Why Arab parties may not be the ‘kingmakers’ in this Israeli election

Israel’s Arab-led parties are projected to win a record number of seats in the Israeli parliament, exit polls indicate, making them increasingly hard to ignore by the leading blocs. “Probably the most important phenomenon of this election is the rise and the revival of the Arab vote,” Daniel Shek, a former Israeli ambassador, said. “The statement is clear: You cannot disregard such a large portion of the electorate in the calculations for Israeli politics.”

Recommended Stories list of 4 items list 1 of 4 Can you form Israel’s next coalition government? list 2 of 4 High voter turnout among Palestinian citizens of Israel threatens Netanyahu list 3 of 4 Israeli voters: hope and despair as election ballots are counted list 4 of 4 Israel’s election: The battle between change and anti-Palestinian sentiment end of list The latest projections from Tuesday’s voting showed that the Arab parties – the Joint List and Ra’am – could hold a record combined 17 seats in the 120-member Knesset.

So far, no clear winner has emerged as partial results give Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s bloc 54 seats and the opposition alliance led by Gadi Eisenkot 49. While Arab parties might theoretically wield influence as the two main blocs fail to win majorities in the Knesset, they are not “kingmakers”, observers said, pointing to what amounts to a political veto that limits Arab parties’ ability to turn electoral gains into influence.

“This veto is rooted in a racist structure that regards the Arab citizen as illegitimate and as an unwanted partner,” Honaida Ghanam, director general of the Palestinian Forum for Israeli Studies in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, told Al Jazeera, alluding to the resistance by the majority of Israeli parties to form any government with Arab-led lists. Both Netanyahu and Eisenkot have rejected the idea of partnering with them, citing a lack of shared values.

Advertisement What do the numbers say? The numbers from exit poll projections thus far are looking clear: If Eisenkot’s bloc teams up with Arab parties, they could secure the 61 seats needed for a majority in parliament and depose Netanyahu. According to The Times of Israel, the latest partial results would give a partnership between Eisenkot’s opposition alliance and Arab-led parties 66 seats. According to Palestinian political analyst Ahmed Najar, the unwillingness by the opposition bloc to join forces is purely “ideological”.

“Eisenkot has imposed loyalty tests on Arab parties and ruled out relying on them even as the electoral arithmetic makes their support indispensable,” Najar told Al Jazeera. How politically feasible is such a partnership? Observers are divided on this. According to Najar, a partnership with the Arab parties is not only feasible, it may be the only “realistic” route for Eisenkot to remove Netanyahu. Omar Shaban, director of Palthink for Strategic Studies, pointed to the fact that Mansour Abbas, the leader of Ra’am, has already shown a willingness to join Eisenkot’s government if the Israeli candidate is elected, based on the condition that internal security matters will be handled by the Arab party.

Abbas has even appointed Jewish lawmaker Yoav Segalovitz to the number two spot on Ra’am’s electoral slate for the elections, Shaban explained. Such a collaboration, if it came to fruition, could help foster better relations between Palestinian citizens and Jewish Israelis, he said. Meanwhile, on Wednesday, Joint List leader Yousef Jabareen said his party is prepared to take responsibility for bringing Netanyahu’s far-right coalition down.

“The government has made the lives of every Arab citizen miserable,” Jabareen was quoted by the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper as saying. His movement “will know how to leverage” its political strength to advance its values, he added. Ahmad Tibi, also a Joint List leader, on Wednesday said the bloc was extending its hand to the opposition alliance to oust Netanyahu, according to Israeli media reports. It was far from clear, however, that the bloc would formally join a governing coalition.

A roadblock to such a partnership is the more “radical” elements in Israeli society that Eisenkot would have to face who “don’t want the Israeli government to be supported or dependent on Arab votes”, Shabaan said. Najar said Eisenkot would also have to persuade his prospective partners, including Naftali Bennett from the Together alliance and Avigdor Liberman, who heads the Yisrael Beytenu party. Advertisement “Politically, however, it would require him and his prospective partners, particularly Bennett and Lieberman, to abandon the longstanding Zionist consensus that Palestinian citizens of Israel may vote but that the parties representing them are not legitimate partners in governing the country,” he said.

Ghanam outlined four possible outcomes: another election, an opposition minority government supported from outside by Arab parties, defections from the opposition to Netanyahu’s bloc or a national unity government. “Beyond the arithmetic, the most telling result of this election is the resilience of Netanyahu’s camp, which has proven deeply entrenched and cohesive,” she added. What are the terms Eisenkot has laid out for a partnership with Arab parties?

According to The Times of Israel, Eisenkot has said he would consider partnering with any party that recognises Israel as a Jewish and democratic state, endorses the values of the Declaration of Independence and commits to all Israelis performing national service. He hasn’t, however, expressed whether Ra’am, with or without Jewish lawmaker Segalovitz, would meet those criteria, the outlet also reported. Have Jewish and Arab parties teamed up before?

Yes, there is precedent for such a move. Most recently, after the 2021 elections, Ra’am emerged as a possible kingmaker, and its support was vital for the formation of the short-lived Bennett-Yair Lapid government at the time. “Ra’am participated in the 2021-2022 coalition while Arab parties have previously supported governments from outside, most notably during the Rabin period,” Najar said, referring to Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who served in the country’s top post in the 1970s and 1990s.

“The obstacle is, therefore, neither constitutional nor practical but ideological.” What have other party leaders said about partnering? Netanyahu said on Tuesday that a coalition with Arab-led parties to form a government would be “a shame and a disgrace”. “It is forbidden – simply forbidden – to endanger Israel and to establish a government that relies on anti-Zionist Arab parties,” he told supporters. Bennett, meanwhile, who is currently in third place, has reversed course from the past: He has made clear that he now only wants “Zionist” parties in government and wants to exclude Arab parties.

By contrast, Yair Golan, leader of the centre-left Democrats party, which is part of the opposition bloc led by Eisenkot, has urged his allies to abandon their refusal to cooperate with Arab parties. “We must no longer accept Netanyahu’s racist division between Jewish votes and Arab votes,” Golan wrote on X. What does the reluctance to partner say about Israeli democracy? The reluctance of Jewish-led opposition parties to work with Arab parties “reveals the fundamentally racist structure of the Israeli political system”, Najar said.

“Jewish opposition leaders describe Netanyahu and the far right as an existential danger to democracy, yet many would apparently prefer Netanyahu to remain in power rather than share political power with Palestinian citizens of Israel,” he said. Advertisement Their objection is not only to a particular Arab party or programme but to the very idea that Palestinian representatives could possess genuine governing power, Najar added. “A state cannot credibly call itself democratic when more than one-fifth of its citizens are permitted to vote but the representatives they elect are treated as inherently illegitimate,” he said.

Palestinian citizens of Israel, he pointed out, are accepted as voters when their participation serves the system but rejected as political actors when they seek the power to shape it, Najar added. “This is not an accidental failure of Israeli democracy; it is the consequence of a system built to preserve Jewish political supremacy,” Najar said. “If Eisenkot is serious about replacing Netanyahu, he must decide whether he is prepared to challenge that racist political order or remain confined by the same exclusionary logic that Netanyahu has spent years exploiting.”