How the Arab vote could decide the balance of power in Israel’s historic election

The Joint List is a three-party coalition that advocates equality for Arab citizens and Palestinian national rights.

Meanwhile, Ra’am accepts Israel’s Jewish character as a political reality and takes a more pragmatic approach to working with the government. It made political history in June 2021 as the first Arab party to join an Israeli governing coalition, led by prime minister Naftali Bennett.

Now Ra’am is breaking new ground again, with the first Jewish candidate to run on an Arab party ticket. Yoav Segalovitz is a former police commander and ex-MK for the centrist Yesh Atid party and is now number two on its election list.

When the Knesset was dissolved in July, Ra’am held five seats. The alliance between Hadash and Ta’al (two of the three parties that now make up the newly re-formed Joint List) also had five.

There is a long-standing issue of under-representation for Arab citizens: they form around 17 cent of the electorate, but the Arab parties had just 10 seats out of 120 in the last Knesset.

Only 53.2 per cent of eligible Arabs turned out to vote last time, far lower than the 70.6 per cent for the total electorate. And almost 140,000 voted for Balad, the third party in that newly re-formed Joint List. Coming below the electoral threshold of 3.25 per cent, Balad had no seats.

“Based on past experience over the past decade, on average about half of eligible Arab voters actually take part in the elections,” says Dr. Arik Rudnitzky, researcher at think tank Israel Democracy Institute.

So why do some not vote? “There’s a group of 10 per cent who are simply politically indifferent, regardless of the political circumstances,” he says. “Another group of 10 per cent boycott Knesset elections for ideological reasons. So they wouldn’t grant the legitimacy to Israel as a democracy.

“This leaves us with a group, estimated to be between 20 per cent and 40 per cent, depending on the political circumstances, which actually chooses to abstain or vote as a tactical choice.”

That leaves somewhere between 40 per cent and 60 per cent of voters who are likely to vote: or up to 15 seats, says Rudnitzky.

With 10 seats in a predominantly right-wing Knesset, Arab parties could participate in committees and propose legislation, but exercise limited power in terms of shaping government policy.

“I think we will see more votes for Arab parties because there is a hope for change, there is a hope that Mansour Abbas’s Ra’am will be part of the government and that this will bring significant change for them,” said Mansour Nasara, a Palestinian-Bedouin academic and political scientist and senior lecturer in the department of politics and government at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.

There will also be Arab voters supporting non-Arab parties, he said. “There will be votes for Jewish parties… for Yair Golan, for Eisenkot, for Netanyahu also, but it will not be as significant as we have seen in the last two elections.”

He expects a higher turnout that at the 2022 election, and more seats. His prediction is for 15.

With that many seats, the Arab parties could make it much harder for Netanyahu to form a government and potentially help an alternative coalition take office, even by supporting it from outside rather than joining it.

Until now, Ra’am has been the party prepared to join a governing coalition (it did so in 2021) and to take responsibility from within.

The Joint List has not said it would do the same. But at the weekend, its leader Yousef Jabareen announced his alliance was prepared to negotiate a parliamentary “safety net” for a government that replaces Benjamin Netanyahu.

He is not offering to join the coalition, as Ra’am leader Mansour Abbas did in 2021, but signalling a willingness to help it govern in return for concrete commitments to Arab citizens and Palestinian national rights.

That is a shift, rather than a breakthrough. Several opposition leaders have publicly ruled out relying on Arab parties. (The usual caveat applies: in Israeli politics “never” means definitely not tomorrow, but maybe the day after.)

Among the main contenders, Yashar’s Gadi Eisenkot says he has ruled out Ra’am as a partner in any government he leads and has said the Joint List is not a viable coalition partner.

Although B’Yachad leader Bennett had Ra’am in his year-long coalition, he now says that after October 7 there is no mandate for a government that relies on Arab parties. As for the right-wing Yisrael Beytenu party, Avigdor Lieberman has rejected both a coalition with “non-Zionist” Arab parties and any government that depends on their support from outside.

