If Israel disqualifies Arab parties, boycotting the election isn’t a solution

Protesters in Tel Aviv against the government’s failure to combat crime in the Arab community, February 2026

Amira Hass writes in Haaretz on 29 April 2026:

We must prepare for the possibility that Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing coalition will do everything so that some, or all, of the parties representing the Palestinian citizens of Israel are disqualified. Some of these parties win the votes of Jews who oppose Israel’s ultranationalist militarism.

These parties are the natural recipient – the only one in my opinion – of the votes of everyone who in recent years has protested under the slogan “There is no democracy with an occupation.” This is the only opposition not addicted to war, and, due to its ethnic makeup, the only one whose politics have not been tainted by Jewish supremacy.

For many Palestinians, citizens lacking equal rights in this country, boycotting elections is still perceived as a way of expressing their alienation from the state’s political and ideological underpinnings, as well as a way of expressing their belief that this place cannot be redeemed. This position conforms with the prevailing notion that the processes described by historiographic and sociological theories are inevitable.

From here it’s easy to leap to the conclusion that the evil that’s still waiting to happen is also inevitable. According to this thinking, the genocide Israel has been perpetrating in Gaza for over two and a half years, and the expulsion of Palestinians from the West Bank, to be followed by expulsion from Israel, have been embedded in Zionism, in ideology and in deed, from its very inception.

Leftist activists and people who oppose the occupation – both Palestinians and Jews – share the understanding that Zionism and its product, Israel, are part of the phenomenon of settler colonialism. And yet, for decades we’ve acted to thwart the dynamics of expulsion and annihilation. We’ve hoped to convince enough Israelis, before it is too late, that dominating the Palestinian people and denying their rights as individuals and as a collective would have a snowball effect, with the toxic effects making things worse for Palestinians and the world, including its Jews.

A political life – not as a career or as opportunistic compromises but as civil action bringing together people seeking one goal, trying to influence power nexuses and the mechanisms of decision-making – stems from the assumption that change is possible and no path is predetermined. Thus, leftist activists initiated and took part in a host of activities – from writing, demonstrating or forming organizations, to refusing to obey orders or do military service, or accompanying Palestinians subjugated by Jewish terror. All this is done with the knowledge that the path is full of crossroads and that a tank driver is also capable of thinking, as is a Supreme Court justice, with both able to choose a different path than the one they were funneled to by society, from first grade through law studies.

We were proved wrong and have failed. The spokes we tried to put in the wheels broke too quickly. Anyone who can do so emigrates, but the majority remains here, including millions of Palestinians who have no European passport because their grandmothers and forebears were born here, or because they don’t belong to the upper-middle class or aren’t academics, high-tech people or artists.

The rules of the game as determined by the current government in many aspects of our lives are different from the rules in the past. Regarding the Palestinians, the new rules are a frightening move to extremes within the long established range of Jewish supremacy. Other rules are transgressing the old lines of the comfortable “democracy for Jews.” In any case, there is no disputing that these rules have formed a new dynamic, with a pace of invasive harm and deterioration that is faster than anything before.

With due respect to theories, our lives aren’t meant to be chapters proving a truth, or sections of a study to be discussed in 50 years in a course on comparative fascism, torture facilities, concentration camps, collaboration, cowardice or the standing aside of ordinary people. These are our lives in the present. And we must take action out of an understanding, an agreement and a belief that we have a duty and a possibility to build a united political force to hinder the other side from realizing the rest of its destructive intentions.

The Knesset is not the most important arena; it’s no substitute for other activities and organizations. But since elections are by their nature organizing and outwardly directed events, and since the Knesset is a focused location attracting media outlets and people with initiatives, interests and capabilities, political power attains there a visibility that can be used in other arenas.

Voting in a Knesset election is a reasoned use of a tool that the antidemocratic coalition, proud of its racism, hasn’t yet dared cancel. Thus, voting in the upcoming election will be a subversive act, the opposite of a collaborationist one, the opposite of capitulation to the arrogance of the victorious side in 1948. Indeed, I think that this time it’s right that Palestinians who have never voted because the elections took place in a state that robbed them of their homeland should vote.

Precisely now, when Bezalel Smotrich’s “decisive plan” to crush the Palestinians as a national collective and as individuals is being implemented – to our disaster, in front of our eyes, step by step – strategic thinking and timely organization could help disrupt it, even if belatedly. Our political, ideological and personal duty is to treat the coming mass expulsion of Palestinians not as a fait accompli but as a malicious plan we can thwart.

If all the Arab and Jewish-Arab parties run in this election as a united bloc, we should vote for it. Everyone is aware of the ideological differences between the four parties. But these aren’t ordinary days, and the principle unifying these parties, “We are here to stay,” must overcome what divides them. If the Knesset’s predatory Central Elections Committee disqualifies one or more of these parties, its constituencies should vote for the other parties in the camp, ensuring that no votes are lost.

For diverse reasons, various groups have reservations about one party or another, or all of them. This is natural. But every Arab or Jewish-Arab party is also a sum of its members, supporters and voters, who come from the most persecuted community in Israel. Voting this time is much more than a personal act of expressing support or political hope. It’s a demonstration of responsibility, a sense of belonging and concern for this collective, and a declaration of loyalty to its rights.

The appetite of powerful political entities to completely wipe out Gaza, to continue mutilating the West Bank and abandoning this country’s citizens to crime and murder (in short, to complete what we left unfinished in 1948) is an existential threat. It’s possible that, as these ambitions are advanced, all parties representing Palestinian citizens and the true left will be banned.

The coalition and the parts of the opposition that hope for much more than the Palestinians’ disappearance from the legislature will celebrate even more if we boycott the election. Cabinet members thumb their noses at the Supreme Court; they don’t come close to being perturbed by condemnation from the UN and debates at the International Criminal Court. Will they be flustered by condemnation by the OECD over the fact that the election wasn’t democratic?

All the Zionist parties that flatter themselves for being the opposition, and all the retired generals who lead them, give us many reasons for disgust and for concluding that they can’t shake their habit of embracing Jewish supremacy. But a boycott – as punishment for a possible disqualification of “our” parties – will only increase the relative electoral strength of the right that espouses a transfer of Arabs, for people like Rabbi Avraham Zarbiv, who takes pride in his role in flattening Gaza, for which he was also honored at an official ceremony. The personal dilemmas will be difficult, certainly for people who have never voted for a Zionist party (as I haven’t).

But if we’re left with no choice, we must give our votes to a Zionist party where at least some of the supporters and members take part in protests against the war and do “protective presence” work with Palestinian communities in the West Bank. This party is Yair Golan’s Democrats. I hope I’m proved wrong and we don’t reach this stage, but we must prepare, knowing that we’re bound to use this means in the attempt to block the onslaught of the fascist right and remove it from our lives.

This article is reproduced in its entirety