Israel’s Arab political leaders are campaigning for a large turnout in the October 27 election, arguing that the 21 percent Arab minority can supply the votes that remove Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and what Mansour Abbas, head of the United Arab List, called the most right-wing government in the country’s history. Abbas told Reuters in Nazareth that Arab voters can ensure the formation of a new government of change.
The arithmetic is tight enough to make the claim plausible. Polls reported by Reuters project the bloc led by former military chief Gadi Eisenkot at 52 of the Knesset’s 120 seats and Netanyahu’s religious-nationalist bloc at 50, with Abbas’s party projected at five seats and the Joint List, a coalition of three Arab parties, at eight. The Stat-Net Research Institute projects Arab turnout of 63 percent, up from 56 percent in 2022. Neither leading bloc reaches the 61 seats needed to govern on its own in that projection.
The obstacle is stated, not hidden. Eisenkot has ruled out forming a government with the Arab parties, saying this month that he will not align himself with any Arab party, citing among other things their refusal to label Hamas a terrorist organisation. Abbas argues the electoral maths will create room to manoeuvre after the vote, and Joint List leader Ahmad Tibi said his group is ready to support a government from outside as a preventive block, with a commission of inquiry into October 7 as an early shared vote. Abbas has also placed a Jewish former police official, Yoav Segalovitz, second on his slate, a first for his party.
Netanyahu’s campaign is treating the possibility as a mobilising threat, using doctored images and AI-generated video to depict his rivals embracing Arab leaders. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has proposed a plan to Judaize areas around Nazareth and in the south, language Arab organisers cite in their turnout pitch alongside anger over crime in Arab communities. If no bloc can form a government, the fallback is deadlock and fresh elections in 2027, with Netanyahu remaining in office in the meantime. Yesterday’s story on this site covers President Trump’s endorsement of Netanyahu; this story is the domestic arithmetic that endorsement landed in.