The Case for Arab Partnership in a New Government Coalition
Why this week’s unprecedented Arab-Israeli voter turnout is a wake-up call for Jewish Israelis
While the nation attempts to make sense of Tuesday’s inconclusive election results and chart a path forward, I’m surprisingly optimistic.
Why?
I believe the current stalemate presents an unexpected opportunity to create a new and inclusive governing coalition that truly reflects the demographics of our nation.
It would require the Gadi Eisenkot-led opposition to partner with both Arab parties, Ra’am and The Joint List. For the first time, Arab-Israelis would become genuine partners in national governance, rather than mere voters who are outside the circle of legitimate political power.
The current election results leave Netanyahu’s bloc with 53 seats, the Eisenkot-led opposition with 48, and the Arab parties with a combined — and unprecedented — 19. Neither major bloc has the 61 seats needed to form a government without additional partners.
Unless coalition negotiations produce an unexpected breakthrough, we may be headed for another election in just a few months. (Oy.)
I see another possibility, and it’s one that will likely make many Jewish Israelis deeply uncomfortable. It will require us to confront difficult questions about political power, national identity, Judaism, democracy, and the very nature of the State of Israel.
That’s precisely the point.
As a Jewish Israeli, I believe this is a conversation — and a national reckoning — we urgently need.
Arab-Israeli citizens comprise roughly 20 percent of the national population, more than 2 million people. Yet their political parties have never been fully integrated into a governing coalition as equal partners. They’ve never had a truly equal seat at the table.
I believe it’s time to change that. Hear me out.
A Truly Inclusive Coalition
A coalition that includes Arab parties could do more to advance Israel’s international standing, address domestic inequality, and tackle shared security concerns than maintaining the current stalemate, returning to the polls, and hoping for a different outcome.
It would also offer a more meaningful alternative to a potential “unity” government, which may be unity in name only when its leaders have spent years advocating fundamentally opposing policies.
An Arab-Jewish coalition would not be easy. The lack of mutual trust is abundantly clear, and the parties have significant policy disagreements on core issues such as Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Yet political cooperation does not require agreement on every issue. It requires finding enough common ground to jointly govern, alongside good-faith commitments to move forward, together. I believe this election has brought to the surface our need to do exactly that.
A government formed through cooperation with Arab-led parties would be a seismic opportunity to improve Israel’s international standing and restore relations with the nations of the world.
This pivotal moment calls for the moral courage of Jewish Israelis to trust that working with our Arab-Israeli counterparts is indeed possible.
Stay with me.
Election Consensus: We’re Heading in the Wrong Direction
This election has made clear that the country remains divided, with neither major political bloc securing a majority. While Likud maintained its position as the largest party, the Netanyahu coalition fell well short of the seats needed to govern alone. Of particular note is that the majority of Israeli voters opted for opposition parties – a vote for change.
The unprecedented Arab-Israeli voter turnout is particularly significant. Channel 12 reported participation around 80 percent, the highest in nearly 25 years. Arab-Israeli participation has easily become one of the biggest storylines of the election.
For Arab-Israelis, many saw the vote as a referendum on the far-right policies of National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, amid surging crime in Arab towns, inadequate policing, and years of neglect and underinvestment.
While votes were scattered across various opposition parties, we have at least one significant point of common ground: most Israelis want a change in direction. The main question is whether opposition leaders can translate this joint starting point into a workable coalition.
More Than “Kingmakers”: Bridgemakers
The Arab parties have been coined “kingmakers” because their seats carry significant influence in determining potential government coalitions.
I suggest we view them as bridgemakers — true partners and bridges to Arab-Israeli society. Including Arab parties in an opposition-led government would demonstrate that Israel is ready to walk the talk when it comes to inclusive democracy and a true, shared society.
Ra’am, led by Mansour Abbas, offers an important precedent. In 2021, it made history as the first Arab party to join an Israeli governing coalition, becoming part of the Bennett-Lapid government. That government lasted only about a year, and the experience was far from perfect. There are plenty of lessons to be learned from that political experiment.
Abbas described it as a “model that can be developed, improved and upgraded.” During that year, Arab-Israeli priorities — including reducing crime and investing in housing, education, and local communities — received greater attention and (finally) entered the national policy arena.
Abbas has emerged as a pragmatic political partner. He is the first major Arab-Israeli lawmaker to publicly acknowledge the legitimacy of Israel as a Jewish state.
