Changing Israel’s course won’t happen without the Arab community

Ayman Odeh writes in Haaretz on 30 October 2026:

For years, we’ve been told that we have no real place in Israeli politics. The right portrays us as enemies and a fifth column, while centrists and left-wing parties fear the political price of collaborating with us. In a country that defines itself as the nation-state of the Jewish people, we are repeatedly forced to fight for the right to influence the future of the very place where we live – our only homeland.

However, as we proved on Tuesday, we haven’t, and we won’t give up. Despite racism, exclusion and delegitimization, we turned out to vote in large numbers and continued to fight for the equality we deserve.

Not only have we refused to give up our place in Israeli society, but we have also joined the struggle for its future, against the Kahanist and fascist forces threatening it. This election has once again exposed a truth that Israeli politics tries to conceal: without Arab citizens, Benjamin Netanyahu, Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich would have been celebrating today.

But we can’t bring about change alone. Replacing this government and bringing about a different reality to this country requires a genuine, equal Jewish-Arab partnership. Arab citizens are not an add-on to the political equation, but a central element in it.

This isn’t a matter of goodwill or symbolic recognition, but of political reality. The history of the past three decades shows that when Arab citizens wield political power, the door to change opens. That was the case under former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, when Arab lawmakers’ support enabled his government to advance diplomatic initiatives and provided crucial political backing for the Oslo Accords.

The same was true in the 1999 election, when Ehud Barak defeated Benjamin Netanyahu with broad support from Arab voters. Yet rather than build on that power and strengthen it, Israeli politics has preferred to fear it.

Netanyahu understood the following equation: to remain in power, it isn’t enough to defeat his opponents, but he must also prevent Arab citizens from becoming legitimate political partners capable of determining Israel’s future. For years, he has cast us as an enemy within, branded our representatives as traitors and incited against the public we represent. Trust me, no one has experienced this strategy more directly than I have.

Netanyahu hasn’t merely exploited racism in Israeli society; he has nurtured it and turned it into a central instrument of his rule. He has sought to convince Jewish Israelis that Arab citizens are a threat, that partnership with them is dangerous and that they have no legitimate role in shaping the country’s future. He has tried to undermine our legitimacy by every means available.

This was neither a mistake nor a momentary lapse, but a method. Netanyahu built his rule on incitement, deepening the rift between Jews and Arabs and excluding one-fifth of the country’s citizens.  Whenever Jewish-Arab partnership threatened his hold on power, he returned to the same formula: instill fear, incite and persecute. This is the political legacy he leaves behind: racism, hatred, supremacy, destruction and annihilation.

But Netanyahu isn’t solely to blame. For years, leaders from the center and the left have allowed him to define the boundaries of political legitimacy in Israel. From Ehud Barak to Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot, time and again, fear of a backlash from the right has outweighed the willingness to recognize Arab citizens as equal partners.

I know this from personal experience, too. Seven years ago, I became the first Arab political leader in three decades to recommend that a candidate be given the mandate to form a government. I did so because I realized that Netanyahu could not be ousted without political cooperation between us.

I wanted to translate our political weight into real influence, but I found no partner. They want our votes when they need them, but are afraid to recognize our representatives’ legitimacy. They want to replace Netanyahu but refuse to break free of the rules he has set.

And that’s the trap he has laid for us all. As long as those seeking to replace Netanyahu continue to fear partnership with us, they preserve one of the key tools he uses to remain in power.

You can’t fight racism while simultaneously capitulating to it, speak of democracy while excluding one-fifth of the country’s citizens from political partnership or build a genuine alternative to Netanyahu without breaking with the politics of supremacy and exclusion.

We must be honest: the belief in Jewish superiority isn’t confined to the right. A deep-seated assumption also exists in the center and the left, sometimes beneath the surface, that Jewish Israelis should determine the boundaries of political partnership, while Arab citizens should be content with whatever place is allotted to them.

To build a different future, we must rid ourselves of this assumption. There can be no reconciling supremacy with equality, or exclusion with partnership.

Imagine what history books will say about what is happening here 30 years from now. How will they explain the fact that opposition leaders refused to cooperate with Arab representatives simply because they were Arabs?

Leave the Joint List aside for a moment: why is the United Arab List also ruled out? It’s now further to the right than the Democrats, both politically and certainly on social issues, yet it, too, is deemed illegitimate.

How will historians explain that millions of citizens had to fight time and again for the right to influence their own future and that of their country, only to have their voices deemed illegitimate?

Behind those votes are human beings: women and men, young and old, people who did everything in their power to reach the ballot box and have a say in their future.

I write these words from within the reality we live in. We are an inseparable part of the Palestinian people, and at the same time, we are Israeli citizens. We know Israeli society from the inside, its hopes and fears, as well as the pain and aspirations of our people. We speak Arabic and Hebrew, and we are not guests here.

We make up about 20 percent of Israel’s citizenry and, at the same time, roughly a quarter of the Palestinian population between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. We are part of Israeli society and part of the Palestinian people. This reality isn’t a contradiction to be resolved by erasing one part of our identity. It’s a starting point for building a different kind of partnership.

Emile Habibi once sought to remind Israelis that no Arab group knows Israeli society better than the Palestinians who are citizens of Israel. His words carry profound meaning. It’s precisely from this position that we can become key partners in the struggle for a future in which both peoples live in peace and security, with the right of both to self-determination fulfilled.

War, supremacy and continued control over the Palestinian people don’t require partnership. You can keep inciting, building walls and launching more wars. But anyone who wants genuine democracy, genuine peace and a better future for our children must choose a different path that runs through a genuine and equal Jewish-Arab partnership.

The chance for change is here and now. We must not let it slip away. Everything must be done to oust the Netanyahu-Ben-Gvir-Smotrich government. But replacing the people in government isn’t enough, as we must also change course.

Without us, it can’t be done. But with us, it’s entirely possible.

Ayman Odeh is a member of the Knesset and chairman of the Hadash-Ta’al party

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