The leader of Israel’s Islamist political party, Mansour Abbas, has worked hard to show the country’s Jewish majority that he is worthy of joining the next government, despite a broad consensus among most Jewish lawmakers that Arab parties should not be permitted to do so.

On Monday, Mr. Abbas took his boldest step yet to gain acceptance from Israeli Jews: He gave a top spot on the party’s candidate list to a pillar of the Zionist establishment, Yoav Segalovitz, a veteran Israeli paratrooper, career police commander and former deputy minister of national security.

It was a milestone in the political life of the country. Until now, only Jews from the fringes of Israeli politics, like Communists, had belonged to Arab parties. Mr. Segalovitz had been a member of Yesh Atid, an avowedly centrist Zionist party.

It could also turn out to be a crucial turning point. Without the support of Mr. Abbas’s Raam party — the Hebrew acronym for the United Arab List — opposition leaders may not have enough seats in Parliament to drive Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from power after this October’s election.

Moreover, at a time when much of Israeli political discourse ranges from thinly veiled racist appeals to brazen ones — Mr. Netanyahu and his allies regularly denounce Mr. Abbas as an enemy of the state and a terrorist — the attempt by Mr. Abbas and Mr. Segalovitz to build a bridge between Arabs and Jews evoked seemingly anachronistic ideals of coexistence.

“There are people who are afraid of partnership,” Mr. Abbas said in introducing his new partner in Nazareth, Israel’s second-largest Arab-majority city. “There are parties that are afraid of partnership. They are afraid of what people will say, afraid of what they will lose. Raam is not afraid of partnership. Raam advances it.”

By securing the No. 2 spot on the party’s candidate list, Mr. Segalovitz is assured of gaining a seat in Parliament along with Mr. Abbas, as long as Raam wins at least two seats in the election. Polls generally show the party winning five or more.

The two lawmakers worked together in 2021 and 2022 in the government headed first by Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and then briefly by Prime Minister Yair Lapid of Yesh Atid, when Mr. Abbas became the first Arab lawmaker to join an Israeli governing coalition.

As deputy national security minister, Mr. Segalovitz took charge of addressing the soaring crime rate in Arab communities inside Israel, targeting criminal organizations and cutting homicides by 16 percent and shootings by 30 percent. Though he speaks no Arabic, he became enormously popular with Arab citizens, who make up about a fifth of the country’s population.

The crime rate in Arab areas resumed its upward trajectory after Mr. Netanyahu recaptured the premiership and put Itamar Ben-Gvir, an extremist anti-Arab politician, in charge of the police as national security minister. So far this year, a record 168 Arab citizens have been killed, according to the Abraham Initiative, a Jewish-Arab nonprofit — more than in all of 2025.

Mr. Segalovitz, who spent 28 years in the police force and established its F.B.I.-like anticorruption and major crime unit, Lahav 433, now says he hopes to become national security minister himself and to pick up where he left off.

“The current government has brought the State of Israel to intolerable places in every sphere of life,” he said Monday night. “Rampant crime, a lack of personal security for all citizens, and certainly for the country’s Arab citizens, in whom the government has no interest whatsoever.”

Mr. Abbas said that crime in the Arab sector threatened all Israelis. “The organizations that collect protection money from an Arab grocery-store owner also collect it from a Jewish garage owner,” he said. “This is not the Arabs’ problem. This is the country’s problem.”

Mr. Abbas appeared to have shattered an invisible barrier for an Arab politician when he joined the Bennett-Lapid coalition in 2021. But the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack on Israel fueled Jewish Israelis’ enmity toward Arabs so much that it was as if Mr. Abbas had to prove himself all over again.

He has repeatedly condemned Hamas and the Oct. 7 attack, and called on Hamas to release Israeli hostages almost immediately after they were captured. He has also transformed his political party, severing its formal ties with the Islamic movement and opening its membership to Israelis of all religions.

Raam hopes that recruiting Mr. Segalovitz could go a long way toward winning over Arab and Jewish Israelis alike, said Thair Abu Ras, an expert on Israel’s Arab political parties at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, a research center.

“Raam is here telling the Arab community — we actually want to solve your problems,” he said. “Raam’s message to the Jewish community is: ‘We’re moderates.’”

Many Jewish Israelis have traditionally looked at Arab parties with suspicion or outright hostility, arguing that they prioritize the Palestinian cause, Mr. Abu Ras said. By bringing over a former senior police officer from the heart of mainstream Israeli politics, Raam is “proving its credentials as a party that has moderated even more — taking someone from the Jewish mainstream — so you shouldn’t have a problem recruiting us for the next government,” he said.

For his part, Mr. Abbas downplayed the importance of his ambitions to join a new government as a reason for his alliance with Mr. Segalovitz. Rather, he said, it was a pragmatic move to draw on Mr. Segalovitz’s expertise.

“They will say to me, ‘What does an Arab need with a Jewish police major general?’ And they will say to him, ‘What is a Jewish police major general looking for with the Arabs?’” Mr. Abbas said. “My answer is simple. I am not looking for someone who is like me. I am looking for someone who knows how to do the job.”

Heedo Abu Laban, Aaron Boxerman and Johnatan Reiss contributed reporting.