Palestinians in Israel and the coming Knesset elections

The continued wars of Benjamin Netanyahu have clearly provided him with additional political breathing space and survival. They may also pave the way for postponing the elections scheduled for next October, an outcome that would align closely with his political interests, particularly as it becomes increasingly apparent that securing victory in the next election will be far more difficult than before. The political landscape inside Israel is shifting in ways that no longer work to Netanyahu’s advantage, compounded by the potentially consequential role of Palestinian voters and other political forces, which could further undermine his electoral prospects. Israel continues to wage war in Gaza and Lebanon, while the possibility of renewed confrontation with Iran remains on the table. Within Netanyahu’s political calculus, attempts by the Israeli government to reignite escalation with Iran may appear entirely rational if such a move serves his political survival and interests.

Palestinians inside Israel played a pivotal role in enabling the Bennett–Lapid coalition to unseat Netanyahu that year.

Benjamin Netanyahu is the longest-serving prime minister in Israel’s history. Under his leadership, the right-wing Likud party has dominated Israeli politics since 2009. A master in politics, Netanyahu may still be able to cling to power for several additional months beyond the scheduled election date in an effort to improve his electoral standing. Legally, postponing elections in Israel is possible only under highly exceptional emergency circumstances, and would likely require special legislation passed by the Israeli Knesset, alongside a broad political consensus. This has happened only once before , during the 1973 October War , when elections were delayed for two months. Yet such a scenario is far from guaranteed today. Public pressure inside Israel could intensify in favor of forcing Netanyahu to proceed with elections on schedule and return to the ballot box in accordance with the law, a scenario that currently appears more likely.

Netanyahu was voted out of power in the 2021 elections due to corruption cases that continue to shadow his political career. Those cases remain open, and he is still appearing in court as part of the ongoing legal proceedings against him. Following his return to office at the end of 2022, Netanyahu assembled what is widely regarded as the most far-right government in Israel’s history. His coalition triggered deep internal polarization, clashing with broad segments of Israeli society over issues ranging from judicial overhaul plans to the conscription of ultra-Orthodox Jews. At the same time, the conduct of Israel’s wars under his government, particularly in Gaza, and the scale of civilian casualties and destruction have subjected Israel to a level of international criticism unprecedented in its modern history. Netanyahu has also faced mounting accusations of mismanaging the Gaza war and mishandling the issue of Israeli captives held there. He has further been criticized for resisting calls to establish an official investigation into the events of October 7. There are growing accusations that the expansion of military fronts and the pursuit of successive wars have, at least in part, served domestic political objectives tied to his personal survival. That is precisely why the opening of any new front in parallel with an election cycle is increasingly viewed inside Israel as a clear political maneuver rather than a purely strategic necessity.

Bennett and Lapid broadly align with Netanyahu on the wars against Hamas in Gaza, as well as on Israel’s confrontations with Lebanon and Iran, though they differ sharply over the way Netanyahu has managed those conflicts.

At the end of last month, former prime ministers Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid announced that they would merge their parties, “Yesh Atid” and “Bennett 2026”, into a new political bloc called “Together, ahead of the next Knesset elections. This is not the first political partnership between the two men. In 2021, they joined forces to form what became known as the “government of change,” ending Netanyahu’s 12-year hold on power. Palestinians inside Israel played a pivotal role in enabling the Bennett–Lapid coalition to unseat Netanyahu that year. The alliance then was supported by the inclusion of United Arab List, led by Mansour Abbas, although the party was not granted ministerial portfolios within the coalition government. The newly announced “Together” alliance represents the most significant effort so far to reorganize and consolidate the Israeli opposition ahead of what is expected to be a difficult and highly competitive electoral contest against Netanyahu.

“Bennett 2026” is generally classified as a nationalist right-wing party established last year. Bennett himself first rose to national prominence after taking over the leadership of the Jewish Home party in 2012. He later broke away and founded the New Right in 2018, before leading the Yamina alliance the following year, which brought together several right-wing parties. By contrast, Lapid’s Yesh Atid is a centrist, secular-liberal party founded in 2012, which emerged as a major political force in the elections the following year. The ideological gap between Bennett’s and Lapid’s parties is therefore clear. It was precisely this gap that led many to describe their previous alliance as fragile, and it was widely seen as one of the reasons for its collapse after only a year and a half in power. That earlier alliance was built around a shared political objective: removing Netanyahu from the center of Israeli politics. Today, that same objective appears to be bringing them together once again.

