Arab parties see a chance to normalize their participation in Israeli governments and thereby protect the country’s Arab minority.

Israel’s Arab parties, which hold the balance in the newly elected Knesset with 19 seats, have handed Gadi Eisenkot an opportunity to remove Benjamin Netanyahu. Whether they can also compel him to change the direction of Israel’s polity is a much more difficult question to answer. Their decision to recommend the former military chief as prime minister is a calculated attempt to convert electoral strength into political leverage. It may improve the lives of Palestinian citizens of Israel. However, its capacity to advance Palestinian self-determination in the occupied territories is extremely doubtful.

The parliamentary arithmetic explains the opening. Netanyahu’s bloc secured 53 seats, now down to 47 with the defection of one of the ultra-Orthodox parties, in the October 27 election, against 48 for the Jewish opposition. The Joint List’s 11 seats and Ra’am’s eight, a total of 19 Arab seats, give Netanyahu’s opponents a potential total of 67 in the 120-member Knesset. But recommendations to President Isaac Herzog do not constitute a coalition agreement. An electoral majority against Netanyahu is not necessarily a governing majority for Eisenkot.

Nor are the Arab parties pursuing identical strategies. Mansour Abbas’ Ra’am is willing to enter government, repeating its experiment with the Naftali Bennett–Yair Lapid coalition in 2021. Yousef Jabareen’s Joint List proposes parliamentary support from outside, refusing ministerial responsibility while occupation continues. This distinction matters: one strategy seeks influence through participation; the other seeks leverage without collective responsibility for policies its constituents reject.

Both approaches have a compelling rationale. Remaining permanently outside the bargaining process allows Jewish parties to treat Arab representation as politically irrelevant. Conditional support challenges that exclusion. It also recognizes that protecting a minority from immediate harm cannot always await a comprehensive transformation of the state. Removing a government dependent on Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich may itself alter the environment in which Arab citizens defend their rights.

The demands already announced are substantial. The Arab parties want a funded, time-bound program against organized crime in Arab cities and towns, with oversight of implementation. Their housing agenda includes approved zoning plans, regularizing construction, halting home demolitions, land for young couples, and recognition of unrecognized Bedouin villages. Employment, education, municipal resources, and civil and national rights complete an agenda addressing the practical mechanisms of inequality. These are negotiating demands, however, rather than concessions Eisenkot has accepted.

This strategy’s broader democratic promise is important. A government dependent on Arab votes will show that those votes possess the same legitimacy as Jewish votes. Cooperation over judicial safeguards and parliamentary accountability could create habits of political partnership. But Arab leaders should insist that defending democracy includes protecting their community’s free speech, political organization, and equal treatment.

However, Arab parties also face serious problems. Eisenkot’s conditions for cooperation include recognition of Israel as a Jewish state and opposition to Hamas. Recognizing Israel as a Jewish state rather than a state of all its people would mean admitting that the Arab citizens of Israel are permanently relegated to second-class status.

The dispute over labeling Hamas a terrorist organization has already complicated dealings with Abbas, despite his call for its disarmament and removal from power. If this trend continues, coalition bargaining could become a succession of loyalty tests in which Arab representatives must establish their admissibility before their constituents’ needs receive consideration. Most Arab parliamentarians would consider this unacceptable humiliation.

Moreover, leverage depends on credible alternatives. Once Arab parties make Netanyahu’s removal their overriding objective, Eisenkot may calculate that they cannot afford to abandon him. Outside support avoids cabinet responsibility but provides less direct control over government functioning. The Arab parties therefore need written commitments, implementation deadlines, monitoring arrangements, and clear conditions governing continued support.

The Bennett-Lapid precedent reinforces the need for caution. Arab participation broke an important barrier, but the coalition’s unraveling in 2022 demonstrated the fragility of an alliance united principally by opposition to Netanyahu. Disagreements involving the occupied territories could not simply be isolated from domestic politics. A new arrangement should build on that experiment’s opening while resisting the assumption that removing one leader creates agreement about the country’s direction. 

On Palestine, the gap is fundamental. The Arab parties seek an end to war and renewed negotiations that promise to lead to a Palestinian state next to Israel. Eisenkot rejects Palestinian statehood and insists on overriding Israeli security control between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River. His opposition to Netanyahu’s leadership cannot therefore be equated with acceptance of Palestinian sovereignty.

Nevertheless, limited gains remain possible. Coalition negotiations could seek restraints on settlement expansion in the West Bank, protection against settler violence, humanitarian access, and renewed dealings with Palestinian representatives. These would require explicit commitments. Removing ministers committed to deepening permanent Israeli control could create some diplomatic room, but whether that room becomes a political process would depend on sustained pressure inside and outside Israel.

The opposite outcome is also plausible. Eisenkot could retain the substance of Israeli policy while making it more acceptable internationally. Arab parliamentary support might then be cited as evidence of inclusion even as Palestinians under occupation remain excluded from determining their future. The Arab parties must resist any bargain implying that their constituents’ equality requires silence about the dispossession of Palestinians in the occupied territories. 

The Arab parties face a further dilemma. They have rejected support for war and settlement budgets. However, parliamentary processes include actual budget votes, not separate menus of acceptable and unacceptable policies. The Arab parties should clarify these issues before supporting a government. Otherwise, they risk choosing repeatedly between violating declared principles and triggering a political crisis that could restore Netanyahu’s political fortunes.

In the final analysis, the Arab parties are faced with a very difficult choice. They have to choose between ousting Netanyahu and his right-wing partners at any cost or bargaining so hard for full participation in Israel’s governing system, including membership of the cabinet, that the prospective Arab-Jewish coalition collapses, paving the way for Netanyahu to return to power either through fresh elections or by engineering defections from Eisenkot’s motley group of supporters. For the moment, they have chosen the first option, but much will depend on how much flexibility Eisenkot is willing and able to show in accommodating Arab demands. 

Israel cannot claim to be a genuine democracy by defining its national identity in exclusively Jewish terms, now codified in the Basic Law passed by the Knesset in 2018, known as the Nation-State Law. This opens Israel up to the charge of apartheid because it denies one-fifth of its population full membership in the nation. This implies that Israeli Arabs are at best “tolerated outsiders.” Ironically, the representatives of these outsiders have now emerged as kingmakers after the recent elections.

A durable Arab-Jewish bargain would also require coordination between Ra’am and the Joint List. Their different approaches can complement each other, but competing separately for recognition could allow prospective coalition partners to divide them, lowering the price of Arab support while weakening their own accountability.

The Arab parties’ gamble is defensible as a strategy of conditional engagement. Refusing every imperfect partnership would surrender opportunities to protect vulnerable citizens. However, treating Netanyahu’s departure as sufficient would surrender the leverage that made partnership possible. The real test is what Arab votes can change in the Israeli polity after they help change Israel’s leader. 

About the Author: Mohammed Ayoob

​Mohammed Ayoob is a university distinguished professor emeritus of International Relations at Michigan State University. His books include The Many Faces of Political Islam (Second Edition, 2020), Will the Middle East Implode? (2014), and, most recently, From Regional Security to Global IR: An Intellectual Journey (2024). He was also the editor of Assessing the War on Terror (2013).

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