A Palestinian citizen of Israel votes in the country’s general elections at a polling station in Umm al-Fahm, Israel, October 27, 2026.
Mahmoud Illéan/AP
hide caption
Mahmoud Illéan/AP
KUFR QASI, Israel — In recent years, many Palestinian citizens of Israel have avoided elections, believing there is little to be gained from participating in the politics of a state that, they say, routinely marginalizes their communities and oppresses their fellow Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.
But last month, Israel’s Palestinian Arabs came to the polls in record numbers, helping to strip Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s most far-right government in Israeli history of its majority and giving Arab-led parties the votes they needed to become a powerful force in Israeli politics.
“We have prevented Netanyahu’s government from continuing,” said Jamal Zahalka, chairman of the High Monitoring Committee, the main body representing Palestinian citizens of Israel. “It’s a historic achievement. I think our community has found its strength.”
Neither Netanyahu’s coalition nor the center-right opposition of his main opponent, Gadi Eisenkot, reached the threshold of 61 seats needed to form a government. Arab parties won 19 seats out of 120 – enough to give them a crucial role in the negotiations that will now determine who governs Israel at this turbulent moment in the country’s history.
The election results are at the heart of decades-long questions about how Israel defines itself and the role of Palestinian Arabs in its society.
“The story is still not over”
In a park in the predominantly Palestinian town of Kufr Qasim, two days after the election, hundreds of people gathered for the annual commemoration of residents shot dead in 1956 by Israeli border police on the opening day of the Suez Crisis during the state’s violent early years, when Israel, Britain and France attacked Egypt after the nationalization of the Suez Canal.
“And here we are today, 70 years later,” the speaker said from a podium to a packed crowd: “And the story is still not over.”
The crowd at this event, mostly dressed in black – some wore keffiyeh, the black and white stitched scarf symbolizing Palestinian resistance – mourned not only their loved ones who died all those years ago, but also the suffering of Palestinians today: the sharp increase in discrimination against their communities in Israel since the deadly attacks carried out by Hamas against Israel on October 7, 2023; Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza which killed more than 74,000 Palestinians and left a population surviving amid the ruins of the enclave. And the actions of Netanyahu’s far-right government in the occupied West Bank, where rights groups and the UN say it has armed and supported settlers as they force Palestinians from their homes and farmlands with unprecedented violence.
The deterioration of rights in Israel is one of the reasons why so many Palestinian citizens in Israel turned out to vote, residents of Kufr Qasm told NPR. “There is no more freedom,” said Intisar Sarsur, 65, sitting with relatives next to an olive tree in Kufr Qasim Park. “We are seeking our basic rights as human beings.”
“Everyone I know participated in the elections. No one stayed home,” Sarsur said. She and her family shared trays of Mutabbaqa sweet Palestinian pastry and freshly pressed olive oil from this year’s olive harvest – usually a joyous time in the Palestinian calendar, which she says is now bittersweet. This year’s olive harvest for Palestinians in the occupied West Bank has been marred by frequent attacks by Israeli settlers attempting to disrupt this economically and culturally important time of year.
Mansour Abbas, a member of the Israeli parliament and leader of the conservative Muslim Raam party, hugs a supporter after the first results of the Israeli general election were released in Sakhnin, Israel, October 27.
Mahmoud Illéan/AP
hide caption
Mahmoud Illéan/AP
Palestinian citizens of Israel, descendants of those who remained when the State of Israel was established in 1948 (when the majority of the pre-war population was forcibly expelled or fled during the war) now make up about 20% of the population.
In this election, Arab-led parties received a 64% increase in votes compared to the last elections, according to the Central Election Commission. The progress they have made has sparked anger, and even fear, among many on Israel’s political right, who view them as a threat to the country’s Jewish character.
Fear factor
Netanyahu and his allies have made the strong Arab turnout a rallying cry. On election day, Netanyahu released a video calling the situation an “emergency.” Itamar Ben Gvir, the far-right Minister of National Security, filmed his own appeal at the entrance to Kufr Qasim: “If you want this country to remain Jewish and Zionist… then get out and vote!”
As the results came in, Netanyahu’s Likud party went further. He claimed that Arab parties had “stolen” the elections through corruption, threats and forgery, and went on to warn of a foreign takeover of the Knesset and the “Islamization of Israel.” The party has not made any evidence public. Police say they have found no basis for the allegations, and election officials say there was no widespread fraud. The head of the electoral commission separately asked the Shin Bet security services to investigate suspicions of foreign financing of efforts to increase Arab participation. But he and the attorney general say the vote was conducted properly and the results were not compromised.
Netanyahu’s bloc message is widely seen as an attempt to prevent Eisenkot’s center-right group from partnering with Arab parties — a reality that would give Eisenkot the majority he needs to form a government. But the sharp rise in anti-Arab sentiment since the October 7, 2023 attacks, in which some 1,200 people were killed, has made any alliance with any Arab party potentially politically treacherous and could cause other right-wing Jewish members of its bloc to split furiously.
Eisenkot is not a natural ally for Arab parties either. A former military chief of staff whose son was killed fighting in Gaza, he served as an observer in Netanyahu’s war cabinet early in the war. And he still comes across as a warmonger. As a general, he is credited with formulating the “Dahiyeh Doctrine,” which he outlined in 2008: the use of “disproportionate force” against the villages from which militants fire into Israel, which he called “not civilian villages” but “military bases.” It owes its name to the southern suburbs of Beirut, a Hezbollah stronghold that Israel largely decimated during violent bombings in 2006.
Campaign billboards show the Ra’am party (left) and the Joint List of Arab Parties in the Bedouin town of Rahat in southern Israel on November 1.
David Goldman/AP
hide caption
David Goldman/AP
Arab parties are therefore divided on how to use the power they gained in this election. Raam, a socially conservative Islamist party, campaigned to join a governing coalition and placed a Jewish former police official second on its list. But for now, the Joint List alliance, which won 11 of the 19 Arab party seats in these elections, will not officially partner with Eisenkot. Its leaders have said they could support his government from outside, but would not join it, citing the ongoing war in Gaza and Israel’s occupation of the West Bank.
President Isaac Herzog consulted with the parties about who they would support in an attempt to form a coalition. He is expected to announce next week which candidate he will give a mandate to try to form a coalition. This candidate will have 28 days and may request an additional two-week extension. If he fails, another candidate has only 28 days (without extension) to attempt to form a government. And if no one manages to form a coalition, new elections will be held next year.
In Kufr Qasim, as readings and re-enactments of the 1956 murders took place on stage, Mansour Shaaban said he would vote again in a heartbeat. Aged 33, this was the first election in which he voted. But he now says it is necessary to try to end what he calls racism and the oppression of Palestinians by the Israeli far right. “There are Israelis we eat with and live with,” Shaaban said. But Netanyahu, Ben-Gvir and other leaders in recent years “make coexistence impossible,” he said.
“Even if we fail to create change this time,” he said, Israel’s right-wing politicians now know that the country’s Palestinian citizens have found their voice.
Nuha Musleh contributed to this report.
Gn world