Bennett and Lapid converge tactically on a number of issues related to domestic governance and the management of state institutions, and opposition to Netanyahu’s policies, despite their clear ideological differences.Netanyahu’s government has pushed for judicial changes that would grant politicians and parliamentary parties greater influence over the appointment of judges, a move that triggered massive protests across Israel and was widely viewed as a threat to judicial independence and a step toward the politicization of the courts. At the same time, Netanyahu’s coalition has sought to pass legislation preserving broad military service exemptions for students in ultra-Orthodox religious schools, largely to protect the interests of his Haredi allies in Shas and United Torah Judaism, which represent Sephardi and Ashkenazi ultra-Orthodox communities respectively. Bennett, for example, supports the conscription of the ultra-Orthodox on grounds of national security necessity, while Lapid backs the same policy from a different perspective, framing it as an issue of equality and equal civic obligation rather than security alone.

The two men also converge on a number of other major issues. Bennett and Lapid broadly align with Netanyahu on the wars against Hamas in Gaza, as well as on Israel’s confrontations with Lebanon and Iran, though they differ sharply over the way Netanyahu has managed those conflicts. Both men have criticized Netanyahu’s handling of the Israeli captives held in Gaza, arguing that securing their release should take precedence over the continuation of the war. Bennett and Lapid have also accused Netanyahu of evading the establishment of an official state commission of inquiry into the events of October 7. On Lebanon, both support maintaining deterrence against the country and against Hezbollah in particular, though Bennett has advocated a far more aggressive approach aimed at pushing Hezbollah farther from Israel’s northern border. Lapid, by contrast, has focused his criticism on what he sees as the absence of a coherent and comprehensive Israeli strategy.

Bennett and Lapid also share significant common ground on the Palestinian issue, even though the Lapid positions are often framed in more diplomatic language. Bennett openly rejects negotiations with the Palestinians, opposes the two-state solution, and refuses the establishment of a Palestinian state altogether. Lapid, by contrast, accepts the principle of negotiations and a conditional two-state framework, but without major concessions, under stringent security conditions, and without a full withdrawal from the Palestinian territories occupied in 1967. Bennett has consistently supported settlement expansion and annexation policies. Between 2010 and 2012, he served as head of the Yesha Council, the main representative body of Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank. Lapid’s position is comparatively more restrained, though he likewise supports retaining the major settlement blocs, opposes their dismantlement, and backs continued construction within existing settlements.

Netanyahu and his current government have adopted positions toward the Palestinian issue that are widely viewed as even more hardline than those of Bennett and Lapid. In its coalition agreements, Netanyahu’s government asserts that the Jewish people alone possess an exclusive and inalienable right to all parts of the “Land of Israel,” including “Judea and Samaria”. the biblical term used by the Israeli right to refer to the occupied West Bank. Netanyahu himself has translated this ideological position into explicit political doctrine, repeatedly portraying the establishment of a Palestinian state as an existential threat to Israel. To advance that agenda, he entrusted key positions within his government to far-right ministers such as Itamar Ben-Gvir, leader of Otzma Yehudit, and Bezalel Smotrich, head of Religious Zionist Party, both of whom have become central figures in pushing the government further toward an openly expansionist and ultra-nationalist agenda. Ben-Gvir serves as Minister of National Security, overseeing the police and prison services operating in the occupied territories, and has become the leading architect of policies aimed at expanding the distribution of weapons among Israeli settlers. Smotrich, meanwhile, serves as finance minister while also holding extensive authority within the Ministry of Defense over matters related to the Civil Administration and settlement affairs in the West Bank. He has played a central role in advancing what many observers describe as a de facto annexation policy across large parts of the occupied territories.

Bennett and Lapid are also seeking to bring Gadi Eisenkot into their political alliance as part of their effort to challenge Netanyahu. Eisenkot, a centrist figure with a strong security background and a former chief of staff of the Israeli military, holds positions on the Palestinian issue that largely resemble Lapid’s. Yet the approaches advanced towards the Palestinian issue by Lapid and Eisenkot remain far removed from those traditionally associated with the Israeli left, even if they are still less hardline than the right-wing camp led by Netanyahu. Between the competing strategies of “managing” the conflict and resolving it, time itself appears to be the primary dividing factor, shaping the differing degrees of rigidity embodied by Netanyahu, Bennett, and Lapid, and the broader political circles surrounding them.

