Israeli Arab Parties And Israel’s Next Government

Gadi Eisenkot, having been selected by President Issac Herzog to try to form an Israeli government, can achieve this objective if he joins forces with Arab parties.

Therein lies the problem.

Eisenkot and all but one of his potential allies are loath to embark on that path, even though that taboo was broken in 2021, when Prime Minister Naftali Bennett invited Mansour Abbas’ United Arab List (Ra’am) into his short-lived government.

The arithmetic tells the tale.

In the wake of the October 27 general election, the four Zionist parties opposed to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government – Eisenkot’s Yashar, Bennett’s and Yair Lapid’s B’Yachad, Yair Golan’s The Democrats and Avigdor Liberman’s Yisrael Beytenu – won a total of 48 seats in the 120-seat Knesset.

The two non-Zionist Arab parties, Abbas’ Ra’am and Yousef Jabareen’s Joint List, picked up a record number of 19 seats and may yet hold the parliamentary balance of power.

Netanyahu’s Likud Party and his coalition partners won 53 seats, with the Likud accounting for 27 of them, making it the largest single party.

When the numbers are added up, the Zionist opposition and the Arab parties hold 67 seats in the Knesset, enough to form a majority government.

Eighty percent of the Arab electorate voted in the last election, signalling their desire for relevance and a role in governance. Muslim and Christian Arabs, plus the Druze, comprise around 21 percent of Israel’s population of 10.3 million.

“The Arab parties managed to produce an historic turnout in the Arab community, a reflection of this population joining Israeli democracy and the democratic process, and their desire to see their issues being taken care of by the Israeli government and political system,” Yohanan Plesner, the president of the Israel Democracy Institute, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

By all accounts, the extraordinary turnout was driven, in part, by animus toward Netanyahu’s far-right government and, in particular, two of its most provocative ministers, National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich.

The question looming over the country today is whether Israel’s Jewish political leaders and the public they represent are ready to accept them as legitimate partners. Almost all of the Zionist party leaders, including Bennett and especially Liberman, oppose an alliance with Arab parties.

Golan is the odd man out. As he wrote in Haaretz, “In a democratic Israel, citizenship isn’t conditional. A ballot cast by an Arab citizen in Sakhnin or Rahat carries the same weight as one cast by a Jewish citizen in Tel Aviv or Sderot …”

Moshe Ya’alon, Israel’s former defence minister and now a vocal critic of Netanyahu, has urged Eisenkot to form a government with Ra’am and offer Abbas a ministerial post. “Mansour Abbas is not Jewish, but I would hope that most Israeli citizens align more with his values than the values of the messianists, racists, and fascists,” he said in a reference to Ben Gvir and Smotrich.

Eisenkot’s apparent reluctance to include Arabs in his cabinet means that he may not be able to cobble together a government. This would give Netanyahu, the caretaker prime minister, an opportunity to extend his premiership.

If Netanyahu falls short of retaining his position, Israelis will head into a fresh election next spring. Given the current circumstances, Netanyahu would prefer this option, thinking he would fare better in the next round.

Herzog tasked Eisenkot with assembling a new government within 28 days after 67 Knesset members, including Arabs, recommended him. Only 46 favored Netanyahu. United Torah Judaism, Netanyahu’s ultra-orthodox ally, declined to endorse him and hinted it might join an Eisenkot-led coalition.

Eisenkot wants to work toward the formation of a “national emergency government” to eject Netanyahu as soon as possible. “We must urgently establish stable, responsible leadership, prevent another round of elections, and put an end to Netanyahu’s determination to cling to office,” he said, adding that parties that do not join him now can do so later.

Eisenkot has three stark options at his disposal.

He can form a national unity government with Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving prime minister. He can set up a minority government with less than 61 seats, finding himself dependent on Arab parties for survival. He can enlist the support of Arab politicians by offering them ministerial portfolios and full participation in the affairs of state.

Until five years ago, the inclusion of Arab parties in an Israeli government would have seemed beyond the pale. Abbas’ participation in Bennett’s government, however, broke that paradigm. Whether this arrangement can be resurrected has yet to be tested.

Historically speaking, Arab members of Zionist parties have served in Israeli governments. Ghaleb Majadele and Issawi Frej, who belonged to the Labor and Meretz parties respectively, held ministerial positions.

Prior to last week’s election, Eisenkot said that any lawmaker willing to accept his conditions was “a potential partner.” Pundits interpreted his comment as a theoretical willingness to cooperate with Arab parties should they meet his conditions, which are clear and unambiguous.

The conditions are: recognition of Israel as a Jewish, democratic, liberal and egalitarian state, acceptance of the values of the 1948 Declaration of Independence, compulsory national service for all citizens, either in the military or in a civilian framework, and agreement that Hamas is a terrorist organization whose military and governance capabilities in the Gaza Strip must be dismantled.

“The door to the government we will establish is open to every elected official who accepts these principles,” said Eisenkot. In his view, neither the moderate Ra’am nor the more radical Joint List have accepted them.

