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How Arab parties could hold critical balance of power in Israeli election
Image caption - Students in Nazareth are handing out leaflets encouraging Arab Israelis to vote in next week's election
By Yolande Knell Middle East correspondent
Reporting from Nazareth
Published 16 minutes ago
At rush hour in Nazareth, the largest Arab-majority city in Israel, students are handing out leaflets by the roadside urging motorists to vote in next week's closely fought, general election. Polls indicate that Arab parties could be left holding a critical balance of power.
Disaffection has often driven down past turnout among Arab Israelis - who account for about a fifth of the population and often describe themselves as Palestinian citizens of Israel. But this election, there is a strong push to get rid of the most right-wing governing coalition in the country's history - an alliance between veteran Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and far-right and ultra-Orthodox parties.
"I see it as our duty to bring down this extremist government. They treat us as second-class," says Arkan Badran, 23, who is with the students giving out flyers. "I call on all young men and women to vote for Arab lists, which represent us, because this is our future."
Most opinion polls indicate that neither Netanyahu and his partners nor the main "Change Bloc", led by centre-right former military chief Gadi Eisenkot, has a clear path to a parliamentary majority.
If they are right, after the election anti-Netanyahu parties wanting to form a governing coalition would either have to go back on pledges not to work with the prime minister or make a deal with Arab-majority lists.
A major sticking point is that Eisenkot has so far ruled out forming a government with Arab parties, citing a lack of shared values.
Israel's politics and society have been changed by the deadly, unprecedented Hamas-led assault on the country on 7 October 2023, and subsequent war in Gaza. There is increased mistrust of and hostility towards the country's Arab minority.
"After October 7, we were treated as enemies of this country," says Suha Salman Mousa of the Mossawa Centre in Nazareth, which advocates for equal rights for Arab citizens. "There was shrinking space for freedom of speech. There were major arrests, there was also firing of people from their workplaces because they put something on social media or they went out against the war on Gaza."
Salman Mousa accuses ministers of "systematic discrimination and incitement" against Arab Israelis. Civil society groups say they have disproportionately cut budgets for Arab communities. The government says reductions are needed to fund wartime defence and security spending.
There have also been politicised campaigns against Arab physicians working in Israeli hospitals and racially motivated attacks on Arab bus drivers by Jewish Israelis.
Some electioneering has sought to capitalise by deepening social divisions. The far-right Finance Minister, Bezalel Smotrich, has vowed to "Judaise" parts of the northern Galilee and southern Negev regions where most Arabs live, likening this to expanding settlements in the occupied West Bank.
The majority of Arab Israelis are descendants of Palestinians who remained in their homes after Israel was founded in 1948. They have faced decades of discrimination and marginalisation, and many say they have never felt truly accepted as Israeli citizens.