The Blogs: Netanyahu Fears A Jewish-Arab Coalition

Public opinion polls in Israel indicate that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition is likely to fall short of winning a 61-seat majority in the 120-member Knesset, leaving him unable to form a government after the October 27 general election.

The center-right opposition, led by Gadi Eisenkot, Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid, appears to be in the same boat. They will probably not win the required number of seats to cobble together a government.

This political paralysis means that Jewish parties will need the support of Arab parties to establish the next government.

Alternatively, the opposition might win power by forging an alliance with Ra’am, an Arab party led by Mansour Abbas, who currently holds five seats in the Knesset.

Five years ago, Abbas made history when he became the first Arab to join an Israeli governing coalition. With Netanyahu unable to form a government after an inconclusive election, Abbas threw his support behind Bennett and Lapid, who formed a coalition that governed until December 2022. When their government collapsed, Netanyahu, Israel’s longest serving prime minister, reclaimed his old job.

Since then, with public opinion in Israel having lurched further to the right due to Hamas’ attack on October 7, 2023, Bennett and Lapid have said they would not form a government with non-Zionist Arab parties.

Eisenkot, however, has said he would consider partnering with an Arab party that recognizes Israel as a Jewish state and endorses the values of Israel’s Declaration of Independence.

The Ra’am Party, which was known as the United Arab List when it was founded in 1996, may fit the bill.

Abbas believes that Israeli Arabs should strive to obtain tangible improvements in their lives rather than remain permanently outside the Zionist-oriented political system.

To curry favor with Jewish voters, Abbas recently pulled Ra’am out of the Joint List, an alliance of Arab parties that consists of Hadash, Ta’al and Balad. Currently, Arab parties have a total of ten seats in the Knesset, enough to sway the result of an election.

Ra’am focuses on domestic issues and Arab-Jewish cooperation rather than Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians. And Abbas, a socially conservative politician who has been described as an Islamist, has pursued the concept of pragmatic participation in Israeli politics while retaining a strong Palestinian national identity.

Abbas’ appeal as a partner in a coalition headed by Netanyahu’s opponents was enhanced last month when Yoav Segalovitz announced he would take the unprecedented step of campaigning with Abbas in the forthcoming election. A former member of Lapid’s Yesh Atid Party, he was deputy minister for public security in the Bennett-Lapid government from 2021 to 2022.

Abbas’ partnership with Segalovitz chips away at the idea that Arab parties have no place in governing the country.

Yoav Segalovitz in 2022

Although Segalovitz has not joined Ra’am as a party member, he hopes to be a working model and a symbol of Jewish-Arab coexistence in Israel. While Jews and Arabs already mingle in Israeli society, he thinks they should do the same in Israeli politics.

Segalovitz is credited with helping reduce crime in Israeli Arab communities, an issue dear to Abbas’ heart and at the center of Ra’am’s platform.

The crime rate in the Arab community has reached alarming levels during Netanyahu’s latest four-year term. “The central issue for Arab society is violence and the leadership’s failure to address it,” said Segalovitz in a recent interview with the Times of Israel.

He believes that drafting young Arab men into national civil service would help resolve the problem.

Netanyahu seems upset by this shakeup in Israeli politics. Likely fearing that his opponents may defeat him by inviting Ra’am into a coalition, Netanyahu’s Likud party has asked the Central Elections Committee to disqualify Ra’am and the Joint List from running in the election.

The Likud has accused Arab parties of failing to label Hamas and Hezbollah as terrorist organizations, adding there is “no room in the Knesset” for such politicians.

Likud’s maneuver to ostracize Arab parties is undemocratic, but it serves two purposes, according to Arik Rudnitzky, a specialist in Jewish-Israeli Arab relations at the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies at Tel Aviv University.

Likud seeks to delegitimize Arab parties, particularly Ra’am, as potential partners in an Eisenkot government. Likud, too, hopes to discourage Arab citizens from voting. “The calculation is that if an Arab party is disqualified, some Arab voters may boycott the election,” says Rudnitzky.

A lower Arab turnout would improve Netanyahu’s chances of remaining in power, he noted. “The effort is not only about keeping Arab parties off the ballot. It is also part of a broader strategy to obstruct the formation of an alternative government.”

For all his bluster about Ra’am, Netanyahu tried to recruit Abbas as an ally prior to the last election. Abbas claims that Netanyahu invited him to his official residence and read him a speech that he, Abbas, would deliver after reaching a partnership with the Likud.

Netanyahu’s ally, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, reportedly torpedoed his supposed plan.

Abbas, though, has criticized the high Palestinian civilian death toll during the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip. And he has called for Palestinian statehood, a notion that the current Israeli government and much of the Israeli population reject.

He focuses on such issues as crime and personal security in Arab communities, housing, infrastructure, education, economic development, recognition and development of Bedouin communities, and government investment in Arab municipalities.

What he wants above all else is a better life for Israel’s two million Arab citizens, who comprise about 21 percent of Israel’s population and who complain they are second-class citizens.

He may be able to achieve these objectives if he joins the opposition after the general election. But if Netanyahu has any say in the matter, Abbas will remain an outsider in Israel’s political system.