Last month, the Hadash party announced that it would promote direct dialogue with other Arab parties to explore the revival of the Joint List, which at its peak in 2015 and 2020 became the third-largest bloc in the Knesset and briefly held kingmaker influence.

The Hadash source said that several discussions have since taken place but that Monday’s was the first to be publicized, signaling “momentum.”

The bloc split due to internal fighting in 2021 when Mansour Abbas’s Islamist United Arab List (Ra’am) broke away and it collapsed the following year ahead of the 2022 election.