Israel’s Arab Parties Hold the Balance of Power. Now What?

Israel may be heading toward another election, but the real question is whether its political leaders are prepared to accept what the voters have told them.

Israel has voted. And somehow, we may be right back where we started.

Neither Benjamin Netanyahu nor Gadi Eisenkot appears to have a clear path to forming a government. The possibility of a unity government, perhaps even a rotation agreement, is already being discussed. President Isaac Herzog will have the unenviable task of trying to find a way out of yet another political deadlock.

But there is something particularly fascinating about this election. Something that, frankly, I don’t think many of us saw coming.

The Arab parties.

With the Joint List and Ra’am currently at 19 seats, Arab voters have become one of the biggest stories of this election. Their representatives could now hold the balance of power between two political camps that have spent months convincing Israelis that the future of the country depends on keeping the other side out of government.

And the irony is difficult to ignore and frankly hilarious.

After years of political rhetoric questioning the legitimacy of Arab parties, those same parties may now be essential to determining who becomes Israel’s next prime minister. And after the events of October 7th and the rehabilition this country needs, the Jewish Israeli citizen is probably asking themselves should Arab individuals have this much power in decsion making? In my personal opinion the entire political identity of the state of Israel is in question right now.

So what happens now?

The Arab vote nobody expected

Much of the discussion surrounding the Arab vote has focused on Itamar Ben Gvir.

And understandably so.

Over the past four years, Ben Gvir’s tenure as national security minister has become a source of considerable frustration within Israel’s Arab communities. His approach to policing, his rhetoric, and the government’s policies toward Arab citizens have contributed to a growing sense of alienation.

For many Arab Israelis, this election became an opportunity to express that frustration at the ballot box.

But I think there is something more interesting happening here.

For years, Israel has discussed Arab political participation largely in terms of voter turnout, boycotts, and whether Arab parties would manage to cross the electoral threshold. The conversation from what Iv’e researched has always been, a glossing over Arab representation but a system in which Arab’s are given the ability to sit in the Knesset Plenum because their livlihood in Israel deserves to be discussed just as much as the average Israeli Jew. This time, the conversation is different.

Arab voters have not simply elected representatives. They may have elected the very people who will determine whether Israel can form a government at all.

And suddenly, Jewish political parties that have traditionally been reluctant to rely on Arab support are facing an uncomfortable political reality.

They may need it.

But who exactly are these Arab parties?

I think this is where much of the public discussion becomes overly simplistic.

We tend to speak about “the Arab parties” as though they all share the same political ideology, ambitions, and relationship with the State of Israel.

They don’t.

The Joint List brings together three different political movements: Hadash, Ta’al, and Balad. Alongside them stands Ra’am, which has pursued a notably different political strategy.

Hadash, associated with the communist tradition and represented by figures such as Yousef Jabareen, is a socialist Arab-Jewish movement that emphasizes equality, workers’ rights, and an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through a two-state solution.

Ta’al, led by Ahmad Tibi, is a secular Arab nationalist party that focuses on civil equality for Arab citizens alongside Palestinian national rights.

Then there is Balad, led by Sami Abu Shehadeh.

Balad is particularly interesting because its political philosophy challenges one of the most fundamental aspects of Israeli identity: the definition of Israel as a Jewish state.

The party advocates a “state of all its citizens,” arguing that Israel should be defined by equal citizenship rather than Jewish national identity. It also supports Palestinian national rights, including the right of return for Palestinian refugees.

For many Jewish Israelis, myself included, this raises difficult questions.

Israel was established as the national homeland of the Jewish people. Its existence as a Jewish state is not simply another political preference. It is tied to our history, our collective memory, and the very reason this country was established.

So what happens when a party that fundamentally challenges that identity becomes part of the political equation determining who governs Israel?

And more importantly, does allowing such a party to participate in government necessarily threaten Israel’s Jewish character?

I don’t think the answer is as straightforward as either side would like us to believe.

Ra’am already showed us another possibility

We also cannot ignore the precedent set by Mansour Abbas.

In 2021, Abbas made history when Ra’am became part of the Bennett-Lapid coalition. For the first time, an independent Arab party formally joined an Israeli governing coalition.

It was an extraordinary political moment.

Ra’am, an Islamist party with religiously conservative roots, chose to prioritize practical improvements for Arab citizens over some of the ideological battles that had traditionally defined Arab parliamentary politics.

Abbas wanted greater investment in Arab municipalities, better infrastructure, housing solutions, and action against the organized crime devastating Arab communities.

He was willing to work with Jewish parties across the political spectrum to achieve those goals.

The government ultimately collapsed, but Ra’am’s participation demonstrated something important: Arab political representation does not have to mean permanent opposition.

Of course, there is a considerable difference between Ra’am and Balad. It would be naive to assume that the entire Joint List could simply follow Abbas’s example.

But the precedent exists.

