TEL AVIV — Israel woke up to a political cliffhanger unlike anything it has seen in years. The votes are in, but the picture is anything but clear. Preliminary results show the country’s two main Arab political blocs, the Joint List and the United Arab List (Ra’am), winning a combined 19 seats in the 120-seat Knesset. That number is not just symbolic. It puts Arab citizens in a position to effectively decide who forms the next government, a role they have rarely, if ever, held so prominently. Neither Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud-led right-wing bloc nor the centrist opposition reached the 61 seats needed for a parliamentary majority, leaving the country stuck in a familiar but dangerous limbo. The arithmetic is simple: without the Arab parties, neither side can reach the finish line. With them, the political map changes completely. But Netanyahu is not going to let that happen quietly. On Wednesday, he made a breathtaking accusation, writing on X that the election had been “stolen by Arab parties that support terrorism and the elimination of the Jewish state.” He claimed that serious criminal offenses — bribery, threats, violence, forgery and the use of prohibited software to mobilize voters — had taken place in many Arab polling stations. It was a statement that immediately split the country between those who saw it as a desperate attempt to delegitimize the results and those who believed the integrity of the election was genuinely under threat.
Netanyahu’s allegations were detailed and dramatic. He said Likud had handed over to the police, the Shin Bet and the Central Elections Committee “hundreds of testimonies and pieces of evidence regarding election theft in many Arab polling stations.” Among the supposed findings were thousands of envelopes containing cash and Ra’am ballot slips, threats and violence against polling station staff, multiple votes cast behind the voting curtain, people voting under multiple identities, and serious discrepancies between the number of ballot envelopes and the number of voters. He also claimed the use of prohibited voter-mobilization software. “We demand from the police and the Shin Bet a thorough investigation into the election theft by the Arab parties and the full prosecution of the criminals,” he wrote. “We demand from the Central Elections Committee an immediate response to investigate these criminal offenses that have severely damaged the integrity of the elections in Israel and the election results.” But the official response was swift and firm. According to the Times of Israel, Acting Central Elections Committee Director-General Dean Livne wrote to a Yesh Atid lawmaker that the elections “were conducted lawfully” and that, “to the best of my knowledge, there is no basis for allegations of systematic violations of election integrity.” He did acknowledge that the request for an investigation involved classified information whose veracity had not yet been determined. That single caveat, however, did not stop the controversy from boiling over.
To understand why these allegations matter so much, it helps to know exactly who holds this newly powerful position. The Joint List, projected to win 12 seats, is an alliance of three parties: Hadash, a predominantly Arab-Jewish left-wing party rooted in Israel’s communist movement, and the Arab nationalist parties Ta’al and Balad. The other party, Ra’am, led by Mansour Abbas, is affiliated with the Southern Branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel and was projected to win seven seats. Arab citizens make up roughly 21 percent of Israel’s population, and turnout in this election reached a near-record high of between 75 and 80 percent. Those numbers changed the equation. Dahlia Scheindlin, a former policy fellow at the Mitvim Institute and a senior analyst at Haaretz, said bluntly: “They are a political force to be reckoned with.” According to Scheindlin, Netanyahu built his entire campaign around the claim that the opposition was prepared to form a government dependent on Arab parties’ support, a move he argued would lead to the establishment of a Palestinian state that would become a terror state and ultimately bring about Israel’s destruction. “This is the most consistent message, and he never stopped saying it, including on election day,” she said. The message was effective enough that leading Zionist opposition parties felt compelled to pledge they would not cooperate with Arab parties. “They have sworn they would not build a coalition that depends on Arab votes, either from within the coalition or from outside it. If they receive any help, they will have to break that promise,” Scheindlin noted.
