As Americans were casting their votes in the high-profile midterm elections, Israel’s journey to form a government, following its very recent election, is only beginning. With no party close to a majority after Oct. 27, Arab parties may hold the key to Israel’s next government.
Israel is an island of democracy in a region filled with dictatorships. Most Arabs across its borders, including Palestinians ruled by the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, have no say in who governs them.
Counting to 61
Unlike in the United States, Israel is a parliamentary democracy—one of dozens, from Mexico to the United Kingdom—where Israelis do not directly elect a prime minister. The whole country votes as one district and every ballot goes to a party, rather than an individual candidate. The 120 seats in the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, are divided according to each party’s share of the vote.
Eleven parties cleared the minimum threshold to win seats. Several are alliances of smaller parties that ran together, ranging from the far left to the far right, and include Jewish, Arab and joint Jewish-Arab parties. National voter turnout was 77.9%, the highest since 1999.
To form a ruling government, parties must secure majority support among 61 Knesset members. No single party in Israel’s history has ever won a majority of seats, so every government is a coalition of several parties, often including rivals that campaigned against each other.
The recent election results gave Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s current coalition 53 seats, the opposition bloc led by former military Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot 48 and the Arab parties 19. Neither bloc can reach 61 without partners from outside its bloc.
Negotiations to build a majority are underway and until a new government is formed, the current one led by Netanyahu remains in office.
The new Knesset reflects Israel’s diversity:
- 47 are first-time members, including Yonatan Shalev, 24, the youngest ever
- 33 women, a record high
- 17 are Arab
- 3 are from the LGBTQ community
- 2 are Druze
‘A future for our children’
Israeli Arab voters lined up in record numbers at polling places from northern Galilee to the southern Negev Desert.
Muslim Arab Bedouin voters in a Negev village gave Netanyahu’s party a majority in the past two elections. This time turnout nearly doubled and they backed Ra’am, an Islamist party. Volunteers went door to door in Bedouin villages to encourage women to take part.
Ra’am’s party includes incoming Knesset member Yoav Segalovitz, a Jewish former police official.
He said he joined the party to symbolize Jewish-Arab political partnerships and to demonstrate that secular Jews and religious Arab citizens can govern together. In 2021, Ra’am became the first Arab party to join a governing coalition, winning new funding for Arab towns and legal status for Bedouin villages.
Arab voter turnout reached 80%, higher than the Jewish vote. The two Arab-led slates, Ra’am and the Joint List, won 19 seats, passing the previous record of 15. The highest turnout anywhere, 87%, was in the northern Arab town of Sakhnin. Both slates campaigned on fighting local crime and securing more investment for Arab communities.
“We want to live, we want a future for our children, and we want a future for ourselves,” Awni Zoabi, 52, said after voting in Nazareth. Many voters said they turned out to replace the government, a choice any citizen of a democracy is free to make. “We should now translate that result into making real improvements in our lives,” stated Amir Hajj Yahya, 30, in Taibe.
Palestinians in Gaza and Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) are not Israeli citizens. Under the 1990s Oslo Accord peace agreements, they have their own government and their own elections, but have been denied a vote for parliament or president in two decades. Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas, who turns 91 on Nov. 15, is in the 22nd year of a four-year term and recently postponed elections again.
Khaled Abu Toameh, an Israeli Arab journalist, described the contrast: Arab citizens of Israel “can organize and compete for office, while Palestinians living under the Palestinian Authority or Hamas have no freedom or influence over their future.”
‘An open heart’
The next move belongs to Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog. Breaking with tradition, he will hear from the smaller parties first, so every option is examined before the largest ones weigh in. Herzog will then ask one lawmaker to try to build a majority, with up to six weeks to succeed.
He has urged party leaders to come with an “open heart” and to avoid another round of elections. In 2019 and 2020, Israelis went to the polls three times in 11 months to break the political deadlock.
There are two likely ways out of the deadlock this time. First, Eisenkot’s bloc could bring the Arab parties into a coalition or lead a minority government that relies on their votes from outside it. Another option is for Netanyahu and Likud to team up with Eisenkot and other parties to form a unity government, leaving out the Arab parties.
The newly elected 26th Knesset will be sworn in on Nov. 10. Parties opposed to Netanyahu hold a majority of its seats and can use it before any government is formed. They are already moving to replace the Knesset speaker, a Likud politician who presides over its sessions.
Points to consider:
1. Every Arab ballot in Israel refutes the ‘apartheid’ lie.
Israel’s Arab citizens have voted and won seats in the Knesset since the country’s first election in 1949. Arabs make up more than a fifth of the population and serve in senior posts in healthcare, education and law. In this year’s election, Arab turnout outpaced the Jewish vote and Arab-led parties won a record 19 seats. This result could give them the balance of power in forming Israel’s next government. The vote clearly disproved anti-Zionist claims of Israeli “apartheid.” Arab journalist Khaled Abu Toameh put it bluntly: “So much for the sweeping claim that Israel is an ‘apartheid state.’”
2. Israel guarantees its Arab citizens a free vote, denied across the Middle East.
An Arab citizen of Israel can help decide who leads the country, something most Arabs across its borders cannot. Abbas governs by decree, and Hamas has not allowed Gazans to vote since seizing the territory from the P.A. in 2007. In Lebanon, generations of Palestinians born in the country still cannot become citizens or vote. Jordan’s king appoints the prime minister and can dissolve parliament. Royal families rule Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar. The same rulers who condemn Israel deny their own citizens the right to vote.
3. After three years of war, Israel reaches its highest voter turnout in decades.
Through three years of a multi-front war, amid the agony of waiting for returning hostages and waves of missile attacks from Hamas, Hezbollah, Yemen and Iran, Israel maintained its democracy. The high voter turnout reflects the level of commitment by all Israelis to the security and success of their nation. In this year’s elections, an estimated 67,000 to 80,000 Israelis living abroad flew home because Israel has no absentee voting, and soldiers cast ballots at military polling stations.
