(The traditional term for this group, Arab Israelis, is increasingly controversial, but it’s the one that Abbas prefers.) In March, when Abbas attended a protest against the Israeli police in the Arab town of Umm al-Fahm, two of his fellow-protesters punched him in the head. But Abbas focusses instead on improving conditions for the Palestinian citizens of Israel proper, a population of nearly two million that has sustained decades of discrimination and neglect. In the West Bank, 2.3 million people live under Israeli occupation another two million are blockaded in Gaza. One veteran negotiator suggested that his ascent in the Knesset had created a “Vichy government.” His offense, in their view, is an insufficient commitment to the long fight for Palestinian statehood. The Palestinian press regularly describes Abbas as a traitor. Things are nearly as bad on the opposing side. At least four of his colleagues in the Knesset, the country’s parliament, have called him a “supporter of terror.” When Ayelet Shaked, a member of his coalition, recently saw him in a narrow corridor there, she walked right past, as he stood by, offering a soft “Shalom.” But, as the head of an Islamist party with connections to the Muslim Brotherhood, he remains an object of suspicion for many Jewish Israelis. In public appearances, he makes sure to keep the Israeli flag in view last year, he spoke stirringly on Holocaust Remembrance Day.
There’s a saying in Arabic about learning from hard experience: “Burn your tongue on soup and you’ll blow on yogurt.” Mansour Abbas, an Arab-Israeli legislator, has had his share of tongue burns, and he has learned to be cautious.
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