This is not the first time Arab lawmakers have held a potential balance of power, but it is a far cry from the old days. Dr. Arik Rudnitzky, a researcher in the Israel Democracy Institute’s Arab Society in Israel Program, explained that Arab parties historically remained in the opposition and did not join governing coalitions. During the governments of Yitzhak Rabin and, later, Shimon Peres in the 1990s, Arab parties provided a parliamentary safety net from outside the coalition. That allowed the government to stay in office and complete its term even after it effectively became a minority government, especially when the Haredi Shas party left the government amid opposition to the Oslo Accords. “Historically, Arab parties were always in the opposition for many reasons. It was quite uncommon to believe Arab parties could [support] the government. It’s a novelty of recent years, plus the fact that their political strength in terms of the number of seats was not as significant as it is today,” Rudnitzky said. Demographic changes alone do not explain their growing power. Voting patterns have shifted dramatically. In the 1980s and 1990s, around half of Arab voters supported Jewish parties. But over time, and especially after the Oslo Accords, more Arab voters turned to Arab parties. “Today, we can say that between 85% and 90% of Arab voters support Arab parties. This is the main reason for their increased political strength,” Rudnitzky said. With that strength comes a price. Any support Arab parties provide to a prospective coalition, he said, would come in exchange for political concessions. Their likely demands include a government decision and a plan to combat crime in Arab communities, as well as a new socioeconomic development plan for the Arab sector involving significant budget allocations. “There is no free lunch in politics. Every collaboration, either within a coalition or from the outside, has its political price,” he said.
So what happens next? Scheindlin says the Joint List will almost certainly not be invited into a governing coalition, and its members would not want to join one anyway. But Mansour Abbas and Ra’am are a different story. Ra’am has pursued a more controversial and pragmatic approach, accepting Israel as a Jewish state and working to improve the lives of Arab citizens within that framework. “They are expecting equality as citizens. They accepted Israel’s identity and are willing to work within that framework to improve the lives of their citizens. They are the only ones who have a chance of being invited into a coalition, as they were in 2021,” Scheindlin said. That is a remarkable statement in a country where Arab parties have long been viewed as outside the political consensus. But the path is not smooth. In September, the Central Elections Committee voted to disqualify the Joint List and Ra’am from competing in the October 27 elections. On October 2, Israel’s Supreme Court overturned those decisions. The legal background is important: Section 7A of the Basic Law: The Knesset bars candidates who deny Israel’s existence as a Jewish and democratic state, incite racism, or support the armed struggle of an enemy state or terrorist organization against Israel from participating in Knesset elections. Martin Sherman, founder and executive director of the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies, took an even harder line, telling Fox News Digital that Arab parties in Israel are essentially illegal and should be barred from participating in elections altogether. “They have different social agendas, perhaps, but on the political level, they all oppose Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people. One can only hope that politicians in Israel will realize that and that political ambitions and animosity toward Netanyahu will not prevail,” he said.
But not everyone sees the situation through the same dark lenses. Shahar Azani, a veteran Israeli diplomat and former spokesperson of Israel’s consulate in New York, pointed to the irony in the results. “Arab Israelis voted in huge numbers and, according to the exit polls, won more Knesset seats than ever before. That is the answer to the ridiculously ignorant accusation that Israel is a supposed ‘apartheid’ state,” he said. Azani emphasized that Arab citizens are not just participating in Israeli democracy; they are shaping its outcomes. “Arab citizens are shaping the government and taking part in the Jewish state’s democratic celebration, and we welcome it. But with great power comes great responsibility: they must now take the next step and reject the extremist positions some voiced as soon as the results came in, that would alienate them from Israel’s Jewish majority.” That is the heart of this moment. Israel is being forced to confront a deeply uncomfortable question: can a democracy that was built as a Jewish state fully embrace a vocal, powerful Arab political presence? The fact that Arab parties are now potential kingmakers is a testament to how much Israeli society has changed. But it also exposes raw nerves. Netanyahu’s allegations of election theft, even if unproven, have already cast a shadow over the results. They have also energized a debate about the legitimacy of the Arab parties and their place in the political system. In a country where every election seems to be a battle for the soul of the state, this one is especially consequential. The next government might be formed not by the strongest bloc, but by the very forces that have historically been pushed to the margins. That is a profound shift, and it will not be resolved easily. For now, with recounts, investigations and political negotiations looming, Israel remains in a state of tense uncertainty. The votes have been cast, but their true meaning is still being fought over, both in the halls of power and in the streets of Tel Aviv.