The Joint List presents a more complicated picture and has much less receptivity among Jewish Israelis. That’s quite understable: some of its leaders have refused to outright condemn Hamas, and there have been numerous questionable comments by party leaders and members since October 7. These concerns deserve to be addressed honestly.
But we should distinguish between criticizing specific statements and treating an entire party — or an entire population — as inherently unfit for political partnership.
Engaging in honest debate about an individual party’s positions is part of any healthy democracy. The Joint List’s policies should be questioned as much as those of any other party. But we must also ask whether these critiques come from a desire to build a stronger democracy — or are merely rooted in fear and prejudice. If the latter, we risk reinforcing the very divisions we seek to overcome.
Crime — not Palestine — is the Clear Arab-Israeli Policy Priority
There are legitimate questions about the Arab parties’ positions on broader issues, including Palestinian statehood and the right of return. Abbas has reiterated that addressing crime and local community matters is a much larger and more immediate priority than the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
A May survey published by Tel Aviv University supports this: by far the most pressing issue for Arab-Israelis today is violent crime in their communities (71.3 percent) — not Palestinian statehood (8 percent).
Concerned Jewish Israelis can take a breath. If brought into a governing coalition, it’s clear that the priority of Arab-Israeli parties will be to address crime and improving daily life in Arab communities. Seriously addressing crime in any Israeli community benefits the entire nation; one homicide anywhere is one homicide too many.
Meaningful investments in crime prevention, housing, education, and in local communities would improve the lives of our fellow citizens and help address longstanding inequalities. Treating Arab citizens with dignity and respect could also restore and strengthen Israel’s standing abroad.
Bringing Arab parties into a governing coalition does not require endorsing every position they hold, nor does their inclusion mean the inevitable creation of a Palestinian state. We do not need agreement on every macro-level issue to begin working together, that is not how consensus-building works. It’s an ongoing process that requires dialogue, relationships, partnership, and good-faith efforts to work together.
We have an opening and, at the very least, a mutual starting point. Let’s begin there, and entrust our newly elected leaders to ask the hard questions required in coalition talks to find a way forward.
Easing Hard-Line Requirements for Political Participation
After October 7, most Jewish and Zionist political parties adopted positions requiring any governing coalition to uphold the Jewish and democratic character of the state. Eisenkot added further conditions, including recognizing Hamas as a terrorist organization, abiding by the values of the Declaration of Independence, and committing to national service, whether military or civilian.
I recognize that these are serious and important issues. Yet I also question whether maintaining hard-line positions and national loyalty tests is the most important political debate for the country at this particular moment. If loyalty to Zionism is the litmus test of Knesset participation, then the same standards and questions should be asked of the anti-Zionist Haredi political parties that are a part of the current Likud coalition.
I believe the more important question is this: can we find enough common ground to sit at the table with our legitimately elected Arab-Israeli counterparts, and move forward together?
“We have condemned every act of terror and all the crimes that took place on October 7th—not only from a civilian perspective, but also from an Islamic religious perspective… None of us should be subjected to such a loyalty test. It is the wrong approach,” Abbas has said.
A December 2025 Democracy Index poll found that 77 percent of the Israeli Arab public supported joining a government. The Tel Aviv University survey also found that 75 percent of Arab Israelis surveyed supported voluntary civilian service.
Arab Israelis are ready to roll up their sleeves. Are the rest of us?
The path forward will not be easy. The 2025 Democracy Index poll found that more than 70 percent of Jewish Israelis opposed including Arab parties in a government. This gap in willingness to govern together should give us pause: many Arab-Israeli citizens are willing to participate in governing the country, while many Jewish Israelis remain unwilling to accept them as partners. This must change.
Eisenkot, Bennett, Lapid, and Lieberman pledged during the campaign not to form coalitions with Arab parties. Changing course would mean breaking a campaign promise, no small matter. However, political leaders must be willing to reconsider their positions when circumstances call for it. With one of the most consequential elections in recent Israeli history, this is clearly one of those moments.
Yair Golan has pledged his openness to work with the Arab parties. It’s a start.
The path forward will require courage, commitment, and good-faith negotiations. It will require Jewish Israelis to confront deeply entrenched assumptions about political power, who belongs at the table, and whether we can work with our Arab-Israeli counterparts. I believe we must have the moral courage to try.
