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‘A Future for Our Children’
Israeli Arab voters lined up in record numbers at polling places from northern Galilee to the southern Negev Desert.
Muslim Arab Bedouin voters in a Negev village gave Netanyahu’s party a majority in the past two elections. This time turnout nearly doubled and they backed Ra’am, an Islamist party. Volunteers went door to door in Bedouin villages to encourage women to take part.
Ra’am’s party includes incoming Knesset member Yoav Segalovitz, a Jewish former police official. He said he joined the party to symbolize Jewish-Arab political partnership and demonstrate that secular Jews and religious Arab citizens can govern together. In 2021, Ra’am became the first Arab party to join a governing coalition, winning new funding for Arab towns and legal status for Bedouin villages.
Arab voter turnout reached 80% – higher than the Jewish vote. The two Arab-led slates, Ra’am and the Joint List, won 19 seats, passing the previous record of 15. The highest turnout anywhere, 87%, was in the northern Arab town of Sakhnin. Both slates campaigned on fighting local crime and securing more investment for Arab communities.
“We want to live, we want a future for our children and we want a future for ourselves,” Awni Zoabi, 52, said after voting in Nazareth. Many voters said they turned out to replace the government – a choice any citizen of a democracy is free to make. “We should now translate that result into making real improvements in our lives,” stated Amir Hajj Yahya, 30, in Taibe.
Palestinians in Gaza and Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) are not Israeli citizens. Under the 1990s Oslo Accord peace agreements, they have their own government and their own elections – but have been denied a vote for parliament or president in two decades. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is in the 22nd year of a four-year term and recently postponed elections again.
Khaled Abu Toameh, an Israeli Arab journalist, described the contrast: Arab citizens of Israel “can organize and compete for office, while Palestinians living under the Palestinian Authority or Hamas have no freedom or influence over their future.”
‘An Open Heart’
The next move belongs to Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog. Breaking with tradition, he will hear from the smaller parties first, so every option is examined before the largest ones weigh in. Herzog will then ask one lawmaker to try to build a majority, with up to six weeks to succeed. He has urged party leaders to come with an “open heart” and to avoid another round of elections. In 2019 and 2020, Israelis went to the polls three times in 11 months to break the political deadlock.
There are two likely ways out of the deadlock this time. First, Eisenkot’s bloc could bring the Arab parties into a coalition or lead a minority government that relies on their votes from outside it. Another option is for Netanyahu and Likud to team up with Eisenkot and other parties to form a unity government – leaving out the Arab parties.
The newly elected 26th Knesset will be sworn in on Nov. 10. Parties opposed to Netanyahu hold a majority of its seats and can use it before any government is formed. They are already moving to replace the Knesset speaker, a Likud politician who presides over its sessions.
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