Exit polling data from Tuesday indicated that the leading Arab-led parties, the Joint List and Ra’am, are set to hold a record number of seats in the 120-member Knesset. Updated exit polling showed that the opposition bloc led by former military chief of staff Gadi Eisenkot’s Yashar party and the bloc led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party were tied at 51 seats each.
Early indications put voter turnout among Palestinian citizens of Israel at around 80 percent, breaking 1999 records, Israel’s Channel 12 reported. Overall voter turnout reached its highest level since 1999 with 77.7 percent casting ballots, according to the Central Elections Committee.
Palestinian citizens of Israel make up about 21 percent of the country’s population of 10 million and have traditionally voted at lower rates than Jewish Israelis. Nour Odeh, reporting from Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, called the election an existential moment for Palestinian-Israelis.
She cited record turnout among a vital voting bloc, drawing even voters who usually boycott elections and who did not believe it would alter the systemic discrimination they face. The Knesset has passed more than 100 laws discriminating against Palestinian citizens of Israel, who also face discrimination in receiving state funds.
Mansour Abbas, the leader of Ra’am, said he hopes the final election results will allow the anti-Netanyahu bloc, including his party, to win the 61 seats required to form a government. With the numbers currently available, there is no government, Abbas told Israel’s Channel 12.
Abbas said both main blocs reached out to his party before and after the election. His Ra’am party currently holds five seats in the Knesset and previously joined the coalition that governed Israel from 2021 to 2022.
Alon Pinkas, a former Israeli ambassador, told Al Jazeera that creating a government might prove difficult for parties such as Eisenkot’s, which earlier exit polls had put narrowly ahead, because they promised not to form coalitions with Arab parties during the campaign. There is a price to pay because the Arabs cannot be kept outside and only considered when votes are needed, Pinkas said.
He said the Arab-led lists will make demands that a Jewish-led coalition government may not support. Meanwhile, Netanyahu and his far-right coalition made last-ditch efforts on Tuesday to get their supporters to the polls, warning of surging voter turnout among Palestinian citizens of Israel.
Arab politicians denounced that tactic as racist and inflammatory. Witnesses stated that cars flying Likud party flags drove through Jerusalem blaring the Islamic call to prayer and urging supporters to cast ballots because Arabs are voting.
In social media posts, Netanyahu pointed to long queues at polling stations in Arab communities and published an image showing Arab voters, including women wearing the niqab, waiting to cast ballots. If we do not wake up now, we will find ourselves with a government of Mansour Abbas and Ahmad Tibi, he said, referring to two leading Palestinian members of the Knesset.
