Ünal Atabay

Arab parties record number of seats in Israel's election is often read as a simple reaction to Netanyahu, Ben-Gvir and the war in Gaza. This success was expected but the real result of success is much complex. Low turnout of the Arab communty since the fall of Camp David was mostly about the feeling of disappointment and the votes of the Arabs wouldn’t change much in the political system and according to pre-election surveys about only half of Arabs expected the elections to be free and fair. Arab community focused more on individual success and education in overall Israel, resulting with an amazingly high number of Arab doctors, lawyers and academics but lack of being kingmakers in domestic politics. So, what have changed that caused an increased turnout and overall votes of Arab Parties? Joint List had 12 seats and Ra'am had 7. That is 19 seats in total, up from 10 in the previous Knesset. At least 730,000 people voted for the two lists, close to 16% of the Knesset. Turnout was the key to this as it has risen from %55 to %77. Much of this surge came from an accumulation of very specific, everyday problems. They rarely receive attention outside Arab communities. Houses, some built without permits, are demolished. Arab shopkeepers pay "protection" money to criminal Arab groups. Families fear stray bullets. Municipalities lose development funding. Many towns have no public bomb shelters. Violence within Arab society keeps rising. West Bank is turning into a powder keg with huge amount of smuggled guns that nobody knows why (For details: teapawt.org/dunya_basol/status/202…) Add to this Ben-Gvir's policies. They brought more aggressive police operations into Arab communities. Yet many residents still feel that organised crime is tolerated. They see this as a longstanding, undeclared policy of non-intervention in Arab internal affairs. The state has also intervened more in local hamula(clan and extended-family) networks. These networks have traditionally shaped community affairs and politics. (For a detailed post on Hamula, which is extrmely important to understand the Arab society-Israeli state relations, check: teapawt.org/dunya_basol/status/208…) These issues may seem unrelated but all together they help explain why people with little interest in national elections suddenly felt they had something to lose or gain by voting. There are mainly three layers, where no single layer explains the result but all together it makes sense: Grievancesgave people something to lose: housing, crime, policing, missing shelters and diverted funding. Exclusion triggers in the final weeks turned grievance into urgency: the disqualification attempt, election-day rhetoric, the attack on Druze youths and pressure on students. Mobilising capacity turned urgency into votes: a reunited Joint List, local candidates and a transformed Ra'am. Together, they do. 1. Housing demolitions and the fear of losing one's home The housing issue in this election is not about punitive demolitions of Hezbullah, Hamas or lone wolf attackers family homes. That is a separate policy, applied mainly in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The demolitions that mattered to Arab voters relate to planning and construction law. Bedouin communities in the Negev have built homes and other structures without permits for many years. Enforcement is not new and previous governments also carried out demolitions. However the scale and intensity have grown considerably under the current government based on Ben-Gvir’s demands and pressure, not Netanyahu. There is an institutional reason for this. In mid-2024 the government moved the national unit that enforces planning and construction laws from the Finance Ministry to the National Security Ministry. That put it under Ben-Gvir, who later boasted of a 400% rise in demolition orders. Housing enforcement thus became a Ben-Gvir issue in a very literal sense. The ministry's own figures show the result. In the Negev, demolitions and enforcement actions rose by 81% over three years compared with the previous three. In 2025 alone, government figures recorded 5,742 demolitions and related enforcement actions. These figures include various structures and measures, not only inhabited houses. Roughly 300,000 Bedouins live in the Negev. Around 30% of them live in villages the state does not recognise and can anytime face with the wholesome demolition of the village. Just 15 days before elections the vote, in Rahat and al-Dahiya villages a mosque and 80 inhabited homes destroyed, where about 400 people lived there, including 250 school-age children. Rahat’s turnout rose to %85, a record high in the recent elections and this fear caused all neighbouring villages to go to the ballot boxes. Housing is already a serious problem in Israel, particularly in densely populated Arab communities. When a young man wants to marry he often tries to build a house next to his parents' home, if there is enough family land. Sometimes construction happens without a permit. Obtaining one is often difficult, expensive or impossible under existing planning arrangements. Even if all goes well Israeli bureaucracy is at turtle speed and while permits are being taken, someone making an official complaint can get the house demolished. This was not the case before Ben-Gvir, state was much more tolerant. Outside the Negev, the 2017 Kaminitz Law changed the picture as well. It moved enforcement towards administrative orders and heavy fines. This affects Arab towns in the Galilee and the Triangle and Druze villages too. For Bedouins, the situation is slightly different. A house or residential compound near family grazing areas and livestock is often tied to a traditional way of life. Such structures may lie far from established towns. The fear is that if Ben-Gvir stays in government, enforcement will continue or intensify. The consequences are not limited to one person. A threatened house can affect an entire extended family, including children who have invested their savings in building near their parents. This is why the fear of losing a house can mobilise a whole community, regardless of broader debates about identity, nationalism or equality. 