Gadi Eisenkot currently heads the centrist “Yashar” party following his departure from Blue and White, led by Benny Gantz. He has not yet made a final decision on whether to join the “Together” alliance. Gantz’s party itself remains politically close to the Bennett–Lapid camp, although it too has yet to formally determine its position regarding participation in the new alliance. At the same time, all of these parties, including Yisrael Beiteinu, led by Avigdor Lieberman, share a common objective centered on removing Netanyahu from power. That same objective previously brought these factions together, including the parties led by Gantz and Lieberman, in the coalition government formed under the Bennett–Lapid alliance.

The “Democrats” alliance is also expected to support the broader anti-Netanyahu opposition in the coming elections. The alliance was formed in 2024 through the merger of the center-left and liberal-left currents represented respectively by the Israeli Labor and Meretz parties, under the leadership of Yair Golan. Historically, the Labor Party, a social democratic and liberal Zionist movement, dominated Israeli politics from the establishment of the state until the rise of the nationalist right-wing Likud party in 1977 under the leadership of Menachem Begin. Begin’s victory over Labor was widely described in Israel as a political “upheaval,” marking a transformative shift in the country’s political order. For years afterward, competition between the two camps remained relatively balanced. That dynamic began to change following the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993, when Labor embraced a negotiated settlement with the Palestinians, while Likud firmly opposed the process.

Since then, Labor’s standing has steadily declined, while Israeli society has moved further to the right. By 2022, a party that had dominated Israeli politics for decades won only four seats in the Knesset. Meretz, the progressive left-wing party, failed in that same election to cross the electoral threshold and enter parliament for the first time since its formation in 1992. Meretz differs from most Jewish parties in Israel, including Labor, in that it explicitly calls for an end to the occupation and opposes settlement expansion. Taken together, the opposition parties appear more flexible and diplomatic in their approach to the Palestinians and to regional issues than Netanyahu’s current government.

Since Netanyahu’s coalition returned to power, the Palestinian issue has entered one of its bleakest phases, while the wider region has been plunged into a level of tension and warfare unseen in decades.

Lapid and Bennett have so far ruled out including Palestinian parties in Israel in their joint “Together” electoral list, unlike the arrangement that helped them defeat Netanyahu in the past. Yet this does not diminish the potentially decisive Palestinian role in the coming elections and in any effort to unseat Netanyahu’s government. In a political system where every vote can prove consequential, the electoral weight of Palestinian parties inside the 1948 territories is increasingly evident. The growing strength of these parties, alongside higher levels of political coordination and voter mobilization, could serve not only the domestic interests of Palestinians in Israel, who constitute the country’s largest minority, accounting for more than one-fifth of the population, but may also evolve into a future source of pressure on Israeli government policy toward the national Palestinian issue itself.

In Israel, it is not uncommon for governments to collapse before completing their legally mandated four-year term, triggering early parliamentary elections. Israel is widely regarded as one of the fragile parliamentary systems among democratic states, largely because of the structure of its electoral system, which is based on full proportional representation within a single nationwide electoral district and a relatively low electoral threshold, currently set at 3.25 percent. This system has produced a highly fragmented Knesset, with a large number of parties represented in parliament and governments formed through coalition arrangements that often rest on narrow parliamentary majorities. These recurring patterns unfold against the backdrop of deep structural divisions within Israeli society, spanning religious versus secular communities, Mizrahi versus Ashkenazi Jews, and Jewish versus non-Jewish populations. That electoral system gives large parties and major alliances,  particularly those positioned as the second- or third-largest blocs, significant leverage in obstructing the formation of a government if they refuse to join either of the leading contenders. At the same time, it grants smaller parties considerable bargaining power, since the withdrawal of even a minor coalition partner can bring down an entire government.

Within this framework, Israeli politics has become increasingly fragile and unstable. That instability was especially evident between 2019 and 2022, when Israel held five legislative elections in rapid succession, driven largely by the convergence of multiple parties around a single objective: removing Netanyahu, whose leadership had become deeply polarizing within Israeli society. Netanyahu ultimately returned to power in 2022 and has since managed to preserve his coalition amid an atmosphere of war and sustained regional confrontation, conditions that have traditionally contributed to maintaining internal cohesion within Israeli society. Yet the period leading up to the next elections appears to reflect a similar political moment: a broad opposition consensus centered on unseating Netanyahu, accompanied by growing public scrutiny over the costs and consequences of perpetual war, regional confrontation, and escalating tensions with the outside world.

