Arab voter turnout could make or break Netanyahu in Israeli election

Israel’s Palestinian leaders are urging Arab citizens to vote in big numbers in next week’s election, as they seek to unseat Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and topple the most right-wing government in the country’s history.

High Arab voter turnout could nudge coalition arithmetic in favor of an anti-Netanyahu bloc led by former military chief Gadi Eisenkot.

Why does Arab voter turnout matter in Israel’s election?

Polls suggest Eisenkot’s bloc of centrist, right- and left-wing parties will win the most votes but fall short of a majority. It will need Arab support, either as coalition partners or from outside, to prop up a minority government. The 21% Arab minority is Palestinian by heritage but Israeli by citizenship.

Mansour Abbas, an Islamist dentist-turned-politician who heads the United Arab List party, told Reuters in his office in Nazareth, Israel’s most populous Arab city. “We can ensure the formation of a new government of change,” he said.

“We want to replace the right-wing government... to end the wars and these policies, to stop the expansion of settlements and to address the failure to stop settler attacks,” Abbas said. “We also want a government that brings shared security and peace for Palestinians and Israelis.”

Will Eisenkot form a government with Arab parties?

Abbas and other Arab leaders face one big obstacle to their goal of playing a role in any future administration without Netanyahu. Eisenkot has so far ruled out forming a government with the Arab parties that most Palestinian Israelis will vote for, citing a lack of shared values. Abbas thinks there will be room for manoeuvre, perhaps after the vote, largely thanks to the cold, hard realities of electoral maths.

For now, Eisenkot is sticking to his position. “I will not align myself with any Arab party,” Eisenkot said in a podcast this month, citing among other issues their refusal to label Hamas a terrorist organisation.

If any bloc fails to form a workable government, that could lead to a period of political deadlock, then fresh elections in 2027, with Netanyahu left in charge in the meantime. Netanyahu appears to be taking the threat of some sort of Eisenkot-Arab alliance seriously, or at least sees it as an opportunity to rile up his base. His campaign has used doctored images and AI-generated videos to depict his rivals embracing Arab leaders.

One faked video, released over the summer, shows Eisenkot running through a meadow into the outstretched arms of Abbas.

Can an Arab party join an Israeli government?

Abbas’ own career shows such alliances can be made. In 2021 he became the first Arab Muslim to join an Israeli coalition as a minister, in a government led by Naftali Bennett, now a right-wing member of Eisenkot’s bloc. That government collapsed after 18 months, partly over disagreements between the two men on the occupied West Bank.

This time round, Abbas said he could paper over those differences. To win over Jewish parties, he has taken the unprecedented step of giving the number two spot on his slate to a Jewish former police official, Yoav Segalovitz. “It sends a message of partnership with the Jewish community and with Jewish citizens,” Abbas said.

What is driving Arab voters ahead of the election?

Israel’s election will be the first since the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack, and is being viewed as a referendum on the leadership of Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving leader. Polls show Eisenkot’s bloc would win 52 of the Knesset’s 120 seats if elections were held today. Netanyahu’s religious-nationalist bloc would win 50 seats.

Abbas’ party is projected to win five seats, with a further eight going to the Joint List, a coalition of three Arab parties.

Ahead of the vote, Bezalel Smotrich, Netanyahu’s far-right finance minister, proposed a plan to “Judaize” areas around Nazareth in the north and in southern Israel where most Arabs live. He described it as similar to settler expansionism in the West Bank.

Party organisers in Nazareth are hoping to capitalise on Arab anger with Netanyahu, Smotrich and far-right police minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, as well as frustration with rising crime in their communities. Last week, canvassers with Abbas’ party handed out flyers near Nazareth’s massive Church of the Annunciation.

“There is a greater need this time than ever before to go out and vote in large numbers,” said one of the people they approached, 74-year-old Gassan Bsoul. “The danger is greater than in the past,” he added.

How high will Arab voter turnout be?

Israeli pollsters expect Arab voter turnout to be higher than in previous rounds of elections in 2022 and 2020. The Stat-Net Research Institute, based in an Arab Druze town near Haifa, projects turnout of 63%, compared with 56% in 2022.

While Abbas has tried to position his party to potentially join government, leaders of the Joint List have said they could wield just as much influence by staying in opposition. Ahmad Tibi, a Joint List leader, said his group was ready to form “a preventive block to support (a government) from the outside.”

He said the Joint List would join an Eisenkot-led government in voting “to establish an official commission of inquiry into October 7,” a stated priority of the former military chief and his partners. “We are placing as our top priority getting rid of the extreme right-wing government of Netanyahu, Smotrich and Ben-Gvir,” Tibi said.