Arab MK running for premier to highlight minority concerns

He noted that "I don't want to be prime minister. This candidacy is an important and influential card."

Bishara, a Christian Arab from Nazareth, said his candidacy would in no way harm the fight against the right or hinder the chances of changing the government, as his political foes in rival Arab parties have claimed. He said it is clear there will be a second round of voting for prime minister, since no one candidate will get more than 50 percent of the votes.

If it seems that the choice of prime minister could be decided in the first round, he will reconsider his candidacy, he said, "in return for recognition of some of our demands."

He said that no other prime ministerial candidate ideologically represents the concerns of the Arab population, a fair solution to the refugee problem, and the need to divide Jerusalem in a peace agreement.

"Neither [Ehud] Barak, [Yitzhak] Mordechai, [Benjamin] Netanyahu, nor, of course, [Ze'ev] "Benny" Begin, will represent the issues that are of concern to the Arab minority in Israel," Bishara said.

Asked about his isolation from the other Arab lists running for the Knesset, Bishara said he does not want to be an appendix to the Islamic movement or some other political body.

Bishara rejected reports that he had reached an agreement with One Israel leader Barak under which he would withdraw his candidacy in exchange for a ministerial position.

"I am not interested in being a minister in a government whose basic guidelines I cannot accept," Bishara said.

He said he has gathered 30,000 of the 50,000 signatures required to run as a candidate for prime minister.

Knesset member Moshe Peled, now of the Moledet Party, has asked the Central Elections Committee to bar Bishara for previous comments, saying he had described the Jewish people as a "fiction with no right of independent existence."