Only two parties emerged from last week’s general election in Israel with a genuine sense of unqualified success and both represent the Palestinian citizens of Israel. This immediately got under the skin of the racist right-wing parties that had formed the previous government and now constitute the interim government.

As the exit polls became public, several results surprised observers. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud remained the largest party, rather than Gadi Eisenkot’s Yashar, which came second. The so-called Jewish/Zionist opposition bloc also came second to Netanyahu’s bloc, albeit by a small margin. However, the big story of the day was the performance of the two Palestinian parties, which together secured 19 seats: the Joint List with 11 and the United Arab List (Ra’am) with eight. This is unprecedented in the country’s 78-year history.

The difference was a huge increase in voter turnout. In 2022, only 53.2 percent of eligible Palestinian voters in Israel went to the polls. This time, the figure was about 80 percent, very similar to the turnout among Jewish voters, which was also a record. It was an extraordinary leap of faith in political participation.

Without belittling the parties’ achievement, the appeal of their platforms or the strength of their leadership, this dramatic increase in their representation was also fueled by the politics of Netanyahu, Itamar Ben-Gvir, Bezalel Smotrich and their ilk. Their brand of racist politics played no small part in mobilizing Arab voters.

The response has been to question the legitimacy of the results and the prospect of sharing power with Palestinians

Yossi Mekelberg

If voters for these two parties needed any further evidence or reassurance that they had made the right choice, they received it in abundance from the panic and hysteria that greeted the electoral success of the Joint List and Ra’am by the right. From the prime minister down to the last of his political mouthpieces in the party and the media, the response has been to question the legitimacy of the results and the prospect of sharing power with Palestinian representatives in government.

In the past, nearly half of all potential Palestinian voters have not exercised their right to vote, largely because they felt their votes would make no difference. Their parties had been excluded from governmental power and voting was therefore seen as legitimizing a system that discriminated against them without offering any apparent benefits. So why bother?

But over the past four years, the most far-right government in Israel’s history, the ongoing war in Gaza and the deteriorating security situation in the West Bank have done much to change this attitude.

Beyond the specific developments during the damaging tenure of the current government, which pushed many Arab voters to seek greater political influence, there is the wider atmosphere that Jewish Israeli society has created around them and that continues to hang over their lives. This is not simply about tangible issues but also about perceptions and identity.

The Palestinian citizens of Israel have decided, in large numbers, that it is time to maximize their political representation

Yossi Mekelberg

Consider that many Israeli Jews become infuriated when Palestinian citizens describe themselves as “Palestinian citizens of Israel” instead of the “Israeli Arabs” that they prefer. In doing so, they seek to deny them their Palestinian identity, as though this would somehow erase their connections to their brethren in the Occupied Territories and elsewhere in the region, including those displaced from their homes in 1948.

Their Palestinian identity does not make them any less loyal as citizens. But their kinship with Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza means that many have relatives who have been killed or maimed since the war began three years ago. They are expected to reconcile their identity and family ties with the devastating reality of a war in which they have little power to intervene, while feeling increasingly abandoned and hopeless.

A major issue, if not the cardinal one, for Palestinian communities in Israel is the surge in violent and organized crime and the horrific number of homicides, at a rate far higher than among the Jewish population. There are many reasons for this, including chronic underinvestment in infrastructure and the marginalization of these communities. The situation has deteriorated exponentially since Ben-Gvir took charge of the ministry responsible for policing and public security. Law enforcement agencies have failed miserably to contain gun crime and, once again, the number of Palestinian victims of violent crime in Israel is set to reach a record high this year.

This — alongside the abhorrent racism of the Israeli right, persistent discrimination and exclusion from government — helps explain the record turnout. It was not foreign money, as Netanyahu and his cronies are attempting to suggest, smearing an entire community and questioning its integrity. Rather, the Palestinian citizens of Israel have decided, in large numbers, that it is time to maximize their political representation. And this scares the right.

Instead of seeing this as an opportunity to build bridges with representatives of more than one-fifth of the population and forge a genuine partnership, thereby recognizing this segment of Israeli society as an integral part of governing the country for everyone’s benefit, Netanyahu and his allies are inciting against them.

It is up to the change bloc to respond diametrically differently. As Yair Golan, head of the Democrats, argued in an op-ed over the weekend, the time has come to embrace this unique opportunity and include those Arab parties with which they can reach agreement on coalition guidelines. A rejection of the racist prejudices of members of the current coalition, and indeed some in the opposition, is long overdue.

Some have been all too explicit in suggesting that voting for the Joint List and Ra’am confirms that Palestinian citizens are a fifth column, accusing them either of being stooges of the Muslim Brotherhood or supporters of a one-state solution and, by that, attempting to bring an end to the Israeli state. Now, Eisenkot and others in the change bloc need to recalibrate their positions and eat some humble pie.

The leader of the Joint List, Yousef Jabareen, and Ra’am’s Mansour Abbas have made this easier by stating clearly that they would support the forces seeking to prevent Netanyahu from remaining in power, whether or not they themselves become part of the government.

The accusation that the Palestinian parties’ electoral success is the result of a foreign influence campaign, with fingers pointed at Qatar, is unlikely to diminish the magnitude of their achievement. But that campaign is causing further damage by its attempts to delegitimize Palestinian voters and their political representatives. It could leave a lasting scar if the right succeeds in making this narrative stick — if not legally, then at least in the minds of its supporters.

Netanyahu is a master, albeit a fading one, of capturing and controlling the political narrative. The opposition may not find a single leader among what now constitutes the Knesset majority who can match him. Collectively, however, they can and must find their voices and articulate a totally different narrative.

It must be a narrative that recognizes that the high turnout among Palestinian citizens of Israel reflects both their deep frustration and, equally, a willingness to become a constructive part of the Israeli political process. It will not be easy but finding common ground could bring immense benefits to all Israelis — and perhaps even clear the way to a future of peace.

X: @YMekelberg