Mansour Abbas: Israel's Arab Kingmaker Wants to Topple Netanyahu Again

TVS News AI, editorially supervised, presents Mansour Abbas: Israel's Arab Kingmaker Wants to Topple Netanyahu Again.

An unusual electoral alliance is forming in Israel: Arab politician Mansour Abbas is taking the field against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu alongside a Jewish former police commander. Who the two are, and why their partnership is out of the ordinary even by Israeli standards, is laid out in a recent New York Times report.

From the Dentist's Chair to the Knesset

Mansour Abbas is a political newcomer of a special kind in Israel. Before becoming a member of the Knesset, he worked as a dentist – a profession that, according to the New York Times, first brought him to public attention. He is now considered one of the most influential Arab voices in the country. Once, the paper writes, he already helped push Netanyahu out of office. Now he is evidently planning to try again.

He cannot do it alone. What matters is who is willing to coalition with him – and who is not.

A Surprising Partnership With a Jewish Former Police Officer

That Abbas is not running solo in this second attempt is new: by his side, according to the NYT, stands a Jewish former police commander. Both are taking the field together with the declared goal of removing Netanyahu from office once again. The paper characterizes Abbas's strategy as a deliberate opening – away from the image of the Arab-Israeli politician as permanent opposition, toward a role as a partner on equal footing.

That an Arab member of the Knesset is forging an electoral alliance with a former high-ranking police officer of all people is an unfamiliar picture in Israeli politics – and the expression of a deliberate strategic shift.

What the Alliance Means for the Election

In Israel, individual mandates often decide things in the end. Once before, in connection with Netanyahu's ouster, Arab MKs were part of a majority that could not have come together without them. If Abbas and his alliance once again belong to the kingmaker bloc, that would be a second piece of evidence that Arab politicians in Israel no longer see themselves as a blocked minority issue, but as majority-builders. The strategic shift is voluntary – and, in the view of the NYT reporting, programmatic.

The full background piece, titled "The Arab Kingmaker in Israel's Election Who Wants a Partnership With Jews", has appeared on nytimes.com (October 16, 2026).

Added value for you: If you want to follow the Israel calculus along with us, it's worth keeping an eye on the question of who talks to whom in the Knesset – Abbas will once again be among the actors in the 2026 election year that no majority can get around.