Mansour Abbas, leader of the Ra'am Party, announced on 2026-08-31 that former Yesh Atid MK Yoav Segalovich will join the Arab party's slate ahead of the upcoming elections. ^[1] Yesh Atid MK Mickey Levy said on 2026-08-31 that he would not be on the party's Knesset list but would remain a member of the party. ^[2] In 2021, Ra'am joined the coalition during the Bennett-Lapid government, marking the first time an Arab party was a formal member of a governing coalition. ^[3] The addition of a Jewish candidate to Ra'am's list is widely seen as a way for Ra'am to be viewed as a more viable coalition partner ahead of the elections. ^[4] According to The Economist's poll tracker, Gadi Eisenkot's centre-right Yashar party has overtaken Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party in voter support ahead of the Israeli election. ^[5] Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel's prime minister, has repeatedly labelled Israel's Arab parties as 'terror supporters' and accused Ra'am of being an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood. ^[6] Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu released a campaign video for the October 27th parliamentary election featuring an AI-generated image of opposition leader Gadi Eisenkot riding a Trojan horse containing Mansour Abbas, leader of Ra'am, and Yair Golan of the Democrats. ^[7] Only Yair Golan, leader of the Zionist-left Democrats party, is openly in favor of including an Arab party in the next Israeli government, while other opposition leaders are opposed or evasive. ^[8]