Votes without power: What future for Palestinian citizens in Israel?
Monjed Jadou writes in The New Arab on 13 October 2026:
Israel’s general election on 27 October, which will fill all 120 seats in the Knesset, is widely seen as a referendum on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
But it is also a contest over the political standing of Palestinian citizens of Israel, who make up about a fifth of the population, the descendants of those who stayed on their land during the 1948 Nakba. Their votes may decide which coalition bloc eventually governs, yet nearly every major Israeli party is working to keep them out of any future government.
“In the dominant political discourse, Israelis often address Arab citizens as subjects, not as equal citizens,” Raafat al-Jawabra, a researcher on Israeli affairs, tells The New Arab. Most Israeli parties, he argues, do not see Palestinian citizens as a natural political partner, instead using them in their campaigns as a subject for fear and mobilisation.
Ahmad al-Safadi, a Jerusalem-based analyst of Israeli politics, says the problem goes beyond the Israeli right and far-right parties and their electoral campaigns. Israeli parties, including those on the left, treat the Palestinian vote as a way to strengthen their own electoral base rather than as the voice of a community whose crises of crime, poverty, unemployment, and discrimination need clear policy answers.
The numbers explain why their vote matters. A recent poll by local Channel 12 puts the bloc led by former army chief Gadi Eisenkot and Netanyahu’s coalition level at 52 seats each, with Palestinian parties on 12.
Salim Brik, a political scientist who researches Israeli parliamentary and party politics, argues that if Palestinian turnout rises above 65 percent, it could reshape the distribution of seats, possibly to the point where a list allied with Netanyahu fails to cross the electoral threshold.
That arithmetic has shaped the campaign. Netanyahu’s Likud and Bezalel Smotrich’s Religious Zionism have largely dropped conventional persuasion on the economy, the cost of living, and post-war reconstruction.