Abbas, a social conservative who appears eager to join an anti-Netanyahu coalition, has taken steps to assure the Jewish public that he is, first and foremost, a pragmatist willing to work within the system.

He recruited a former police commander and an ardent Zionist, Yoav Segalovitz, as Ra’am’s number two candidate. He has recognized Israel as a Jewish state. He condemned Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack and called for the release of the hostages.

Abbas’ vulnerability is that he supports a two-state solution, which most Israeli Jews reject. And while he calls for Hamas’ disarmament, he has refrained from demanding its destruction, citing his wish to remain a “bridge” to Palestinians and his fear that he may endanger himself and his family. Still, Abbas has not ruled out condemning Hamas as a terrorist group, saying this issue can be discussed in negotiations.

The Joint List, which includes Palestinian nationalists who reject Israel’s status as a Jewish democracy, is composed of three Arab parties. Hadash is a socialist party. Ta’al promotes Arab civic rights and equality. Balad upholds Palestinian rights.

Hadash and Ta’al have both indicated a readiness to set aside parts of their agenda in order to depose Netanyahu. Ahmed Tibi, Ta’al’s leader, is prepared to support anti-Netanyahu Zionist parties, but he does not want to enter an Eisenkot government. Tibi has urged Eisenkot to act like the late Yitzhak Rabin, who relied on the votes of Arab parliamentarians to pass the 1993 Oslo peace accord with the Palestine Liberation Organization.

Yousef Jabareen, the leader of the Joint List, concurs with Tibi. “We are ready for political cooperation to form an alternative government that will present a genuine alternative and commit to a fundamental change in the current government’s racist policies,” he said. “A government that will work to recognize the rights of the Arab public and end its exclusion, and that of its representatives, from the political system.”

Jabareen’s conditions for such a deal look like a nonstarter. He insists on a two-state solution, which even The Democrats have put on ice. In addition, he demands the halt of demolitions of homes of convicted terrorists and seeks a budget for reducing violent crime in Arab municipalities.

He brushed off reports that Qatar tried to interfere in the election, dismissing them as “spin” and “dangerous slander.” And he added, “The only interference I know of is Donald Trump’s message supporting Netanyahu.”

Since the election, Netanyahu has attacked the prospect of an Eisenkot government reliant on Arab parties. Claiming this scenario would unleash “fires and flames in the streets,” he has likened it to “national suicide.”

Zionist parties, he said, should unite under his leadership. “This is a matter of our very existence. Israel simply will not survive under such a government.”

Within hours of the election, Netanyahu issued a video in which he said, “It is simply forbidden to endanger Israel and form a government that rests on anti-Zionist Arab parties.”

On X, he wrote, “The elections were stolen by Arab parties … through serious criminal offenses involving bribery, threats, violence, forgery and the use of prohibited software to mobilize voters.”

The Likud has also accused Qatar of foreign interference, an accusation that has yet to be proven. Meanwhile, the Central Elections Committee announced it is investigating foreign funding irregularities.

Netanyahu disparaged anti-Zionist Arab parties in the full knowledge that his own bloc includes ultra-Orthodox lawmakers who represent anti-Zionist communities that, for religious reasons, reject Israel’s statehood.

Netanyahu’s inflammatory comments are hardly surprising.

For years now, he has portrayed Arab parliamentarians as illegitimate partners, thereby consigning one-fifth of Israeli citizens to political purgatory.

Netanyahu posted a similar warning during the 2015 election. Accused of racism, he walked back his comment and apologized.

Tani Frank, the director of the Shalom Hartman Institute’s Center for Judaism and State Policy, argues that the willingness of Jewish Israelis to accept cooperation with Arab parties is extremely limited after the atrocities of October 7.

On the eve of the election, a poll conducted by the Israel Democracy Institute found that a clear majority of Israeli Jews are opposed to Arab parties playing a role in government. While most Israeli Jews on the left would support the participation of Arab parties, those in the center and the right would prefer another election rather than a coalition with Arabs.

Even as Netanyahu lambasted “anti-Zionist Arab parties,” he conveniently ignored the reality that he himself courted Ra’am after the previous election in 2022.

Netanyahu’s son, Yair, has followed in his footsteps, having said that Arab citizens of Israel pose the “greatest threat” to its survival apart from Iran’s nuclear threat. He claimed that Israel cannot survive “when 20 percent of its population identifies with its enemies and wants to see its destruction.”

Proceeding from the assumption that Netanyahu’s claims are unfounded, Esther Solomon published a bold piece in Haaretz. “In the Netanyahu camp, the only legitimate government is one with a Jewish majority,” she wrote. “This is plain, repulsive racism, a fundamental subversion of what Israeli citizenship, suffrage and democracy mean, alongside a gross attack on the integrity of Jewish-Arab partnership. For Netanyahu, it’s an … effort to preemptively invalidate a government led by Gadi Eisenkot with Arab partners, whether inside the coalition or supporting it from outside.”

Whether Eisenkot will ultimately reach out to Arab parties in his quest to form a government has yet to be determined, but at this moment it remains a possibility.