As long as he is prime minister, a Palestinian state run by Iran will not be established, Benjamin Netanyahu vowed on Saturday, adding that such a state would be the result if a narrow left-wing coalition forms Israel’s next government following the Oct. 27 election.
“The price of a left-wing coalition with the Muslim Brotherhood has been exposed once again,” Netanyahu tweeted in Hebrew.
He was referring to an address delivered by the United Arab List (Ra’am) Party leader Mansour Abbas on Saturday evening in which he called on Israel to recognize a Palestinian state, which was already “a reality.”
“All of the world will acknowledge it—after the United States and Israel fulfill their duty and recognize it [too],” he continued at his party’s convention in the city of Tayibe.
Abbas emphasized, “We want the peace between the State of Israel and a Palestinian state to materialize. We recognize a Palestinian state.”
In his X post, Netanyahu charged opposition leaders Gadi Eisenkot (Yashar), Avigdor Liberman (Yisrael Beiteinu) and Hili Tropper (Zionist Home—The Reservists) of wanting to partner with Abbas’s party while boycotting the Likud Party’s voters.
National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, the leader of the Otzma Yehudit Party, also reacted to Abbas’s speech, referring to him as “the friend” of former IDF chief Eisenkot and former prime ministers Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid. (The latter two head the Yahad Party.)
Abbas’s plan for the next government is “to establish a state of terror and restore all the conditions I canceled for his friends in the prisons,” Ben-Gvir continued in a Hebrew language tweet.
During his tenure, the national security minister has advanced a reform that toughened conditions for Palestinian terrorists incarcerated in Israeli prisons.
According to recent polls, the opposition would need to include at least one Arab party to have enough Knesset seats to form a governing coalition. The other Arab parties, Hadash-Ta’al and Balad, refuse to be part of a Zionist governing coalition, which leaves Ra’am as the only alternative.
Ra’am has expressed readiness to become part of an Israeli government, having already participated in the Bennett-Lapid government (June 2021-December 2022).
In 2024, a Ra’am-linked charity, Aid 48, was caught sending large sums to Hamas.
Abbas has attempted to broaden his party’s appeal. He announced in December 2025 that he would split from the party’s Shura Council, a body associated with the Muslim Brotherhood-inspired Southern Branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel, which guided the party and ultimately made its decisions.
Abbas’s move followed an announcement by Netanyahu a month earlier that he intended to ban the Muslim Brotherhood. His declaration followed a similar announcement by U.S. President Donald Trump.
In 2009 and 2019, the Knesset Central Elections Committee banned Ra’am from running due to its extremism, only to have its ruling reversed by the Israeli Supreme Court.
Netanyahu ‘100% firm’ against Palestinian state
In a meeting on Monday with Jared Kushner, U.S. President Donald Trump’s son-in-law who advises the president on Middle East subjects, Netanyahu made “very clear, and in no uncertain terms, that he is against a Palestinian state,” according to a senior Israeli official.
Kushner and other visiting Americans didn’t press a Palestinian state, but the prime minister made it “abundantly clear that he is 100% firm on this,” the senior Israeli official told JNS.
The prime minister made the statement during a discussion about Israel’s red lines.
Netanyahu “made it incredibly clear that this was something that he is against, and the vast majority of Israelis are against,” the Israeli official told JNS. “I think the other side heard the message very well.”