Palestinian parties inside Israel are increasingly moving toward the formation of a unified joint list for the upcoming elections. Earlier this year, following a massive demonstration and a widespread strike in the city of Sakhnin protesting the sharp rise in crime and killings within Palestinian society, amid what many Palestinians described as Israeli government and police negligence, if not complicity, an overwhelming sentiment emerged in favor of reunifying the Palestinian parties under a single electoral framework. During that same event, the Palestinian parties in Israel signed a joint pledge committing themselves to work toward reviving the Joint List  ahead of the upcoming elections. The initiative brought together Ayman Odeh, head of the Democratic Front for Peace and Equality “Hadash”; Ahmad Tibi, leader of the Arab Movement for Change, “Ta’al”; Sami Abu Shehadeh, chairman of the National Democratic Assembly “Balad”; and Mansour Abbas, head of United Arab List, “Ra’am”. The move reflected growing Palestinian pressure for greater political unity amid mounting internal and national challenges.

Recent opinion polls project major gains for a unified Palestinian electoral list, potentially increasing Palestinian representation in the Israeli parliament from 10 seats to as many as 15.

Under such a scenario, the Joint List could emerge as either the second- or third-largest bloc in the Knesset in terms. The previous experience of the Joint List has already underscored the political significance of unity among Palestinian parties in Israel’s parliamentary elections. The alliance was originally formed in 2015, bringing together the leading Palestinian parties in Israel and securing the largest parliamentary representation Palestinians had ever achieved in the Knesset. The Joint List won 13 seats in the 2015 elections, before increasing its representation to 15 seats in 2020, becoming the third-largest parliamentary bloc in the Knesset at the time. The alliance later fragmented ahead of the following elections. The number of seats could rise even further if Palestinian voter turnout increases. There is a clear positive correlation between the unity and cohesion of Palestinian parties and higher levels of popular participation. In the 2015 Knesset elections, Palestinian voter turnout reached around 63.5 percent, one of the highest rates in modern Israeli election history. In 2020, turnout rose further to 64.8 percent. By contrast, in the 2021 and 2022 elections, Palestinian turnout fell to 44.6 percent and 53.2 percent respectively, a pattern that reinforces the same conclusion. Palestinians are currently represented in the Knesset by only two parliamentary blocs, following the decision of the Palestinian parties to contest the 2022 elections on separate lists. United Arab List, commonly known as Ra’am, won five seats, while the alliance between Hadash and Ta’al secured another five seats.

Historically, Palestinian political attitudes inside Israel have been divided between participation in the Israeli political system and its boycott. The first camp is represented by parties such as Hadash, Ta’al, and Ra’am, while the boycott camp has traditionally been associated with the northern branch of the Islamic Movement and segments of the Palestinian nationalist current. In 2021, Mansour Abbas, leader of the southern branch of the Islamic Movement and a pragmatic advocate of political participation, joined the Bennett–Lapid governing coalition, marking the first time a Palestinian Arab party formally entered an Israeli governing coalition. The move, however, remained controversial among other Palestinian parties in Israel. On the other side stands Raed Salah, leader of the northern branch of the Islamic Movement, who represents a more traditional Islamist-nationalist discourse and firmly rejects participation in the Knesset altogether.

Palestinians’ participation in Knesset elections dates back to Israel’s first elections in 1949. At the time, Palestinian political participation largely took place through joint Arab–Jewish lists, particularly those affiliated with the Arab–Jewish communist current, rather than through independent Palestinian parties, a pattern that largely continued until 1981. That Arab–Jewish communist current later evolved into Hadash (the Democratic Front for Peace and Equality), established in 1977 as a broad political framework centered on equality, social justice, and ending the occupation. The first significant emergence of an independent Palestinian national-oriented list came with the Progressive List for Peace in the 1984 elections, where it won two seats in the Knesset. In 1988, the Arab Democratic Party was founded under the leadership of Abdulwahab Darawshe, promoting demands such as Palestinian self-determination and full civil equality for Palestinians inside Israel. By the mid-1990s, Balad emerged as a distinctly Palestinian nationalist party. Ta’al was established shortly afterward, while United Arab List emerged following the split of the southern branch of the Islamic Movement from the broader movement during the same period.

If completed, the formation of a unified Arab electoral list in the upcoming elections could become a major instrument in removing Netanyahu’s government by fundamentally reshaping the parliamentary map. Such a development could deny Netanyahu’s bloc the 61-seat majority required to form a government, while compelling the winning camp to coordinate politically with the Palestinian parties.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.