Segalovitz decision to join Arab party is a paradigm change for Israel

After two months of negotiations, Yoav Segalovitz, a former high-ranking police officer and MK, has joined Ra’am, an Islamist party and will hold the second slot on the party’s slate in the upcoming elections. This is an extraordinary development, a paradigm change that may have a direct effect on the elections.

Ra’am, whose name is an Arabic acronym meaning United Arab List, was once allied with the southern, strongly ideological branch of the Islamic movement; deeply committed to the one-state solution, it had also been part of the traditional bloc of Arab parties. Over the past decade, however, Ra’am, led by Abbas Mansour, has disassociated from the Islamic movement and played down his party’s involvement in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Rather, the party has emphasised civil problems Israeli Palestinians face, including rising crime and violence, inadequate housing, persistent unemployment, poor levels of education, and unequal government investment.

Segalovitz has been an MK since 2019, as part of Yesh Atid. Prior to entering politics, he served in the Israeli police, attaining the rank of nitzav (deputy commissioner), establishing the police anti-corruption unit and serving as head of investigations and intelligence. During the Lapid-Bennett Government, he served as deputy minister of internal security and is universally credited with minimising criminality and violence in the Arab sector.

Until 2021, Jewish majority parties generally regarded Arab parties as unsuitable to form a government with, especially since most of these parties called for the establishment of a single, bi-national state, a non-starter in Israeli politics. This exclusion was challenged for the first time when Ra’am joined the Lapid-Bennett coalition (2021-2022).