Only a partnership with Mansour Abbas can save Zionism from itself

In the face of annexation, democratic erosion, and a mounting brain drain, partnership with Ra’amn – the United Arab List – is no longer a political option – it is an existential necessity for Israel’s pro-change camp. If Israel truly seeks renewal and life, it must stop apologizing for a civic alliance with Arab society and make it the backbone of a governing alternative.

There is one truth that too many are afraid to say out loud in Israel in 2026: if we want a Jewish and democratic state, we must build a political partnership with Mansour Abbas and Ra’am. Not because “they deserve it,” and not because “there is no government without them,” but because it is the only way to pull the country off its current trajectory.

That trajectory is clear to anyone willing to look: de facto annexation of the West Bank alongside a systematic weakening of democratic institutions, and a mass departure of Israel’s economic elite.

In recent weeks, we have heard the familiar refrain again – an acceleration of settlement activity, the retroactive legalization of outposts, and open talk of “deepening” control rather than resolving the conflict. Annexation is no longer creeping; it is racing ahead. Hundreds of thousands of settlers in the West Bank, and tens of thousands more in East Jerusalem, are creating a reality that makes the necessary separation – essential for our own survival – ever less feasible. Because annexation means one state for two peoples.

Israeli society prefers to suppress the obvious question: what happens the day after? If Israel effectively annexes the West Bank, what is the status of the millions of Palestinians who live there? Grant them full civil rights, and the result is a binational state. Deny them those rights, and you have a single state with a hierarchy of rights – apartheid – and the destruction of democracy.

Even if one ignores international law and dismisses the academic, scientific, and eventually economic boycotts that would follow, there remains the internal price: the collapse of the basic consensus over what the state is and what its future should be.

This brings us to the second part of the equation. It is not only annexation that leads toward a binational reality; the regime itself is changing rapidly before our eyes. In a democracy, the Knesset is meant to be the legislative branch. In practice, for some time now it has functioned as an executive arm – a rubber stamp for the coalition. Coalition discipline replaces oversight, legislative blitzes replace deliberation, and committees operate like assembly lines, silencing the opposition.

At the same time, a reckless assault continues against law-enforcement institutions – the judiciary and the prosecution. This is not legitimate criticism, nor a necessary debate about the limits of judicial intervention. It is a sustained campaign designed to make the public stop trusting judges, prosecutors, and the police.

This is not “reform.” It is a method. Weaken the checks and balances, and politics is unshackled precisely when restraints are most needed: during war, fear, polarization, and under leadership locked in a perpetual struggle for survival.

In such a reality, it is hardly surprising that more and more capable Israelis – the people who actually keep this country running – are choosing to leave. They are not “spoiled elites from Kaplan Street,” nor are they anti-Zionists. They come from across the political spectrum and are choosing to raise their children elsewhere, in places that feel more stable and sane. They are aware of rising antisemitism (another consequence to which Israel’s government has significantly contributed), but they want stability, a future for their children, a functioning economy, and a state that speaks to them rather than screams at them.

Of course, the chorus responds: “Let them go,” “we’ll manage without them,” “there are scientists on the right too,” as if only leftists want normal lives. The truth is that we will not manage without them, and that scientists, doctors, and tech professionals who are not politically identified are leaving as well.

What is most troubling is not just the numbers, but who is leaving: those who can afford to go. In other words, the very people the state needs most, the backbone of the economy. Their departure is not a “protest.” It is a crack in the pillars.

A pragmatic politician

Among those who remain, about 21.1 percent of Israel’s citizens are Arab. Citizens in every sense, even if some are uncomfortable with that fact. They are doctors and nurses, pharmacists and engineers, educators, outstanding students, entrepreneurs. They pay taxes, build lives here, and seek civic belonging.

Anyone who believes a Jewish and democratic state can be sustained while permanently excluding one-fifth of its citizens from political participation simply does not understand democracy or does not want to. Mansour Abbas is the test case of the Israel we are becoming. He is not a symbol of the left, nor an anti-Zionist revolutionary. He is a pragmatic politician who articulated a simple formula: civic partnership in exchange for civic responsibility.

Benjamin Netanyahu himself once reached understandings with Abbas. But Abbas took that agreement further, making a historic move by joining the Bennett-Lapid government – the so-called “government of change.” That step did not solve all the problems, or even most of them. But it proved something invaluable: it is possible, and entirely legitimate.

Had Abbas done this under Netanyahu, no one would have objected. But he chose to join a government without Netanyahu, and for that supposed sin, we slid back into fear, incitement, and exclusion.

It is time for opposition leaders to stop dancing to Netanyahu’s tune. Equal rights are a national interest. Those who oppose principles like equal budgeting, affirmative action, removing barriers in planning and construction, and a genuine fight against violence in Arab society are the true anti-Zionists – enemies of Israel as a democratic state.

And anyone who still imagines a genuine government of change without Mansour Abbas – even if technically possible – is selling illusions to the public and to themselves. If you truly want life, governance, and above all, repair, stop trying to be a pale imitation of Netanyahu. Stop being ashamed. Stop apologizing and stammering.

Every delay in building an alternative coalition, every ego game within the pro-change camp, every postponement of this partnership brings Netanyahu closer to another term – one in which Israel will cross its final red lines and become a religious, fundamentalist autocracy. A state where the majority carries the minority on its back, the police fight the opposition instead of crime, and public money is spent preserving the past instead of building the future. Look at Iran. If we do not wake up, that is our future.