Rejecting Hysteria and Fearmongering – and Engaging in Legitimate Policy Debate
It’s of critical importance that we refrain from trauma-based hysteria, fear-mongering, and fatalist end-of-days scenarios that boil down to pointing at an entire population and yelling “Jihad!”
As a people who have endured millenia of character attacks, collective blame, and conspiracy theories, Jews of all backgrounds should understand the ramifications of casting blanket suspicion, judgement, and blame on an entire population.
Any argument rooted in hysteria shouldn’t be taken seriously.
We can – and must – do better.
Further, we should reject any attempt to intentionally pull at the strings of our base fears (see: Netanyahu’s post-election allegations of widespread voter fraud and Arab-Israeli stealing of the election, despite no proven evidence). It’s a page out of President Trump’s fear-mongering election playbook, and one we should categorically reject.
Many concerned Jewish Israelis point to past troubling statements by Joint List leaders. These are rightful concerns, and Israeli opposition leaders should hold Arab lawmakers to account if they decide to engage in coalition talks.
By the same measure, Itamar Ben Gvir and other hard-line Israeli ministers should also be held accountable for their history of extremist statements. Israelis of all backgrounds should reject divisive positions that play off fear and hysteria.
The nation that produced Rabbis Hillel and Shammai, the Talmud, centuries of Gemara scholars, and Nobel Prize winners can do better. I call upon all Jews of all moral conscience to engage in a serious, rational debate about partnership with Arab society and the future of our democracy.
The National Conversation We Must Have
In the three years since I’ve made Aliyah, a striking subplot of my Israel experience has been witnessing the divide between Jewish and Arab-Israeli worlds.
I made Aliyah from the United States just one month before October 7. My first year was spent pursuing a Master’s Degree in Peace and Conflict Management at the University of Haifa, an institution with a 40 percent Arab student population. Two years ago, I moved to Abu Tor, considered a “mixed” Jerusalem neighborhood that borders East Jerusalem (though much of the neighborhood remains divided along communal lines).
In hundreds of interactions (yes, hundreds) over the past three years, I’ve witnessed Jewish Israelis respond with surprise, fear, and ignorance in response to my lived experience studying at an Israeli university with Arabs as well as living near Arabs. Some reactions have been outright racist, including once being asked by a religious woman: “Did you ever ask your (Palestinian) classmate if she wanted to kill you?”
Our nation is undoubtedly traumatized by October 7. But my experience has also been a wake-up call, revealing the shocking political and ideological silos so many of my fellow Jewish citizens live in.
More than 2 million of this country’s 10 million citizens are not Jewish—a fact Jewish Israelis must constantly remember. While retaining the Jewish character of the state is essential, we do not live in a homogeneous ethnostate, nor have the Jewish people ever lived in one. We have not always lived in harmony, but fantastical, revisionist histories of an exclusively homogenous Jewish past are divorced from reality. We have always lived with and among the nations of the world, even in the times of our historical kingdoms.
With much love for my Jewish brothers and sisters, I think we need to open our eyes. We are not the only ones living here, and the more than 2 million Arab-Israeli citizens aren’t going anywhere. They are part of this nation, and it’s past time we treated them as equal citizens.
Arab Israelis have made their voices heard at the polls. The question now is whether Israel’s Jewish citizens and political leadership are prepared to listen—and recognize their legitimate place in jointly shaping the country’s future.
This nation cannot honestly claim to be a democracy for all its citizens, while treating Arab political participation as inherently unfit for national leadership.
I am not suggesting that a coalition with Arab parties would solve the divisions within the Jewish people. The rifts run deep, and I think all Jews are in agreement that at the core, the main division is internal (within Am Yisrael). Yet unfortunately at this moment, I don’t believe Jewish Israelis are ready for the kind of national unity required to move forward. As a Torah-observant Jew and ola-chadasha with deep connections to diaspora Jewry, I pray daily for Achdut and true unity among Am Yisrael. Until that day comes, I propose we work toward realistic possibilities that are rooted in our present reality.
Refusing even to consider working with Arab parties is detrimental to our democracy and the future of our shared nation; it prevents us from exploring possibilities that might actually bring us out of our current gridlock.
This moment in our nation’s history is calling on us to have the moral courage to explore a different path. The election proved that our Arab-Israeli counterparts are ready to sit at the table.
The question is: are we?
