Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Make a matched gift and support Jewish journalism. DONATE NOW
Fast Forward

Arab-Israeli Lawmakers To Meet With Arab League in Cairo, Doha

Arab-Israeli lawmakers will meet in two Arab capitals with the Arab League, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said.

Abbas made the statement on Saturday in Ramallah during his second meeting in less than a month with Ayman Odeh, the head of Israel’s Joint Arab List political coalition. The lawmakers would go to Cairo and Doha, Qatar, the P.A. leader said, but did not say when the visits would be arranged.

Also present at the meeting was the head of the southern branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel, Abdullah Nimer Darwish.

Odeh is scheduled to meet in the next week with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

While Netanyahu reportedly plans to use the meeting to patch up relations with the Arab-Israeli community, Odeh told the Times of Israel he would use the meeting to push the Arab community’s agenda.

In a video posted on his Facebook page on Election Day, Netanyahu urged his right-wing supporters to vote to counteract the Arab-Israelis who he claimed were voting “in droves” with assistance from foreign groups. The statement was widely criticized.

Netanyahu later apologized to representatives of the Arab-Israeli community during a meeting in Jerusalem. Joint Arab List lawmakers were not invited to the meeting.

Odeh and members of the Joint Arab List also met with Abbas a week after Israel’s March 17 national elections.

This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.

We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news. All donations are still being matched by the Forward Board - up to $100,000 until April 24.

This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.

With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.

The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.

Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:

  • Credit the Forward
  • Retain our pixel
  • Preserve our canonical link in Google search
  • Add a noindex tag in Google search

See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.