Palestinian citizens of Israel voted in record numbers. Netanyahu called it an emergency, his rival promised them no state, and most of the press called them Arabs.

Have you noticed what Palestinian citizens of Israel are called in this week's election coverage? "Arabs". "Israeli Arabs". "Arab Israelis". "The Arab sector".

In Sammy Smooha's 2019 survey of 718 adult Arab citizens of Israel, 61.9% chose a description of themselves that included Palestinian. Most reports in our election audit never used that word to describe them. Original survey, Table 5.13.

That is the Israeli state's own label for them, and it cuts them off from the rest of their people: the Palestinians in Gaza, in the occupied West Bank, in East Jerusalem and in the refugee camps. Call them Arabs and they become a voting bloc to be counted. Call them Palestinians and a reader starts asking why every candidate competing for power promises to deny their people a state.

On 27 October they voted in record numbers, and the two Arab-led lists were projected to take 17 to 18 seats in the exit polls, more than ever before. So we dug into how the press described them, and into what Israel's leading candidates have said about Palestinians.

What the figures show

We checked every English-language report on the election in the NewsCord archive from 15 to 28 October. 199 of them described these citizens.

• 115 of the 199 (58%) only ever called them Arabs. Not once Palestinian, anywhere in the report.
• Israeli outlets and the Jewish community press: 63 of 71. The Jerusalem Post alone accounts for 23, The Times of Israel for 16.
• Every other outlet: 52 of 128. That includes reports from the BBC, AP, NPR, Time, CNBC, Foreign Policy, France 24, AFP, The Irish Times and The Christian Science Monitor.
• It can be done. The Guardian, The New York Times, Reuters, CNN, CBS News, DW, Al Jazeera and Middle East Eye all named these voters as Palestinian in their election reports.

The BBC used the same label

The BBC's 20 October report on Ben-Gvir and first-time voters took readers to Ramle. It described the city as:

Further down, the BBC described a classroom debate in which a student advocated "killing all Arab citizens of Israel". Even when reporting a threat to kill these citizens, the BBC never named them as Palestinian.

The report used "Palestinians" when discussing Ben-Gvir's plans for the occupied territories. The citizens in Israel remained "Arabs". The BBC reproduced the same separation so common in the Israeli press: Palestinians outside Israel, Arabs within it. Readers were told about the racism facing these citizens without being told that they are part of the Palestinian people.

This was one of four BBC reports in our audit. The other three did identify these citizens as Palestinian. The omission in this report is the same one we found in 23 of 27 Jerusalem Post reports and 16 of 18 Times of Israel reports. NPR and CNBC each left it out in both of their two reports. Western outlets are using the same labels too.

Outlet by outlet

Each row shows the reports that described Palestinian citizens of Israel. "Only Arab" means the report never named those citizens as Palestinian. "Named Palestinian" includes reports that used both labels. Syndicated reports appear under the outlet that published them; these are report counts, not counts of distinct wire stories.

Every other outlet

Israeli outlets and Jewish community press

AP managed it in one clause, in its main report on polling day:

Now look at what AFP wrote about Netanyahu's own campaign posters.

Notice the double standard. When Netanyahu wants to frighten Jewish voters, these politicians are "Palestine". When the press describes the same people, they are "Arab-Israeli". Their Palestinian identity only appears when it is being used as a threat.

The Irish Times headline called the turnout an "Arab surge". TribLIVE told its readers that "Arabs in Israel make up about 20% of the population".

What Netanyahu posted on election day

On 27 October Benjamin Netanyahu posted at least nine times about Arab voters or Arab politicians. Turnout among Palestinian citizens was rising, and he treated it as an emergency.

Palestinian citizens turning out to vote became "a war for the home". In his words, "Muslim Brotherhood supporters" were "stealing the elections". Israel's Central Elections Committee said it had no evidence of systematic ballot tampering. Times of Israel

He has done this before. In 2015 he warned that Arab voters were heading to the polls "in droves", and apologised afterwards. Jerusalem Post Eleven years later he did it again, nine times in one day.

When the exit polls came in, he said it outright.

