Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited Nazareth today (Wednesday), which soon became particularly stormy following the demonstrations in the city. Nazareth Mayor Ali Salam, who met with Netanyahu earlier, praised the prime minister in an interview with the main edition: “I believe him, he wants to help the Arabs.” He sharply attacked joint list chairman Ayman Odeh, while sitting in the studio: “Don’t count him, he only cares about himself.”
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Ali Salam: “Netanyahu wants to help the Arabs, I believe him”
“Netanyahu is the prime minister of all the citizens of the country, including the Arabs,” Salam explained to Danny Kushmero. “He wants to help, and from the way he spoke today – I believe him.” As for the murky relationship the mayor knew with Netanyahu, he said: “I do not look back, but forward, in favor of the Arabs who have suffered since 1948.”
Salam claimed that the Likud was expected to receive between 3 and 4 seats in Arab society, and did not deny that the prime minister tried to reserve him on the Likud list for the upcoming Knesset: “Leave what I was promised. I will remain mayor of Nazareth. I will never be in the Knesset.
But the climax of the interview came at the end – when Salam launched an unprecedented attack against the joint list chairman MK Ayman Odeh, who was sitting in the studio at the time. “I do not recognize him, do not want to hear his voice,” he said. “For me he does not exist. I do not count him by half an inch because he cares only for himself and not for anyone else. He did nothing for those who voted for him.”
MK Odeh: “From Netanyahu’s point of view – a good Arab is a distant Arab”
Odeh did not directly address the words of the mayor of Nazareth, but claimed: “We made a school for Netanyahu for 3 election campaigns. After the Nationality Law, which saw us as second-class citizens – we showed him what it means to be first-class citizens.”
“We are the ones who recommended Bnei Gantz – and he turned his back on us,” Odeh said of the joint list’s recommendation for a blue-and-white prime ministerial prime minister. “More than Haman’s hatred than Mordechai’s lover, but we did it.”
Odeh attacked Netanyahu: “As far as Netanyahu is concerned – a good Arab is a distant, very distant Arab. I know my people in the palm of my hand – the Arab citizens will never vote ‘sick’.” Asked if the joint list would run in its current format in the upcoming election campaign as well, he explained: “We will turn every stone to make it happen.”
RAAM Mansour Abbas chairman: “The Arab public will not vote for those who turn their backs on him after the election”
Meanwhile, PM Mansour Abbas, who has recently reported on his warming relations with the prime minister, sounded a little different tonight, hinting at Netanyahu: After the election. “
“Ra’am under my leadership has become the address for sober Arab citizens who refuse to be in the pockets of the left or the right,” he added. “We have been able to put the painful issues of Arab society at the heart of the discourse and change the rules of the game.”