And it forces us to ask whether the reluctance to include Arab parties in government is always about genuine ideological differences, or whether some of it has become a political taboo that we are simply unwilling to challenge.

A Jewish state with Arab political power

Here is where I find myself conflicted.

Israel is a Jewish and democratic state. Both words matter.

I believe deeply in the importance of Israel remaining the national homeland of the Jewish people. That is not something I believe should be negotiated away as part of a coalition agreement.

At the same time, approximately one-fifth of Israel’s citizens are Arab.

They live here. They work here. They pay taxes, raise families, attend universities, and participate in Israeli society. They are affected by the same economic pressures, housing shortages, and failures of public services that frustrate Jewish Israelis.

Surely, they deserve meaningful political representation.

But what does meaningful representation actually look like?

Does it mean Arab parties should have the opportunity to enter a governing coalition? Should they be able to influence national budgets, education policy, and policing? And if so, what happens when their positions on Israel’s national identity or security fundamentally contradict those of their Jewish coalition partners?

These are not insignificant disagreements.

There is an enormous difference between negotiating additional funding for Arab municipalities and negotiating the future character of the State of Israel.

But perhaps that distinction is precisely where the conversation needs to begin.

Having Arab lawmakers in a coalition does not mean handing them control over the country. Coalition governments are built on negotiation and compromise. No party gets everything it wants.

The question is whether the Jewish parties are willing to negotiate with Arab representatives in the first place, and whether those representatives are prepared to accept the compromises that governing requires.

We have spent years arguing about whether Arab parties are legitimate political partners.

Perhaps we should be asking which policies they are actually willing to negotiate, and which principles they consider non-negotiable.

And what if nobody gives in?

There is, of course, another possibility.

We could end up going to elections. Again.

After months of campaigning, political promises, heated debates, and an election that produced a remarkable shift in Arab political participation, Israelis may find themselves returning to the ballot box simply because neither political camp can assemble a majority.

I find that possibility almost absurd but very likely.

Having worked inside the Knesset, I have seen how difficult political compromise can be, even among parties that supposedly agree on the most fundamental issues.

Coalition politics is rarely about perfect ideological compatibility. It is about deciding which disagreements can be managed and which ones cannot.

Yet we seem to have reached a point where political leaders would sometimes rather risk another election than entertain the possibility of governing alongside people they have spent years portraying as unacceptable partners.

Perhaps Netanyahu and Eisenkot will reach an agreement. Perhaps Herzog will manage to facilitate a unity government. Perhaps one side will convince enough lawmakers to cross political lines.

Or perhaps the Arab parties will find themselves holding more political influence than ever before, only to watch the Jewish parties refuse to use the parliamentary majority that could potentially be formed with their support.

And then what?

Another election? Another campaign? Another few months of political uncertainty?

Would the results really be that different?

The question we cannot keep avoiding

I don’t think the answer is simply to bring every Arab party into government. Nor do I think it is reasonable to dismiss concerns about parties whose political platforms challenge Israel’s Jewish identity.

There are legitimate ideological differences here, and pretending otherwise would be dishonest.

But I also struggle with the idea that an entire segment of Israeli society can participate in elections, send representatives to the Knesset, and potentially determine the parliamentary balance of power, yet remain permanently excluded from meaningful political influence.

If we believe in democracy, we have to be willing to confront what happens when democracy produces results that make us uncomfortable.

That does not mean every party deserves a place in government. It means every party should be judged by its policies, its actions, and its willingness to operate within the democratic system, rather than by the ethnicity of its voters.

And perhaps there is another question worth considering.

What would happen if Arab citizens felt that their political participation could genuinely improve their lives? Would that strengthen their connection to the state? Could it create a greater sense of shared responsibility? Or would the ideological differences between Jewish and Arab political movements ultimately prove too difficult to overcome?

I don’t know.

But I do know that holding another election will not make these questions disappear.

Israel’s Arab citizens are not going anywhere. Neither are the disagreements surrounding our Jewish and democratic identity.

We can continue treating Arab political participation as a problem to be managed, or we can begin discussing what responsible political partnership might actually look like, without abandoning the principles that make Israel what it is.

Perhaps the most revealing outcome of this election is not that Arab parties have gained so much political power.

It is that, even when their votes could help break a national deadlock, we still seem unsure what to do with them.

And if that uncertainty sends us back to the polls, we should ask ourselves whether another election is really going to solve anything.

Or whether we are simply postponing a conversation that Israel can no longer afford to avoid.

I’m not sure how to finish this piece; the cognitive dissonance of being a Jew who moved to this country and left a life of a melting pot of religious freedom in America to live in a country of Jewish control and sovereignty is something that I have cherished over a decade as an Israeli and I don’t want that to be threatened. That cannot change. If someone can ensure that Arab parties within the government coalition won’t threaten that sovereignty, then thats a conversation I’m willing to have and hear more.