Arab Parties Poised for Record Knesset Gains as Palestinian Citizen Turnout Hits Historic High

On election day in Jerusalem, cars flying Likud flags drove through the streets blaring the Islamic call to prayer, according to witnesses. The message from the loudspeakers was that supporters should go and vote, because "Arabs are voting." It was one of the last-ditch efforts by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his far-right coalition to bring out their own base on Tuesday.

By the evening, exit polls suggested the warning had pointed at something real. Israel's two leading Arab-led parties, the Joint List and Ra'am, were projected to hold a combined 19 seats in the 120-seat Knesset, a record. Early estimates put turnout among Palestinian citizens of Israel at around 80 percent, which Israel's Channel 12 reported would break the 1999 record. Palestinian citizens make up about 21 percent of Israel's 10 million people and have traditionally voted at lower rates than Jewish Israelis. Overall turnout was also the highest since 1999, at 77.7 percent, the Central Elections Committee reported.

The counting was far from finished. With more than a third of votes tallied, the Joint List was winning over 9 percent. The opposition bloc led by former military chief of staff Gadi Eisenkot's Yashar party was trailing the coalition led by Netanyahu's Likud, though those votes were preliminary. Earlier exit polls had put Eisenkot's side narrowly ahead.

Netanyahu himself used the turnout as a rallying point. On social media he highlighted long queues at polling stations in Arab communities and posted an image he said showed Arab voters, among them women in the niqab, waiting to vote. "If we don't wake up now," he wrote, "we'll find ourselves with a government of Mansour Abbas and Ahmad Tibi," naming two leading Palestinian members of the Knesset. Arab politicians denounced the tactic as racist and inflammatory.

Abbas, who leads Ra'am, the United Arab List, was frank about the arithmetic before the first votes came in. Speaking to Channel 12, he said that with the current numbers there is no government. He hopes the final results will let the anti-Netanyahu bloc, his party included, reach the 61 seats needed to govern. Ra'am holds five seats now and was part of the coalition that ruled Israel from 2021 to 2022. Abbas said both main blocs had approached his party before and after the election.

That is where the difficulty lies. Alon Pinkas, a former Israeli ambassador, told Al Jazeera that forming a government could be hard for parties like Eisenkot's, because they pledged during the campaign not to enter coalitions with Arab parties. "There's a price to pay," he said, because Arabs "can't be kept outside and only being considered and co-opted when you need their votes." He added that the Arab-led lists will make demands a Jewish-led coalition may not accept.

Al Jazeera's Nour Odeh, reporting from Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, called the vote "an existential moment for Palestinian-Israelis." She said the turnout drew in even voters who would normally boycott elections, people who did not believe voting would change their reality or the systemic discrimination they face. By her account, the Knesset has passed more than 100 laws that discriminate against Palestinian citizens, who also face discrimination in the allocation of state funds.

The figures remain exit-poll projections and partial counts. What to watch is whether the final tally gives either bloc 61 seats, and if not, whether opposition parties that ruled out Arab partners during the campaign will reverse course.