army and recognize the State of Israel as the state of the Jewish people. In the first place, not in retrospect. No 'taqiya';

"Deep in DNA"

Wadia Awada, a veteran writer and political journalist in the Arab media, an expert and commentator on Middle Eastern affairs and Arab society, recalled this week that already in 1996, in Netanyahu's first term as prime minister, former MK Abd al-Malek Dahamash told him - then chairman - Because his party will be willing to cooperate with Netanyahu and the Likud.

"It was a revolutionary statement," Owada recalled, "but these things in the interview that Damascus gave me did not cause a stir, because in those days, numerically, Netanyahu did not need a PM at all and was not ready for it.

It was a one-way courtship, which illustrated even then how deeply ingrained pragmatism and practicality are in the DNA of RAAM.

How, then, do you understand Mansour Abbas' stormy remarks about the Jewish state?

Awada: "Abbas did try to make it clear after the storm he provoked that he only wanted to describe reality and did not express a position, but if we go back to what he said, both every evening and at the Globes conference, he was found to have taken a position, and not just described reality. "To convey an almost overt message, which must be reconciled with the fact that the State of Israel is a Jewish state. The message is further derived from the concept of integration in government and government, a concept that enjoys broad support from the Arab public in Israel."

And there is still a difference between integration into the government and the apparent recognition of the State of Israel as a Jewish state.

Awada: "True. Recognition is two steps further. It is in fact an adoption of the historical Zionist narrative. In my opinion, Mansour Abbas estimated that such a statement would serve him within the government, and expedite the implementation of the coalition agreement."

Wadia Awada,

Does he have a backing in the Arab public for this statement?

Awada: "He has his back in the Arab public to integrate into the government and work for the needs of the Arab citizens. He has no back in the Arab public to recognize the State of Israel as the state of the Jewish people. The criticism he received was sweeping. MK Walid Taha explicitly objected to this statement. Ibrahim Hajazi, head of the Southern Bureau's Political Bureau, clarified that what is required is the Islamic Movement Charter. "

But Abbas' council did not condemn or correct Abbas.

Awada:" I heard from within that they decided to allow him to correct his own statement. "

Let us assume for a moment that the meaning of Abbas' words is indeed recognition of Israel as a Jewish state - is the Arab public in Israel due to digest it?

Awada: "Not in the foreseeable future. If there is a sixty-day agreement on the conflict, then it is possible that in exchange for the repeal of the Nationality Law, Israeli Arabs will recognize the State of Israel as a Jewish state, not just a description of a situation." Maturity for that. "

Awada believes that Abbas went so far as to say.

"He spoke as if he were observing a distant event taking place in Honduras," says Awada. " 

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