Knesset Members from the Joint List announced yesterday (Friday) morning that they would not be attending the state funeral for former president Shimon Peres, who died at the age of 93. “The memory of Peres among the Arab public is different from the narrative of the last few days, and I understand that complex messages such as this are difficult to hear the moment after someone’s death,” Joint List leader MK Ayman Odeh (Hadash) wrote in Hebrew on Twitter.

President of the State of Israel, Reuven Rivlin and the US President, Barack Obama, during the funeral for former president Shimon Peres in Jerusalem, on Friday morning, October 1 (Photo: Office of the President of Israel)

“Thanks to Peres, in the 90s there were two positive and important points in the peace process, while building a partnership with representatives of the Arab public, after which 90% of the Arab population voted for him,” Odeh wrote. “But on the other hand, we fiercely opposed the man of security, occupation and settlement construction, who introduced nuclear [weapons] to the Middle East and, unfortunately, was also a president of who chose to support Netanyahu and his policies.”

MK Yousef Jabareen (Hadash – Joint List) pointed to “Peres’ history of harming the rights of the Palestinians.” He added that though Peres “had been Rabin’s partner in the Oslo Accords, in the last decade, he has served as a cosmetic cover for the occupation policies of the Israeli government in the Palestinian territories.” The Joint List has 13 of the 120 seats in the Knesset, making it the third largest faction in Israel’s parliament.