What matters here is that the Arab-led parties have moved from the margins of Israeli politics to the centre of coalition arithmetic.
Thousands of people rallied in Tel Aviv on Saturday to press Israel's opposition into a deal with Arab parties aimed at removing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to Al Jazeera. Protesters told the AFP news agency that this may be the "last chance for real change" and described Netanyahu, Israel's longest-serving prime minister, as a "great manipulator". Counter-protesters also gathered, with Netanyahu supporters shouting that "Israel should not have a government with so-called terrorists", the broadcaster's correspondent Nour Odeh reported.
The rally follows Tuesday's elections, which left neither bloc able to govern alone. Netanyahu's bloc won 53 seats and that of main opposition leader Gadi Eisenkot won 48 in the 120-seat parliament. Israel's three Arab-led parties won 19 seats, a significant gain, and nearly 840,000 people voted for Ra'am and the Joint List, a coalition of three Arab-led parties — a 64 percent increase on the last elections in 2022, according to the Central Election Committee.
Those figures give the Arab-led parties unusual leverage. A coalition between Eisenkot and the Arab parties would command a comfortable majority of 67 seats, according to the report. Eisenkot has previously ruled out forming a coalition with Israel's Arab parties, and the rally is in part an attempt to push him past that position. Odeh said people "really want this vote for change to work out" and believe Eisenkot and other leaders of Jewish-Israeli parties need to listen to their voice.
The obstacle is political as much as numerical. The report notes that for many in Israel the idea of siding with Arabs is politically unpalatable. Netanyahu has accused Palestinian-Israeli parties of "stealing" the polls and accepting funding from Qatar, allegations Qatar has rejected as a disinformation campaign. Odeh said right-wing circles have described the historic turnout of Palestinian Israelis as electoral terrorism, equating it to the October 7 attack, when Hamas-led fighters stormed southern Israel, killing more than 1,200 people and taking hundreds captive. Palestinian-Israeli votes and voices are under attack, she added, because they hold a prominent position in deciding whether Eisenkot can form a government.
What matters here is that the Arab-led parties have moved from the margins of Israeli politics to the centre of coalition arithmetic, and that a street movement is now trying to convert their electoral weight into a governing arrangement. Whether Eisenkot will reverse his stated refusal is not confirmed, and no formal negotiations have been reported. The composition of any coalition, the terms the Arab parties would demand and the timetable for forming a government are all unknown. What the report does establish is the scale of the Arab vote and the intensity of the resistance to it — two facts that will shape whatever government emerges.
