PM Netanyahu commends Trump on banning Muslim Brotherhood, hints that Israeli Arab Ra’am party could also be outlawed

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu praised U.S. President Donald Trump for reportedly deciding to outlaw the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood organization in the U.S., while hinting that he could follow suit and outlaw the Ra’am Party of Mansour Abbas ahead of the coming elections.

As part of a statement mainly focusing on the elimination of Hezbollah’s chief of staff, published Sunday, Netanyahu said: “I also want to commend President Donald Trump on his decision to outlaw and designate the ‘Muslim Brotherhood’ organization as a terrorist organization.”

“This is an organization that endangers stability throughout the Middle East and beyond the Middle East. Therefore, the State of Israel has already outlawed part of the organization, and we are working to complete this action soon,” he said.

News outlet “Just the News” on Sunday quoted Trump as saying that a formal decision to label the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) a foreign terrorist organization in the U.S. is in the works and that the paperwork is being finalized.

However, the president or his administration hasn’t officially confirmed the move that has been debated in Washington for years.

Last week, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott designated the MB and its affiliated Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) as foreign terrorist organizations and transnational criminal organizations. Abbott stated that both “have long made their goals clear: to forcibly impose Sharia law and establish Islam’s ‘mastership of the world.'”

Netanyahu’s statement that he would seek to “complete” the outlawing of the MB in Israel raised some eyebrows, as the Ra’am Party that is currently holding four Knesset seats as part of the opposition is affiliated with the movement.

The “Society of the Muslim Brothers,” as it is officially called in Arabic, was founded by school teacher Hassan al-Banna in Egypt in 1928, and, over the next decades, established branches across the region.

Its Gaza branch eventually morphed into the Hamas movement. The founder of the MB branch in Israel, however, shifted toward more peaceful and charitable activities after serving time in an Israeli prison, prompting a split within the movement.

The northern branch of MB continued on a radical course and was outlawed in 2015 due to its ties to Hamas and the broader Muslim Brotherhood movement.

The southern branch, however, decided to follow the political route. Starting from the 90s, its political wing, the Ra’am Party, ran in several elections together with the other Arab parties, and in 2021, even joined the government.

Netanyahu’s statement now signals a possible intent to outlaw the party, whose leader, Mansour Abbas, has been criticized by the right for not distancing his party clearly enough from support for terrorism throughout the war.

Two weeks ago, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich called Ra’am “a sister movement of Hamas” that “supports terrorism and encourages terrorism, and whose place is place is in prison, not in the Israeli Knesset.”

This came after Abbas had called for a new government in Gaza to be focused on “peace and reconciliation,” while declining to state whether Hamas should be destroyed during an interview with Kan News.

On Sunday, he said that the party is “evaluating the legal situation” after Netanyahu’s comment.

“We are examining the matter from a political and legal perspective, and evaluating the situation and the information we have,” he told Ynet News.

The MB is outlawed by most countries in the region, especially after its successful activities in the fields of education, charity, and religion enabled it to attempt to use the Arab Spring to vie for political power in several countries. Jordan banned its activities in April of 2025.

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