A step-by-step plan for a Jewish-Arab coalition

Steven Klein writes in Haaretz on 2 November 2026:

Israel’s fractured opposition has been presented with a daunting challenge – to forge a narrow path forward that will enable Israel to start healing from the nightmarish past four years. A new government could reduce nepotism and corruption, restore law and order in Arab communities and in the West Bank, depoliticize the security forces, undo the judicial overhaul, close socioeconomic gaps, prioritize diplomacy over endless wars and rehabilitate Israel’s standing in the world.

Given the numbers – the Zionist component of the change bloc won 48 seats while the Arab component won 19 for a solid majority of the 120-seat Knesset – some form of Arab-Jewish partnership is necessary to pursue these goals. At least one snap poll suggested that twice as many change bloc voters (59-26 percent) prefer Arab-Jewish cooperation over Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud as a partner.

However, due to existential fears, the Jewish leaders are resistant to the Arab ones who have stretched out their hand in partnership. Gadi Eisenkot is demanding Arab leaders agree to ideological principles before they begin to cooperate on substance. Netanyahu is counting on being able to exploit these divisions to remain in power.

These principles include recognizing Israel as a Jewish state and condemning Hamas as a terrorist organization that must be destroyed. These demands are big asks that Arab leaders aren’t ready to comply with. They prefer to focus on practical policies that address inequalities without threatening the state’s Jewish identity, and on advancing the Trump peace plan, which would necessarily neutralize Hamas, without forcing them to explicitly express ideological stands.

I would also like to see them agree to these demands, but policing their thoughts shouldn’t be the goal now. It’s far more important that the Arab leaders, focused on deeds, have announced their own commitment to supporting the change bloc and replacing Netanyahu.

Before people can embark on ambitious projects like a governing coalition, they have to foster cooperation, a subtle difference the Arab parties seem to grasp. Research in the science of belief, opinion and persuasion indicates that leaving behind unhealthy relationships and forging new ones precede changing one’s mind. It’s a losing strategy to insist that the other has to embrace your perspective before working together. It’s a winning strategy to engage them in joint action, for it’s these small steps that can lead to impactful, positive outcomes.

Yet, it’s so damn hard for Israeli Jews to let go of their fears, even more so after October 7. It’s the reasoning I’ve heard when people explain why it was possible to form a coalition with Mahmoud Abbas and the United Arab List in 2022 but not now. Jewish leaders are understandably hesitant, as are many of their constituents.

It feels like a Catch-22: Jews and Arabs won’t trust each other until they work together but they can’t work together because they don’t trust each other.

The only way out of this trap that I can see is through incremental change.

The evolutionary process of moving from hostility to cooperation between Arab and Jewish parties can begin with small change. Find one step everyone can agree on, evaluate and repeat. The destination on our GPS is a government of change, but we’ll need to break up the trip into several steps.

The first step is replacing the Knesset speaker, a powerful position which few people outside of Israel have even heard of, let alone given much thought to. The speaker gets the ball rolling at the beginning of a Knesset term to set up the house committees and the rules. The sooner that happens, the sooner individual lawmakers can introduce bills. The Kan broadcaster’s report that Netanyahu has threatened to shun unity talks should Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana be replaced is a strong sign that Bibi also recognizes that this step could lead to a positive outcome for the change bloc.

After the speaker is replaced, the parties can begin to experiment to see what an Arab-Jewish partnership would look like. Eisenkot has called for a state commission of inquiry into the October 7 massacre, a repeal of the judicial overhaul laws, a duty of military or national/civilian service for all citizens, and more people serving in the Israeli military. The Arab parties have already endorsed the first two. They should be able to add a couple of their own priorities at the start, such as directing funds back into fighting crime and improving infrastructure in Arab communities, as well as closing socioeconomic gaps in education and housing.

At the same time, the Arab parties face political landmines, too. Research on and experience from ethnically divided democracies indicate that inclusion of minorities can lead to pushback from disaffected members of the majority. The Netanyahu bloc will be looking for every opportunity to delegitimize the effort to include Arabs.

Thus, the Arab parties will need to consult with the change bloc’s most skeptical members, namely Yisrael Beiteinu’s Avigdor Lieberman, to give this partnership a fighting chance. They can choose to keep insisting that they are right regarding their grievances, but then they will get more of what they’ve gotten for the past four years. Conversely, Lieberman also has the choice of sticking to his guns and leaving the Haredim in power or forging a new path with the Arabs that preserves his dearest interests.

Assuming Eisenkot gets the nod from President Isaac Herzog, he will have six weeks to form a government. If he can deliver some victories in the first couple of weeks, then the change bloc parties will be able to evaluate the partnership. If they like it, they can begin selling the gains to their constituents: Do you want more of this or the status quo of the last four years?

Should the quick political wins increase the public and politicians’ appetite for partnership, what could be the next incremental step? One might be to form a limited partnership: Commit to a government of one year or less to get important things done like passing the 2027 budget, but only after confirming there is no Amichai Chikli-type of parliamentarian who would undermine it. The selling point of this approach is that potential damage is limited but the upside of securing more wins for the change bloc remains, motivating everyone to stick to the task and act quickly.

In that stage, a fully functioning government could pass more serious legislation like a Haredi draft bill and legalizing unrecognized Bedouin villages, clamp down on settler terror, increase compensation for soldiers and expand secular rights, and other pet projects. Then, a national conversation could also begin about what national service for all would look like that all can live with. Six or nine months of such cooperation would ease minds much more than the year of wrangling in 2022 did.

The late Rabbi Jonathan Sacks taught that when the Children of Israel said in Exodus 24:7, “Na’aseh v’nishma”, this should not be interpreted as “we will do and we will hear,” but should be read as “we will do and we will understand.”

“Those who hover on the edge of a commitment, reluctant to make a decision until all the facts are in, will eventually find that life has passed them by,” he wrote. “The only way to understand a way of life is to take the risk of living it.”

The same goes for Arab-Jewish political cooperation. Only by pursuing the politics of partnership incrementally will Israeli Jews truly have an opportunity to understand the potential benefits of working with the Arabs who care about liberal democracy in Israel like they do, and more so than Likud does.

Steven Klein is an editor at Haaretz and adjunct instructor at Tel Aviv University’s International Program in Conflict Resolution and Mediation

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