And Netanyahu’s Likud showed its disdain by seeking to disqualify both Ra’am and the Joint List from running altogether, accusing them of harming Israeli soldiers and refusing to identify Hamas and Hezbollah as terrorist organisations.

It was subsequently overruled by the Supreme Court, although Balad leader Sami Abu Shehadeh withdrew after it became clear the court was likely to uphold his disqualification after his suggestion others could learn from Hamas’s success on October 7.

So what informs the decisions Arab voters make and what separates the two Arab blocs?

The biggest issue, ahead of Gaza, Palestine, discrimination or poverty is crime and personal security. Arab society recorded an all-time high of 252 murder victims last year, according to the non-profit Abraham Initiatives.

The vast majority were shootings – evidence that illegal firearms are widespread. And the vast majority remain unsolved: the clear-up rate is around 8 per cent. Successive governments have failed to deliver a sustained response.

Mansour Nasara said: “The current government and Ben Gvir [the far right minister of national security] claim they are implementing the law, but on the ground people are fearful. They will have lost their personal safety in the main Arab towns and villages.”

According to a poll last month by the Israel Democracy Institute, a non-partisan research body, 53.5 per cent of Arab voters ranked crime as their primary concern, followed by the economy and cost of living on 46 per cent.

The two Arab blocs have broadly similar policies on crime and overall objectives too: greater political influence, better personal security, an end to discrimination against Arab citizens and a government that is less hostile towards their community.

They differ largely over whether they are willing to cooperate with Israel – as Ra’am is – or not: the Joint List.

These approaches are based on decades of political history.

Ra’am emerged from a 1996 split in Israel’s Islamic Movement over participation in national elections. The Northern Branch advocated a boycott. Ra’am, the political party that emerged from the Southern Branch, chose to participate, arguing that Arab citizens should use parliament to advance their interests.

Since then it has switched between electoral alliances with other Arab parties and running independently. In 2020 it was part of the Joint List that secured a record 15 seats. In the next two elections, in 2021 and 2022, it ran independently, determined to make crime, violence, housing and employment the key issues rather than Palestinian national rights.

This time, in 2026, Ra’am is again distancing itself from the Joint List. Leader Mansour Abbas has publicly said he wants the party to remain free to negotiate with, and potentially join, a future Israeli government.

Abbas, aged 52, was a dentist before entering politics. He was one of 11 children and grew up in Maghar, a town in the Galilee with a predominantly Druze population, and still lives there.

He manages to combine religious conservatism with political pragmatism and does not regard his Islamic faith as a bar to cooperation with Jewish Israelis.

The Joint List is an electoral alliance of three secular Arab parties – Hadash, Ta’al and Balad. They are not natural bedfellows. Hadash grew out of the Israeli Communist Party and advocates Jewish-Arab partnership and equality. Its leader Yousef Jabareen, aged 54, is a law professor and specialist in constitutional and human rights law.

Balad rejects outright Israel’s definition as a Jewish state and calls for it to become a “state of all its citizens”. Its leader Sami Abu Shehadeh, aged 50, will not be contesting the election after the controversy over his October 7 comments.

Ta’al sits between Hadash and Balad, and is led by Ahmad Tibi, 67. He was an adviser to PLO chairman Yasser Arafat. He founded Ta’al in 1996 and has served continuously in the Knesset since 1999 (including time as deputy speaker).

In 2022, Hadash and Ta’al ran together after Balad split from the alliance. Together they won five seats. Balad won none. Ra’am had five.

Could the Arab parties hold the balance of power in the next Knesset? Professor Jonathan Mendel, head of the department of Middle East studies at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, believes so.

His prediction is for an increased Arab turnout close to 65 per cent, potentially giving the parties around 14 seats in total.

He cites a 2025 Tel Aviv University poll that claimed 77 per cent of Arab citizens wanted an Arab party to be part of the governing coalition.

“Arab citizens of Israel are pragmatic actors,” he says. “They go to vote because they want to influence.

“They want to have a different agenda for Israel.”