Avraham Borg, co-chairman of All Its Citizens in an interview on Network B: On the party and its principles

Attached is an audio recording of an interview on the B network with Akiva Novik and Rina Matzliach from 3/7/2025.

These are the key points of the interview (the conversion from voice to text was performed using artificial intelligence):

To all its citizens:

- It is a joint party, Jewish, Arab in all its institutions. It is also bilingual and it is also bi-representative or multi-representative. Women, men, Jews, Arabs, with the principle being essentially to propose to Israeli politics that will do so much good and to a certain extent justice in the place. Another of the same thing is a group of parties that is on a national basis, Jewish with Arab fig leaves and a group of parties on an Arab national basis with a Jewish fig leaf. So propose a party that is completely civil. Be what you want in your home, be what you want in your community before the place. All citizens are equal.

**

- A Zionist party?

- This is an irrelevant question because Zionism ended in 1948 with the establishment of the state in a wonderful euphoria for the Jewish people and a terrible tragedy for the Palestinian people. Since the advent of Israeliism, it has been difficult. It does not move, it is unequal, it is full of discrimination and crises, but ultimately Israel belongs to all its citizens. This is what is written in the Declaration of Independence, and we want to implement exactly this thing that everywhere in the normal world is that all citizens are equal, and only in Israel is fighting for the democratic normality perceived as not being normal Ashkelon. This is a completely democratic party that offers a civic agenda over the national agenda that always slides into the nationalist.

**

- Who do you think will vote for this party?

- First and foremost, I think that any coalition of this type that you find in the Knesset has enormous potential. I believe that it is possible to go beyond the Zionist comfort zone, as you define it, because that is perhaps how they define themselves. To establish a very large bloc or coalition of parties that could include Bled and Hadesh and remnants of Meretz from the disappointed Labor Party, and people who understand that even Yair Lapid does not really offer a real democratic alternative, and only to see their vote to remove Ayman Odeh to understand that it is possible to establish one.

**

- In what world do you think people who voted for Bled would sit, would vote together with people who would vote for Lapid? What?

- You ask me a question of an alert journalist, and I give you an answer of an optimistic person with a vision. What does that mean in this Israeli moment? It's a difficult moment. Almost everyone doesn't have one person, one perception. One system that is able to sit with the other system, with the other person. I can't even understand how, how really at any given moment you can see Yair Golan and Avigdor Lieberman in the same coalition, but I'm not concerned with current events. We are presenting a vision here that says where Israel will go.

**

- A very large part of the center-left camp is considering supporting the ouster of Ayman Odeh. And leave the political contours aside for a moment. Did Odeh, for example, express joy at the release of the kidnapped prisoners? He expresses an ethos that many of his Jewish listeners say is against me.

- Let's make a lot of distinctions here. Okay. First of all, when you listen to the words of the then-artist, you understand that his words were in a much larger and much higher-quality context of real peace between the two political communities, the Jewish and the Palestinian, and not to take anything out and put it in some kind of tick-tock cut and say this is Ayman Odeh, you know very well, and Rina knows very well, and many of our listeners know very well that Ayman Odeh, perhaps the most eminent man of peace in Arab society today. We will go beyond that. The attempt to oust him in the Knesset is ultimately some kind of tool test by some Israeli defectors to disqualify Arab parties in general, so that it will be more convenient for them to establish right-wing governments than to fill the seats. Good luck to them in this struggle, we'll see where we get to.

There is a loose pile of MKs here who are flattering the god of polls. Contrary to their opinion, they don't understand that today they are taking Ayman Odeh and tomorrow they will take Yair Golan and, of course, Yair Lapid is also invalid.

**

- I'm sparing the listeners the statements of Hanin Zubi, Basel Gats, Jamal Zahalka, and Li Yazbak. You. You're calling for a connection with Balad here and people are listening to us and you know, banging their heads on the steering wheel and causing accidents.

- This is really wrong and I believe that the Minister of Transportation will prevent this. Still, there is someone here who understands these things, but I think your words are just words. Sorry, but they are self-serving. In what sense? If Jewish Israeli society had made room in its conversation to understand the tearing tension of the Arab citizen who is a loyal citizen to his country and a mushroom of his people, and his country is at war with his people, the whole thing would be much calmer, but when Israel declares war internally and externally against the Palestinians, what do you expect from it?

**

- Q. Let them say that even a Palestinian declared war. By the way, already in 1948 when you said that Zionism was dead, and in 1967 and almost every war and the Al-Aqsa Intifada and the Knife Intifada.

- You are a journalist and I don't want to argue with your opinions. I only want to argue with your journalism. When there are ministers in the government who say we will do it in Gaza and complete the work of the Nakba. Don't expect any other response from the Palestinians, but let's move on. You asked me a question about Balad. You asked more, yes.

....

- I want to complete a previous question without just arguing with you. Okay. The process that Arab society is going through within Israeli society is a fascinating process, and those who were once the Bedouins and once the nationalists speak differently today. Listen to the language of Sami Abu Shehadeh. Pay attention to the expressions of the desire to integrate into the state of all its citizens, with all the responsibility that stems from this. There was a place to say that this is the complete Land of Israel. Where does it come from? Where does it extend to? From the Tigris River to the Nile River.