Loading ...
Voters in Nazareth Cheer Gains by Arab Alliance
Choruses of beeping horns echoed through this Arab city in northern Israel as word spread that an alliance of Arab parties had received 14 seats in the next Parliament, making it the third-largest bloc.
Long-divided Arab parties’ forming a coalition was unprecedented; so was the size of their new bloc, offering a good reason for Nazareth and other Arab towns to rejoice.
“This is a great achievement,” said Ahmad Tibi, a veteran Arab politician who was elected to Parliament on Tuesday, speaking at the alliance’s headquarters in Nazareth. Men and women cheered and waved flags bearing the alliance’s slogan, “The Will of the People.”
“We will have before us great challenges. We will fight racism, we will fight fascism; we will defend our rights, regardless of the government,” he said. “Today, we are stronger.”
Yet as the euphoria fades, it remains far from clear what influence the Arab cohort, which calls itself the Joint List, will actually have.
Exit polls on Tuesday night showed that the race between the Likud party, led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and the center-left Zionist Union, led by Isaac Herzog, was very close. But as the votes were counted, Likud actually had a substantial lead.
Source: www.nytimes.com