Background
The party was formed on 8 March 1977, during the eighth Knesset by the merger of the Arab List for Bedouins and Villagers and Progress and Development. Both were Israeli Arab parties associated with the Alignment, and had merged into it shortly after the 1973 elections, only to break away again. The new party had three seats in the Knesset, held by Hamad Abu Rabia, Jabr Moade and veteran Israeli Arab politician, Seif-El-Din El-Zubi.
In the 1977 elections the party won just one seat. The three former MKs agreed to take it on a rotation basis. El-Zubi held the seat first, staying in the Knesset until 3 April, 1979, and was then replaced by Abu Rabia. However, it was claimed that Abu Rabia was refusing to give up the seat in favour of Moade, an allegation that resulted in Abu Rabia being assassinated on 12 January, 1981 by Moade's sons. Despite his family's role in Abu Rabia's death, Moade took the seat for the remainder of the Knesset session.
The party failed to cross the electoral threshold in the 1981 election (indeed, no solely Israeli Arab parties did, making it the only Knesset without one), and subsequently disappeared.
Read more about this topic: United Arab List (1977)
Famous quotes containing the word background:
“In the true sense one’s native land, with its background of tradition, early impressions, reminiscences and other things dear to one, is not enough to make sensitive human beings feel at home.”
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)
“Pilate with his question “What is truth?” is gladly trotted out these days as an advocate of Christ, so as to arouse the suspicion that everything known and knowable is an illusion and to erect the cross upon that gruesome background of the impossibility of knowledge.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)