Abbas told Channel 13 in December 2025 that he wants to be in the next government, without naming a ministry. By July 2026 he was framing Arab-party membership in the coalition as a necessary condition for any government that would invest in Arab society.
Who they are
Mansour Abbas is a dentist who leads Ra’am and took it into an Israeli governing coalition, the first Arab party to sit in one since 1977. He was born in Maghar in 1974 and began preaching at the new mosque in Nazareth at seventeen. Sheikh Abdullah Nimar Darwish, a preacher of non-violence and dialogue, shaped his thinking. He took a doctorate in dentistry at the Hebrew University, where he chaired the Arab students’ committee in the late nineties, and a master’s in political science at the University of Haifa.
He became Ra’am’s secretary-general in 2007 and three years later was elected deputy to Hamad Abu Daabes at the head of the southern branch of the Islamic Movement. He met Hamas figures including Khaled Mashal between 2014 and 2016 in a peace initiative run by Michael Melchior. Elected chairman of Ra’am in 2018, he pushed through a new charter for the Islamic Movement built on wasati Islam and brought Arab Muslim women onto the party’s Knesset list.
In the Knesset he has been a deputy speaker and has chaired the special committees on eradicating crime in the Arab sector and on Arab society affairs. After the Joint List broke apart, Ra’am ran on its own in 2021, won four seats, and Abbas joined Yair Lapid and Naftali Bennett in forming the 36th government. In December 2025 he announced that the party would separate from the Shura Council and the Islamic Movement.
Positions and record
Pragmatism: Civil equality through participation, not protest.
Crime: An emergency national plan for Arab towns.
Faith: Conservative religious values, political moderation.
Where they stand
Holds the party line on every issue.