Why I, a Palestinian citizen of Israel, broke my boycott and voted in the election

Nagham Zbeedat writes in Haaretz on 28 October 2026:

I am a Palestinian citizen of Israel, and until Tuesday, I had never voted in an election. When I put my ballot in the envelope, I felt nothing. At home, I went to sleep with shame.

I had decided to boycott this year’s election long ago, because I am yet to see Palestinian presence in the Knesset be a meaningful power, because our issues are always pushed aside, and because Arab politicians are allowed a place only within certain limits. I did not want my vote used to make a system that oppresses my people look democratic.

In my mind, I had already rehearsed how I would explain my decision not to vote. Then I began to waver. Around me, people who had boycotted for years were deciding to vote. I kept asking myself whether staying home would protect my principles or make them easier for others to blame us. I didn’t know. I decided to wait until the end of the day.

I spent most of Election Day driving through Arab towns in the north, asking people what they felt, what had brought them to vote and what they hoped might change. I left Sakhnin – my hometown and location of my polling station – until last. I was reporting on other people’s choices while postponing my own.

At my old junior high school, I walked slowly through the corridors. My neighbors were arriving with their children. Some persisted on crutches; others leaned on walking sticks. They hurried to vote. I was shaking: Am I really doing this?

I held the envelope. Everything around me disappeared. And when I placed it in the ballot box, no relief came, no sense that I had made the right choice. I had only the hope I had carried into the school: that one family in Gaza or the West Bank might feel less alone.

In the end, I voted not because I suddenly came to believe in Israeli democracy, but because I was tired of hearing that Palestinians are responsible for their own exclusion: “You left your homes,” “You don’t participate enough,” “You don’t cooperate enough.”

I wanted to take that accusation away from the people who use it to explain why Palestinian lives remain as they are.

I know why Palestinians here voted. Fear was part of it: fear of losing what remains, fear of what comes next, fear that staying away would leave us more exposed. I felt that fear too. But voting did not require me to trust the system. I cast my ballot knowing that the same system is built on Jewish supremacy, racism and apartheid; that it has been killing my people in Gaza, ethnically cleansing my people in the West Bank and leaving my people exposed to gun violence in Israel.

Then the exit polls came out: Early projections gave the Arab parties a strong showing, while neither major camp had an obvious path to forming a government. Yashar party leader Gadi Eisenkot, who leads the opposition bloc, very quickly announced his intention to “do everything in my power to build a Zionist, pro-IDF enlistment government.”

This was the next humiliation: I had voted because momentum had gathered among Israel’s Arab community to participate, because our absence was being used against us. But my vote did not make me an equal partner to Jewish Israelis. It did not make Palestinian citizens part of the public whose will politicians claimed to represent. I had done what my peers expected of me, and still our participation could be counted without our presence being accepted.

I do not believe a single ballot can end the violence or undo the damage. I did not walk into that polling station thinking I could change the reality of Gaza or the West Bank by myself. But I wanted to leave open the smallest possibility that someone might be spared more pain. I also wanted to show that Palestinians can participate when we choose to, and that our exclusion cannot be blamed on our refusal to enter the political arena.

I felt I was forced to compromise a principle I still believe in because I hoped it might help one family: that voting legitimizes the system that oppresses my people as democratic. I can live with that shame, but I will not pretend the vote repairs anything, or that Palestinians are responsible for what this system chooses to do.

To all the Jewish Israelis who voted for parties in the anti-Netanyahu bloc, seeking to “save Israel’s democracy” and create a different future here:

We Palestinian citizens of Israel did our part, coming out to vote in massive numbers. Now it’s your turn – to include Palestinian safety and dignity in that future. My freedom, and my people’s freedom, will not be decided by one election day. You will have to defend what the ballot cannot.

I went to vote partly to prove people wrong. I want you to prove me wrong too.

This article is reproduced in its entirety