“Israel was born as a Jewish state. And that was the decision of the Jewish people, to establish a Jewish state,” said Knesset member Mansour Abbas, head of the Israeli Islamist party Ra’am, in a statement that stunned listeners at a Dec. 21 conference hosted by the financial newspaper Globes. “That’s how the state was born, and so it will remain. The question is not about the state’s identity, but about the status of its Arab citizens.” Asked whether he was aware of the significance of his comments, Abbas responded, “We should be waging a struggle for the status of Arab society as a collective inside the State of Israel as it was born.”

While Abbas did not explicitly recognize Israel’s official legal definition as a “Jewish and democratic state,” contested for decades by leaders of the Arab-Israeli population, he did say Israel was established in 1948 as a Jewish state.

Truth be told, this was not Abbas' first such statement. He said the exact same things a month ago in an interview with the Arabic-language Kul al-Arab news site. Still, this week he was addressing a mostly Jewish audience in Hebrew. Naturally, the statement set off a storm. The audience cheered, clearly excited by his reference to one of the most divisive issues in Israel’s existence and political discourse.

Abbas’ former political partners — the Joint List from which Ra’am split last February, were not happy. Senior Joint List official Ahmad Tibi also took the stage at the Globes event, rejecting Abbas’ statement. “We do not accept anyone’s patronage over us. I know that what I am saying will not generate applause,” Tibi conceded, but added that the 2018 nationality law had created “a new classification of citizens … and we cannot accept that.” The legislation, he added, “anchors the Jewish state in law and grants collective rights to Jews, while depriving the Arabs …and its underlying mindset is that 20% of the citizens should accept” that their rights are limited to “civilian matters.”