Mansour Abbas’s decision to take his Islamist Ra’am grouping into a sprawling, eight-party coalition last year was hailed as a taboo-breaking moment in Israeli politics. It was the first time in the country’s history that an independent Arab party had become part of government.
But the coalition’s acrimonious collapse after just 12 months in power has left Israel facing its fifth election in under four years, and polls suggest that despite Abbas’s gambit, the level of discouragement among Arab voters has gone up, rather than down, over the past year.
“I didn’t feel any change whatsoever,” said Ibrahim Hassan, a 21-year-old working in a cake shop in Nazareth, of Abbas’s involvement in parliament. “There is a difference between Arabs and Jews. They have better rights. We have less. We have less than less.”
Palestinian citizens of Israel make up about a fifth of the country’s 9.4mn- strong population. How — and whether — they vote could play a significant role in what is expected to be a knife-edge election in November.
In Israel’s coalition-heavy political system, small parties can be influential in government formation. In last year’s election, Ra’am’s support helped the coalition, led by Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid, eke out a one-seat majority.
This time, opinion surveys forecast a deadlock, with both the outgoing coalition and the rightwing opposition, led by Benjamin Netanyahu, short of a majority. But a low turnout among Arab voters — and the failure of Arab parties to make it over the electoral threshold — could help tilt the scales in Netanyahu’s favour.
Arab parties have long shied away from joining Israeli governments, arguing that doing so would betray the Palestinian cause. As such, Ra’am’s decision to break ranks deeply divided Palestinian opinion — both in Israel and in the Palestinian territories it captured in 1967, with critics arguing the move helped legitimise Israel’s occupation. “We have Jewish Zionists, and Christian Zionists, and now we also have Muslim Zionists,” said one Palestinian official.
However, Abbas’s backers argue that, given the remote prospect of a political resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the institutionalised discrimination that Palestinian citizens face in Israel, joining the government was worthwhile as it was a chance to push policies that would improve their daily lives.
“The Zionists want us to be invisible all the time. The question is how we change this situation to be visible in the public sphere,” said Rassem Khamaisi, an urban planner and professor at the University of Haifa. “Now [following Ra’am’s decision to enter government] we are in the salon of the Israelis in Tel Aviv. No one can ignore us.”
The eight-party coalition deal struck last year included a pledge to direct Shk30bn ($8.7bn) in much-needed funding to the Arab community and a further Shk2.5bn to fight the crime wave afflicting Arab areas.
But by the time the government fell, only a fraction of the money had been spent. Ra’am’s other signature achievement — the passing of a bill to allow Arab homes built without permits to connect to Israel’s electricity grid — was neutered by amendments demanded by rightwing coalition partners.
On the streets of Nazareth, home to Israel’s largest Arab population, many voters are deeply frustrated at Arab politicians’ inability to alleviate the problems the community faces, which range from pervasive discrimination to rising violence and economic hardship.
“We just see [politicians] at weddings and funerals. I am someone who works on this street every day and I don’t see them at all,” said Tawfiq Ali Musa, who runs a small store selling snacks on one of Nazareth’s main thoroughfares. “They need to pay a price for the fact that they didn’t help. I didn’t vote last time . . . Now I am even feeling that I should persuade people to boycott the election.”
Other residents were only marginally more positive. “[Abbas] didn’t change much. Maybe he did a little bit of good,” said Reham, a young woman who planned to vote but had not yet decided for which party. “There are lots of problems. Salaries are very low right now, and there is a lot of violence in the Arab sector.”
Ra’am’s rivals say the lack of impact shows that it was a mistake to join the government. “To be in a coalition that is much more rightwing than the Netanyahu government, with no achievements for the Arab minority and with catastrophic votes against our people — it’s a big mistake,” said Ahmad Tibi, a leading politician in the Joint List, an alliance of Arab parties from which Ra’am split before joining the coalition.
“The direct influence of [Ra’am’s stint in government] will be bringing down the [Arab] turnout. Because people will say that even though you were in the coalition, you did nothing.”
Polls suggest that turnout among Arab voters could indeed fall to about 40 per cent in November’s election, down from around 45 per cent last year and a far cry from the 65 per cent who voted in 2020. But an even bigger impact could come from the fragmentation of the joint list, which split further on Thursday, raising the risk that none of its parties enter parliament.
With opinion surveys previously putting Netanyahu’s bloc just short of the 61 parliamentary seats needed to form a government, analysts say these two factors could help him inch over the threshold. But more fundamentally, the disaffection of Arab voters underscores the mounting frustration in Palestinian politics, according to Raef Zreik, a Palestinian jurist and scholar.
“I am with Abbas when he says you can’t judge us in one year, because if you want to make a change, it’s a long [one]. But . . . I think overall that fewer people will participate in this election,” he said.
“To be part of Israeli politics is not promising. But to be out of Israeli politics is not promising either. So people in this sense are more and more frustrated by politics.”