Israel Election Update No. 3: The Limits of Arab Political Participation

With less than two weeks before the October 27 Israeli Knesset elections, the opposition bloc of Jewish parties led by former chief-of staff Gadi Eisenkot and his Yashar (straight or honest) party is polling neck and neck with the bloc of parties comprising Israel’s current government led by Benjamin Netanyahu and the Likud. The Ha’aretz average of TV station polls not linked to the Likud, shows the bloc led by Eisenkot winning 51 Knesset seats while the government parties would receive 52 seats. The poll of the Hebrew daily Ma‘ariv shows the two blocs locked in a tie at 52 seats each. There are 120 seats in the Knesset with 61 required to form a governing majority

This apparent tie is deceptive. Two new unaligned rightwing parties are currently polling around the minimum threshold of 3.25% of the vote required to enter the Knesset with 4 seats. Retired brigadier general Ofer Winter has announced that his Amcha Yisrael party will join a coalition led by Netanyahu. The Reservists, led by Yoaz Hendel, could swing either way. Given their ideological proclivities, it is plausible that these parties could provide the margin that would return Netanyahu to the prime minister’s seat if they both enter the Knesset.

This is a grim prospect for those in Israel and internationally who would like to see Benjamin Netanyahu in their rear-view mirrors, if not in jail. As if it were a talisman to ward off a potential Netanyahu victory, The New York Times published what in part reads like a political advertisement for Gadi Eisenkot by Dahlia Scheindlin entitled, “Israelis Feel Abandoned. That’s Why They Might Turn to This Bereaved General.” 

Scheindlin, the most astute interpreter of Israeli polls, explains why despite his political inexperience, lack of charisma, and vague political program, Eisenkot is attractive to Israelis who identify as right and center-right but dislike Netanyahu. Eisenkot is a hero of October 7, three times bereaved (his son and two nephews lost their lives in Gaza), the son of Moroccan immigrants, and hails from Israel’s geographical periphery – born in Tiberias and raised in Eilat. Eisenkot was a member of Netanyahu’s post-October 7 war cabinet but resigned because he became convinced that freeing Israelis held hostage in Gaza was not a priority for Netanyahu. He favors a state commission of inquiry into the security failures of October 7 and drafting Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) young men, very popular positions with a majority of Israelis.

Eisenkot only recently begun speaking about his vision for Israel’s future relationship with Palestine. He told The Times of Israel that he favors maintaining all the legally established settlements in the West Bank, dismantling the illegal outposts, and cracking down on settler violence against Palestinians. Beyond the restoration of the rule of (Israel’s) law in the West Bank he believes, “We need to create the conditions for a permanent-status arrangement in the future. Will it be autonomy or a state-minus? That is the geopolitical space I am talking about. But it certainly will not have an army and will be under overriding Israeli security control.”

Effectively, this means formalizing the existing Palestinian Bantustans in the 40% of the West Bank comprising Areas A and B and continuing full Israeli control over all or most of the remainder of the territory. 

In Gaza, Eisenkot would “advance President Trump’s 20-point postwar plan, but strictly from a position of strength, with the absolute basic condition being Hamas’s total disarmament.” Knowledgeable observers concur that beyond the return of all living and deceased Israeli hostages and Israel permitting the entry of a minimal amount of food and humanitarian aid, though far less than the Trump plan calls for, the remainder of the Trump plan has not been and is unlikely to be implemented. So Eisenkot’s vision for Gaza is more of the same.

Dahlia Scheindlin may nonetheless be correct that this is sufficient for Israeli Jewish voters to swing behind Eisenkot in the waning days of the campaign. No Jewish political figure with a substantial following has offered the public a realistic plan for resolving the question of Palestine for over a quarter of a century. It’s not surprising that Eisenkot, like all of mainstream Israeli political discourse, lacks the language or vision to address the question.

Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel could theoretically break the impasse between the two large political blocs.

As was expected, Israel’s Central Electoral Commission, comprised of representatives of the political parties, voted to ban the Arab-led Joint List and the United Arab List led by Mansur Abbas from running for the Knesset. Also as expected, on October 2, Israel’s Supreme Court unanimously overturned the ban and permitted both party lists to run. With a dangerous precedent-setting wrinkle.

Before the Supreme Court issued its ruling, its president Isaac Amit, told Sami Abou Shehadeh, the leader of the Arab National Democratic Alliance (Balad) a component of the Joint List, that all the justices favored excluding him personally from running. He encouraged Abu Shehadeh to withdraw as a candidate of the Joint List.

The justices believed that an Arabic article Abu Shehadeh published in “Arab48” and “The New Arab” on October 8, 2023 entitled “The al-Aqsa Flood: Preliminary Observations” allegedly expressed support for the previous day’s Hamas-led attack on Israel.

Abu Shehadeh wrote:

What happened and is happening, up to this moment, is entirely consistent with the law of physics that we all know: excessive pressure leads to an explosion.

Decades of occupation and blockade, the assassination of leaders, the daily killing of people, and violations against the dignity, property, and holy places of the Palestinian people – all of this could only lead to a reaction.

The real surprise is the Palestinian people’s capacity for endurance, until they reached the point of explosion.

Abu Shehadeh’s article neither condemned nor praised Hamas. However, its mode of expression is insensitive to the horrors Israelis experienced on October 7 and far beyond the boundaries of what most Jewish Israelis can tolerate. Arab citizens (and a few Jews) without parliamentary immunity were arrested and fired from their jobs for less.

Abu Shehadeh apologized for his article and said that he had not understood the full scale of Hamas’s October 7 attack when he wrote it. The entire Jewish political spectrum considered this inadequate. Yair Golan favored banning Abu Shehadeh, a fair indication of the limits of the democracy his Democrats support.

A serious legal analysis of Abu Shehadeh’s article concluded that while his words “gesture toward violence,” he did not support armed struggle. The court sought to avoid adjudicating this difficult legal distinction. It pressured Abu Shehadeh into withdrawing his candidacy, precisely because the evidence against him did not clearly meet the established standard for banning a candidate or a party: “denying the state's Jewish and democratic character, inciting racism, or supporting the armed struggle of an enemy state or terrorist organization.”

Abu Shehadeh’s voluntary withdrawal of his candidacy enabled him to remain as the leader of Balad while another member of the party took his place in the Joint List. It also reinforced the prevailing norm that Jews establish the limits of permissible Arab political expression.

Unexpectedly, Abu Shehadeh’s withdrawal appears to have increased the number of Arab citizens intending to vote in the election. 

The Joint List is currently polling at 8-9 seats. The United Arab List led by Mansur Abbas, which has given former senior police commander and deputy minister of national security (police) Yoav Segalovitz the number two spot on its electoral list, guaranteeing him a seat in the next Knesset, is polling at 5 seats. 

Those 13-14 seats could put the anti-Netanyahu bloc comfortably over the 61 seats needed to form a new government. Without them, it appears unlikely that the opposition bloc can win a Knesset majority. Gadi Eisenkot and the leaders of all the parties in the bloc he leads except the center-left Democrats, currently polling at 9 seats, have declared that they will not form a government with the Arab parties. Democrats leader Yair Golan has declared that he is willing to form a government with Mansur Abbas. It is uncertain if Segalovitz’s presence on the United Arab List will render the party acceptable to Eisenkot and his other partners.

Once again, I conclude with a caveat: polls are an approximation and a snapshot of a moment in time. There is still time for surprises before the October 27 voting.