A fifth of Israel's citizens voted, and the prime minister said the people they elected must not count towards a government. Only Jewish votes are supposed to decide who rules.

On Palestinian statehood he has been just as plain.

What his "centrist" challenger said

Gadi Eisenkot, the former army chief who led the opposition bloc, is the man much of the press presented as the alternative. On Palestinians, he competed with Netanyahu over who would refuse them more.

In an interview with The Times of Israel this month he described the most Palestinians could expect as "autonomy or a state-minus", with Israel keeping overriding security control and no Palestinian army. Times of Israel

On election night he claimed a victory for "the Zionist-statist majority" and promised "a Zionist mobilisation government". The Irish Times He has said he will not govern with Arab lawmakers. AFP, via NDTV The 17 or 18 seats Palestinian citizens elected are the seats that could put him in power, and he counts them out in the same breath as Netanyahu.

This is the man who, as head of the army's Northern Command in 2008, said this about Lebanese villages:

What Bennett and Lapid said

Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid ran together on one list. Two days before the vote Bennett wrote: "I oppose a Palestinian state and always have." Times of Israel blog Both men have ruled out a government with either Arab-led party. Times of Israel

Here is how Bennett talks about Palestinians as a people.

He built that post on a claim that "67% of the Palestinians SUPPORT the October 7th massacre". PCPSR's June 2024 poll, the one he was citing, asked whether Hamas's decision to attack was correct, and its authors warned that the answer did not mean support for killing civilians. PCPSR Poll 92 Bennett turned it into a whole people backing a massacre, and then said Gaza and "many of the Palestinian public" had to be de-Nazified.

To Bennett, Israel's genocide in Gaza is "what they claimed is Genocide", in scare quotes, and the people who protested it were out "to destroy Israel".

Lapid told the UN in 2022 that a two-state agreement was right for Israel. In May this year he said the next government would not pursue it in the coming years. AP, via the Inquirer

What Lieberman said

"Without Arabs" writes off a fifth of the country's citizens in two words. Lieberman has gone further. At a 2015 election rally he said of Arab citizens he considered disloyal:

This month he published a plan to dismantle the Palestinian Authority and hand parts of the West Bank to Jordan, with Israel keeping security control. Ynet Jordan has not agreed, and nobody asked the Palestinians.

A death sentence for anyone involved "directly or indirectly" puts no limit at all on who can be killed.

What Ben-Gvir and Smotrich said

Itamar Ben-Gvir, the national security minister, and Bezalel Smotrich, the finance minister, sit in Netanyahu's government and are the partners he needs to keep power. Ben-Gvir ran asking for the defence ministry.

Notice whose word "Arab" is. Ben-Gvir uses it too: Palestinians are "immigrants from Arab countries", so they are not a people, so they have no claim to the land.

Point one is removing Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank. Point three is loosening the rules on when soldiers may shoot. Then, a week before the vote:

He mocked the survivors of a genocide for staying in their homes, in their own language. He has also demanded they be cut off from water.

Smotrich speaks the same way about land.

Jenin and Tulkarm are refugee camps. The High Court ruled on their residents going home, and the finance minister told the army to defy it. He calls the people "Arabs" and their homes "terror nests".

In 2023 Smotrich said in Paris: "There is no such thing as a Palestinian people." Reuters In August 2024 he said starving two million Gazans "might be justified and moral" until the hostages came home. Times of Israel

What Jewish Israeli voters back

These men are not on the fringe of Israeli politics. Polls of Jewish Israelis show who they are speaking to.

• 61.8% of Jewish Israelis supported removing Palestinians from Gaza to other countries "even by force and military means". Tel Aviv University Peace Index, March 2025. Findings
• 67.9% of Jewish Israelis opposed an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel; 24% supported one. Peace Index, July 2026. Findings
• 32.2% of Jewish Israelis said Arab citizens should not have the right to vote in Knesset elections at all. Israel Democracy Institute, July and August 2026. Data

Six in ten Jewish Israelis backed forcing Gaza's people out of their land. One in three would take the vote away from Palestinian citizens. Those are the voters every leading candidate was courting.

How we counted

Palestinian citizens of Israel voted against all of this in record numbers. The least the press can do is call them by their name.