Parliamentary election in Israel: Who are the kingmakers in Israel?

Why is everyone talking about the Arab parties in connection with the elections in Israel?

This is mainly because neither the camp around Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has a majority, nor does the opposition camp around ex-military chief Gadi Eisenkot. The Arab parties therefore play a central role as kingmakers. They also achieved a historically good result: after 90 percent of the votes were counted, the Ra'am party got 7 seats, the United List got 12. This is mainly because the Palestinian Israelis went to the polls this time. The voter turnout among them was around 80 percent. Many of them had previously boycotted Israeli elections.

For many Palestinian Israelis, it was about actively preventing what they saw as a catastrophic Netanyahu government. They have followed the devastating war in Gaza, in which, according to Palestinian figures, more than 74,000 people were killed, as well as the escalating settler violence in the West Bank and the rapid expansion of settlements. Added to this are the problems within the Arab community in Israel, which feels abandoned by the current extreme right-wing government: lack of combat against organized crime, poverty, discrimination, orders to demolish residential buildings without building permits, inadequate electricity supply.

Palestinian-Israeli Nagham Zbeedat puts it this way in a column in the Israeli daily Ha'aretz: "In the end, I voted not because I suddenly believed in Israeli democracy, but because I was tired of hearing that the Palestinians themselves were responsible for their exclusion."

What policies are the Arab parties pursuing?

The Arab parties have very different political orientations. What they have in common is that they primarily advocate for the interests of Palestinian Israelis.

Ra’am ran as a single party and is conservative and Islamic. Its leader, Mansour Abbas, came under fire in 2020 when he took a position against LGBT rights. At the same time, Abbas formed a government with the Zionist anti-Netanyahu bloc in 2021, thereby taking an important step towards Jewish-Arab cooperation. Ra'am emerged in 1996 from the so-called southern wing of the Islamic Movement in Israel, which was influenced by the Muslim Brotherhood. This wing is considered more moderate than the northern one. In 2026, Ra'am broke away from the religious movement. For the 2026 election, Abbas brought the Jewish-Israeli politician Yoav Segalovitz, a former police major general, into the party as his unofficial deputy.

It consists of the three other Arab parties. Ta'al was founded in 1996 by Ahmad Tibi, among others, and is secular and Arab-nationalist in orientation. Their politicians supported the peace negotiations. They continue to strive for a Palestinian state and equal rights for Palestinian and Jewish Israelis.

Balad was founded in 1995 in response to the Oslo Peace Accords and is even more nationalist in orientation. Some of its representatives are striving for a long-term one-state solution, albeit in the form of a common democratic state. Balad is led by Sami Abu Shehadeh, who withdrew from the election campaign and did not run because of a controversial article about the Hamas massacre on October 7, 2023. He had previously been threatened with expulsion at the request of the Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben-Gvir.

Chadash is the oldest of the parties, emerging in 1977 from the Communist Party of Israel and other left-wing groups. It still sees itself as socialist-communist, and Jewish Israelis are also active in it.

And now? Will they be part of a governing coalition?

Even before the election, Ra’am was ready to form a coalition with Zionist parties. The United List parties, on the other hand, had not considered participating in the government before the election. However, after the election, United List leader Yousef Jabareen declared his willingness to support an alternative government to Netanyahu. Within the list, Balad in particular is reluctant to work with Zionist parties.

And will the Zionist parties cooperate with them?

That remains to be seen. But positive signals have so far only come from the center-left Democrats; the other parties of the Zionist opposition expressed themselves rather negatively.