Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ weekend meeting with Nazareth Mayor Ali Salem is widely seen as a desperate gambit, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appears to coast to re-election on a security platform while Israeli peacemakers fade from the scene.

Why it matters: Abbas urged Salem, one of the influential Israeli Arab figures, to back a last-minute effort to reunite the four Arab-Israeli parties for the April elections. The Palestinian leader hopes to challenge Netanyahu through an Israeli Arab coalition with the center-left to usher in a new prime minister, as they did with Yitzhak Rabin in 1992.

Divided they fall: The socialist Hadash, nationalist Balad, Islamist Raam and progressive Taal parties ran as a united political body in the 2015 elections, scoring 13 seats in the Knesset, their best showing ever. But Taal head Ahmad Tibi broke the partnership in January and announced that he would run alone when the other parties refused to let him lead the list despite polls showing his party could get six to eight seats versus only four to six seats for the others.

Foreign interference: The Israeli right wasted no time accusing Abbas of interfering in domestic politics. Ex-Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman said the meeting proved that Israeli Arab leaders are more loyal to the Palestinian Authority than to Israel. Abbas himself said that he does not interfere directly in the Israeli elections but that it’s important to "stay strong" on the issue of peace.