Former Knesset Speaker Avraham Burg, in the past a member of Knesset from the Labor Party, attended a meeting of Hadash (Democratic Front for Peace and Equality) which took place in Nazareth on Saturday, January 3, and expressed his support for the Jewish-Arab front. “In the next elections I will support Hadash,” he said, though it is far from certain whether he will run for a spot on their Knesset ticket.

Former Knesset Speaker Avraham Burg, in the past a member of Knesset from the Labor Party. (Photo: Al Ittihad)

Burg, who enrolled as a delegate, said that he would support Hadash in the upcoming elections and urged the party to remain distinct from the two nationalist Arab parties and promote a “powerful campaign by a Jewish-Arab list.” He explained: “I left the Jewish nationalist space because it became jingoistic, and I didn’t come all the way here just to connect with [Arab] jingoism,” said Burg, a former chairman of the Jewish Agency for Israel, in an allusion to the Islamic Movement. He called for “full solidarity” between Jews and Arabs in Israel. Burg, an Orthodox Jew, said that he had traveled to the conference on the Sabbath, contravening a religious prohibition, because advancing solidarity between Jews and Arabs was “a matter of life and death” that trumped the ban.

Recent polls have predicted five Knesset seats for Hadash, which would put the front above the electoral threshold, albeit by a narrow margin, without requiring it to run jointly with the Arab parties.