On Saturday Ra’am selected the candidates who will take the top five spots on its list for the next Knesset. Party chairman MK Mansour Abbas will head the list. Walid Taha was elected to second place, Waleed Al-Hawashla to third, and Iman Khatib-Yassin and Yasser Hujeirat to fourth and fifth place, respectively.
In addition, the party’s general conference authorized Abbas to make changes to the list and add candidates through reserved slots.
Abbas addressed his talks with Yoav Segalovitz, a law enforcement officer and politician, saying that they were “halfway there.” According to Abbas, Segalovich “is worthy of being the Minister of Public Security.” Abbas also addressed the possibility of serving as a minister himself, saying that the matter was still under consideration: “We are approaching a decision on this issue.”
Abbas was elected chairman of Ra’am in 2018. The party’s constitution limits the chairperson’s term to nine years. To a large extent, today’s vote was also a vote of confidence in the path Abbas has charted for his party toward the heart of Israeli politics.
Recently, the party formally separated from the Shura Council of the Islamic Movement. This time, the elections were held independently of the Shura Council and on a regional basis, meaning that the representatives were elected to represent the party’s different electoral regions.
Ra’am currently has five members of Knesset, and polls project that the party will win around five seats. Abbas refused to join the Joint List and announced that the party would run independently in the upcoming elections.