Can Israeli Arab Politics Change the next Election

Israel remains almost evenly divided over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s fitness. Netanyahu avoids criticizing US-Iran deal, and claims the war’s main goals have been achieved.

Meanwhile, Israel’s Arab political parties failed to sign surplus-vote sharing agreements before the deadline for submissions passed; thus giving an edge to the bloc of parties led by former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the coming November 1 election.

A pair of polls predicted a rise in Arab voter turnout, despite months of surveys predicting that less than half of the Arab community will participate in the November 1 election. The Israel Democracy Institute’s Special Arab Society Election Survey, found that among respondents, 50.5 percent said they are “certain” that they will vote.

Arab Israelis are largely enthusiastic about Arab parties joining an Israeli coalition government, with 69.5% supporting such a move, and 29% opposing it. Additionally, 75% responded that they would approve of an Arab MK becoming a cabinet minister. However, only 43% of respondents believed that Ra’am’s participation in the last coalition improved the lives of Arab Israelis.

The Arab nationalist Balad party refused a request by Hadash-Ta’al to sign a deal. Balad is not expected to pass the 3.25% electoral threshold needed to win Knesset representation, according to public opinion polling, meaning that the tens of thousands of votes for their party will likely go to waste.

Under Israeli law, the combined leftover votes go to the party in the agreement closest to winning another seat — and are often sufficient to add that seat to its tally, making the votes potentially decisive in a tight race.

And Likud party leader Benjamin Netanyahu has increased his spending in Arab communities in the final weeks of the election campaign, with statistics revealing a significant gap in expenditure on Arabic-language advertisements between Likud and the Arab parties. Likud received around 5% of Arab (including Druze) votes in the last election, more than any other non-Arab party.

Israeli Arab parties fare much better when running together, the Arab Islamic Ra’am party is determined to continue its independent course. It sat in the anti-Natanyahu coalition government.

And on the last day the Joint List of Arab-led parties announced it would run in upcoming elections as two separate factions, in a surprise 11th-hour move that shuffled Israel’s political landscape and could significantly dilute Arab representation in the Knesset after November.

The Joint List was first formed in the run-up to the 2015 elections after the vote threshold was raised to four seats, more than any Arab party had managed to get on its own. The alliance created an awkward marriage between communists, nationalists and Islamists, essentially forced together in order to retain political influence, but disputes and fissures have hounded the Joint List throughout its short life.

There are approximately one million Arab citizens of Israel, a huge electoral demographic with immense potential. Far from monolithic, the Arabic-speaking citizens of Israel are made up of a diverse collection of communities with a wide range of views: the Druze in the north; the Islamist Bedouin in the south; the Arabs of the mixed cities of Haifa, Acre and Jaffa; the residents of the villages, towns and cities of “the Triangle” and the Galilee; and of course a sizable Christian Arab population. Israel’s Arabs are as divided as Israel’s Jews.

Nationwide turnout in Israel has hovered around the 70% mark for the last 20 years, and has changed little throughout the past five election cycles. Yet turnout in Arab localities is extremely volatile, reaching highs of 65% and lows of 45% in recent years. The vast majority of the Arab vote now goes to Arab parties, with only 9% going to Jewish parties in the last election.

Ra’am, “The United Arab List,” which was formed from the southern wing of Israel’s Islamist movement. Its leader, Mansour Abbas, controversially pulled out of the Joint List prior to the last elections in 2021, gambling that it could garner enough support with a totally different strategy: to join a coalition and become the kingmaker, rather than remain perennially in opposition. Abbas had read the pulse of the Arab community where polls had shown big majorities in favor of joining an Israeli government coalition.

The idea of being part of a government is especially attractive to the growing number of Arab professionals. In 2000, Arab Israelis constituted just 11.2% of all new physicians; by 2020, that number had risen to nearly 50%, according to the Central Bureau of Statistics and the Ministry of Health. And Arab women, whose status in society is rising now number almost 66 percent of Arab students at colleges and universities.

But a 2021 study from researchers at the Academic College of Tel-Aviv-Yaffo and Tel Aviv University found that Jewish Israelis exhibited bias towards Arab Israeli doctors. A government party can do much to change that.

When the four main Arab parties united as a single list (as in 2015, September 2019 and 2020), Arab turnout has been around 60-65% (only 5-10 points behind the general turnout), and the Arab parties have subsequently done well in the election.

But when the parties have been divided, as in April 2019 and the most recent election in 2021, turnout has dropped to below 50% and the parties performed poorly. In fact, at the most recent election, the 10 seats the Arab parties won, representing 8% of the Knesset, contrasted sharply with the Arab community’s 21% of the population as a whole. Unlike the Jewish parties, Arab parties have received more votes when they run together.

So one might have thought that the Arab parties would want to reunite for this election. In fact, the opposite is true. The split Joint List and Ra’am will again run separately. So a recent poll reported in The Times of Israel suggests Arab turnout could drop to as low as 40%.

Ra’am no longer sees itself as the party of eternal opposition. Mansour Abbas has crossed that line. Abbas believes that Ra’am can again prove a kingmaker as it did in the last election. And despite being called “terror supporters” by Netanyahu, Ra’am has not ruled out sitting with Netanyahu either.

So Arab voters now fall into two camps: those voting to be in the opposition (the split Joint List), and those looking to join the next coalition (Ra’am).

There is also a claim that Ra’am leader Abbas would actually prefer to join a Netanyahu-led government, the argument being that the only way for his Arab community to get true recognition and acceptance into Israeli society is to join a government of the right and Netanyahu.

Indeed, Ra’am has more in common with the religious and socially conservative Jewish parties that are part of the Netanyahu coalition than with its more liberal partners in the outgoing coalition government. But the far right Jewish nationalist parties, small as they are, will not join a government that includes Ra’am.

If Netanyahu doesn’t get to 61 seats, the “real” campaign will begin the morning after the election and go on for many weeks after the election. Then Ra’am will have its opportunity to be a king maker and fulfill the words of the Biblical Prophet Isaiah:

“On the day of your fasting, you do as you please and exploit all your workers. Your fasting ends in quarreling and strife, and in striking each other with wicked fists. You cannot fast as you do today and expect your voice to be heard on high.
58: 5 Is this the kind of fast I have chosen, only a day for people to humble themselves?
Is it only for bowing one’s head like a reed and for lying in sackcloth and ashes?
Is that what you call a fast, a day acceptable to the Lord?

6 “Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke?
7 Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—
when you see the naked, to clothe them, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?
8 Then your light will break forth like the dawn, and your healing will quickly appear;
then your righteousness will go before you, and the glory of the Lord will be your rear guard.
9 Then you will call, and the Lord will answer; you will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I.