SUBLIME:

But the biggest winner in the budget approval effort was the chair of Raam, Knesset member Mansour Abbas. There would not have been a government without him, and as of yesterday morning, he could boast of another remarkable victory. Never before has a single political player controlled that much money.

The huge sum -- an estimated $16 billion -- to be spent on Israel's Arab society. About $11 billion will be made available in a first stage, with the remainder paid out as the rotation agreement between Bennett and Foreign Minister Yair Lapid play out in about two years.

What Abbas was able to achieve was historic, marking the first time that an Arab party has played an active role in budget deliberations and was an integral part of the decision-making process.

Abbas is not a minister but he was given an office right next to the cabinet chamber and he spent the whole night negotiating from it.

Muhammad Majadele, senior correspondent for Arab affairs for Channel 12 News and Radio an-Nas, reported there were two sets of budget negotiations taking place simultaneously.

The first set were the comprehensive negotiations that took place over the state budget as a whole. They resulted in the largest sum ever allocated for the needs of Israel's Arab society. In comparison, when the fourth Netanyahu government allocated $5 billion for the Arab sector, everyone gasped at the enormous amount.

Then were the second set of negotiations, in which Abbas won more than an unprecedented sum of money. He was also granted the authority to decide how it would be spent. For that purpose, he conducted separate negotiations with each minister. The money will be spent on infrastructure, the war on crime, health care, education and transportation.

Majadele noted that what Abbas achieved was historic. In a podcast interview he said, "What ended up happening is that Mansour Abbas has a budget. He spent all night playing an active role in the negotiations with each minister and their ministries' directors general over how the budget would be divided. What actually happened was that every time the cabinet completed its debate [over the different sections of the budget], the ministers went to meet with Abbas so that they could reach a deal with him. ... One person in the room told me, 'Mansour Abbas presided over his office like a sultan, divvying up the amount among the different ministers.'"

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