Arab parties gain bargaining power in Israel

In the impasse that has been established in the post-election scenario in Israel, there is one certainty: the impressive performance of the Arab parties, which won 19 seats in Parliament, gives them a decisive role in the formation of a new government.

It can be said that the opposition to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu won the elections, adding the two Arab parties — Raam and Joint List — to the Zionist bloc led by former army chief Gadi Eisenkot. Together, they would total 66 seats and form the parliamentary majority in the Knesset capable of dismantling the extremist government consolidated by the current prime minister.

The problem is how to make this alternative viable in practice. Without them, Eisenkot's bloc has 47 seats and Netanyahu's has 54, with 77% of the votes counted. Both are short of the required majority of 61 deputies.

Previous experience shows that forming a governing coalition with Arab integration is an intricate challenge. Raam was part, in 2021, of the government divided between Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid, which lasted just one year. But, in the current scenario, in which the participation of these voters was record and was reflected in the result, it becomes impossible to ignore the weight of this portion of the electorate.

Netanyahu's bloc completely discards the option and the reverse is true. During the campaign, Eisenkot made demands to negotiate with the Arabs: recognizing Israel as a Jewish and democratic state, accepting military service as mandatory and dismantling Hamas as a terrorist organization. According to Eisenkot himself, the two parties did not agree to these conditions.

Raam is expected to win 6 seats and the Joint List, formed by three parties of Palestinian origin, 11. Together, they increase their representation to almost double the ten seats compared to the last election. In the opinion of the chairman of the Joint List, Yousef Jabareen, Eisenkot's bloc is not in a position to impose demands.

"Anyone who wants to offer a substantial and genuine alternative to Netanyahu's bloodthirsty government will have to talk to us to pave the way for the change that the Israeli public so desperately craves. Either we continue with racism, exclusion and supremacy, or we have a true Jewish-Arab partnership", he declared, confidently, after the exit polls were released.

The participation of the two Arab parties divides Israelis, although more than 61% approve of a government with Raam, according to a recent survey by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. But this party alone is insufficient to make a future government viable.

About to win eight seats, the leader of the left-wing Democrats party defended the union of Eisenkot's bloc with the Arabs, arguing that there is no future in Israel under the aegis of fear. “We can no longer accept Netanyahu’s racist division between Jewish votes and Arab votes,” wrote Yair Golan in X.

This negotiation, however, faces resistance from figures who are part of the anti-Netanyahu bloc, such as former Defense Minister and Chancellor Avigdor Lieberman, who represents the hard line and is expected to have seven deputies. The question here is who will renounce their campaign promises to form the fragmented Israeli opposition.