2. Umm al-Hiran and the fear of future displacement The demolition of Umm al-Hiran in November 2024 had an impact far beyond the village itself. Umm al-Hiran was an unrecognised Bedouin village caught in a long legal dispute over land and construction. After court proceedings, the village was demolished to make way for a planned Jewish community called Dror. Residents were expected to move to the nearby Bedouin town of Hura. One detail shows how powerless people felt. On 13 November 2024, residents began demolishing their own homes, a day before the state's demolitions were scheduled. Families facing final orders often choose this path to avoid paying the costs of a state demolition. Destroying one's own home with one's own hands is a powerful image of defeat. This can be something used against attackers homes to their relatives in Israel for Hezbollah or Hamas members but applying the same thing over ordinary people causes a mass anger. For residents of other unrecognised villages, the lesson was clear. Even a community with a long history, established family networks and years of litigation could ultimately be removed. This creates an important psychological spillover effect. A family does not need a demolition order of its own to start worrying about its long-term security. That is the biggest problem in Israel; there is no single applied law to all citizens, all the time. Haredim are different, West Bank settlements are different, West Bank’s illegal settlements are different, Arab towns are different, illegal Arab buildings get different treatment in Negev, West Bank or Wadi Ara, different practices in Druze area as well….This is creating an extremely complex and non-governable situation for a tiny country that makes everyone angry at the end. 3. The Tarabin al-Sana operation and Bedouin relations with the state Tarabin al-Sana in the Negev may be the clearest example of how policing reshaped political attitudes. In late December 2025, after residents were accused of setting fire to cars in nearby Jewish communities, police encircled the village. The Border Police’s National Guard, a force founded under Ben-Gvir, sealed the entrances and checked the identity of everyone entering or leaving. During the operation, police shot dead a local father at the door of his home. Police said he endangered the officers, his family denied it, and Ben-Gvir praised the forces involved. The siege ended after twelve days, when police withdrew before a court could rule on the checkpoints. The most revealing detail is political: the village had backed Likud in the previous election and expected its life to improve, which makes it a defection story in miniature. Bedouins have long had a complicated but often cooperative relationship with the security establishment. Many communities also enjoyed practical autonomy, because the state was largely absent and protection rackets filled the gap. That leaves them under-policed in daily life and over-policed in sudden operations. Some residents welcomed the crackdown as overdue action against criminals, while others saw it as collective punishment. Either way, it made questions of policing, autonomy and relations with the state very immediate. 4. Organised crime and the dilemma of policing Arab communities Organised crime has soared in Arab communities under a government that puts security at the centre of its agenda. The crime rate is simply too skyrocketing among Arab communities. An Israel Democracy Institute survey from 31 August to 3 September 2026 found that 53.5% of Arab respondents named crime in Arab society as one of their two most important voting considerations. The same survey found that only 32% of Arab respondents saw 7 October as central to their vote, compared with 68% of Jewish respondents. This strongly supports the idea that domestic insecurity, not Gaza alone, drove Arab voters. This issue is a double-edged sword. If the government intervenes more aggressively, it means more police, raids, arrests and checkpoints. It may also mean deeper involvement by security and intelligence agencies. Some residents fear their towns will become heavily policed communities. If the government does not intervene, criminal organisations keep expanding. This reinforces the perception that the state has adopted an undeclared policy of non-intervention in Arab internal affairs. There is also the sensitive issue of the hamula. Clan networks remain influential in many Arab communities. Aggressive policing can interfere with family relations, informal mediation and traditional authority. An August 2026 survey for AJEEC-NISPED of 257 Arab citizens aged 18–26 found that 60% would consider voting for a non-Arab partywith convincing solutions. Only 48% said they were loyal exclusively to Arab parties. Their priorities were: Crime and violence: 55% Employment and income: 22% Education: 20% Housing: 19% These findings suggest that many younger Arab voters are not driven mainly by ethnic or national identity. They want practical solutions, whoever offers them. Though, the actual vote complicates this picture. 5. Missing shelters: protected neither from gangs nor from missiles Another grievance receives little attention abroad: the lack of bomb shelters. In June 2025, an Iranian missile hit a home in Tamra and killed four women. Tamra's mayor said only 40% of its 37,000 residents had a safe room or a working shelter, and the town had no public shelters at all. A later report found an almost total lack of public shelters in most Arab localities, including large cities like Umm al-Fahm and Rahat. About 100,000 Bedouins in some 35 unrecognised villages live in structures with no protected space at all. For many Arab citizens, the message is simple. The state protects them neither from gangs nor from missiles. 