Eisenkot rejects claim he promised Ra'am a place in future coalition during Bedouin meeting

Yashar party chairman Gadi Eisenkot denied on Wednesday that he promised to bring Ra'am into a future government or coalition during a meeting with Bedouin local authority heads on Tuesday. The denial followed an N12 news report in which northern Bedouin local authority heads who met Eisenkot on Tuesday said he had promised to include Ra'am in a government he would lead. Mu'id al-Heib, head of the Tuba-Zanghariya Local Council, told Radio Nas that Eisenkot had said contacts were underway with Ra'am and that he would work to include the party in his next government. Yashar rejected the report outright and released footage of Eisenkot's meeting with the Bedouin leaders, as well as a separate clip of remarks by Eisenkot and another of remarks by al-Heib. The party stressed that Eisenkot did not discuss the makeup of the next government at any point during the meeting. The report came as recent polls show that both Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's bloc and the opposition bloc seeking to replace him lack the ability to secure a majority, suggesting that forming a coalition without the support of the Arab parties could prove challenging. In 2021, Ra'am joined the coalition with the Naftali Bennett-Yair Lapid government, marking the first time an Arab party was a formal member of a governing coalition. Although Ra'am now seeks to rejoin a coalition, most opposition parties in the bloc seeking to replace Netanyahu have rejected the possibility of forming a government with any Arab party. Eisenkot's Yashar party has been leading in recent polling with around 23 seats, surpassing Netanyahu's ruling Likud party. On Sunday, the Likud announced that it would file requests to the Central Elections Committee to ban both the Arab-led parties – Ra'am and the Joint List – from running in the October 27 election.