6. The controversial transfer of nearly half a billion shekels In July 2026, Netanyahu’s government moved nearly half a billion shekels out of Resolution 550, the development plan for Arab society adopted under the Bennett–Lapid government, into a new campaign against organised crime. Most of the money went to the Shin Bet, with the rest going to a new police unit, and the plan also created permanent Shin Bet positions and annual funding. This was not a one-off transfer but a lasting security structure. The contradiction is obvious. Arab towns have demanded tougher action on crime for years, yet many residents fear that money meant for development, education and local government will instead strengthen the state’s ability to monitor and control them. The move was contested even inside government: the Labor Ministry objected because some funds had been earmarked for Arab employment, and rights lawyers argued the Shin Bet has no authority in criminal enforcement. Arab opinion was split too, as some local leaders called for Shin Bet involvement. Frustration with Resolution 550 predated the cut, since only a small fraction of its municipal development money had ever reached Arab towns. The real question, then, is not whether the state should fight crime, but whether Arab communities should pay for that fight with their own development funds. 7. The attempt to disqualify Arab parties may have backfired In late September 2026, the Central Elections Committee disqualified both Ra’am and the Joint List, along with two individual candidates: Hadash’s Ofer Cassif and Balad chairman Sami Abu Shehadeh. In early October, the Supreme Court unanimously reinstated both lists and, by a majority, Cassif. Abu Shehadeh withdrew after the court signalled it would uphold his disqualification over an article he wrote the day after 7 October. For several weeks, Arab voters faced the possibility that their main parties would not run at all. The outcome also produced two kinds of anger. The first was at a perceived double standard, since the court had let Ben-Gvir run despite his past convictions. The second was at Zionist opposition parties, including Golan’s Democrats, that supported Abu Shehadeh’s disqualification. That second grievance pushed voters towards Arab lists rather than the Jewish left. The effort may therefore have backfired, turning a vote into an act of resisting exclusion. Its exact effect cannot be measured, but its timing, only weeks before the election, makes it hard to ignore. 8. Election-day warnings about Arab turnout On election day, cars flying Likud flags drove through Jerusalem playing the Islamic call to prayer and urging people to vote because Arabs were voting. Netanyahu joined in. He warned of high Arab turnout, posted an AI-generated image of veiled Arab women queuing to vote, and claimed Arab voters were trying to steal the election. The groundwork had been laid earlier, with coalition parties sending activists to observe Arab polling stations and alleging fraud without evidence. After the vote, Likud claimed the Arab parties had “stolen” the election. The aim was to mobilise right-wing Jewish voters by presenting Arab participation as a danger. Yet Arab citizens who see their vote portrayed as a threat may become more determined to cast it. Arab turnout did surge after Netanyahu’s midday messages. However, Arab localities have traditionally voted late in the day, so only a comparison with 2022’s hourly turnout can tell a backlash from an old habit. 9. The attack on Druze youths for speaking Arabic One disturbing incident occurred just days before the election (For details: teapawt.org/dunya_basol/status/211…) Speaking Arabic in public has long been a normal part of everyday life in Israel. An argument that allegedly escalated into a stabbing because of the language spoken can therefore create a much wider sense of insecurity. It raised an uncomfortable question. If even Druze soldiers can be attacked after being mistaken for other Arabs, how safe is an ordinary Arabic-speaking citizen? Its electoral effect should not be overstated, though. Druze voters traditionally support mainly Zionist parties. The incident's main significance was probably symbolic, not electoral. In my view, it may have resonated more widely among Arab speakers beyond the Druze community. 10. Arab voters did not want another 2022-style loss of representation There was a straightforward electoral calculation. In 2022, Balad received 138,617 votes, or 2.91% of valid ballots. It missed the 3.25% threshold. Those votes were valid but produced no seats, roughly three to four seats' worth of wasted support. Meanwhile, Hadash–Ta'al and Ra'am each won five seats. Hadash, Ta'al and Balad agreed to run together again under the Joint List. Ra'am chose to run separately. This changed the calculation for Balad supporters who feared wasting their vote again. A combined list reduced that risk. Voters could support their preferred political current without sacrificing representation. 11. Local candidates turned a national election into something like a municipal one Arab parties made particularly effective use of candidates with strong local roots. In many Arab communities, municipal elections are shaped by extended families, clan networks, personal relationships and local loyalties. Turnout is usually much higher than in national elections, because people know the candidates and their families. National elections are usually less personal. This time, local candidates brought that dimension into national politics. Joint List leader Yousef Jabareen comes from Umm al-Fahm. Ahmad Darawshe of Ta'al comes from Iksal. He is a lawyer, a former Iksal council member and the director-general of the Reineh local council. He moved up to eighth place after Abu Shehadeh's withdrawal, a realistic slot that gave his village a concrete stake in the result. Other post-election analyses have noted the same effect in Iksal and Umm al-Fahm. The turnout figures are striking. According to a Globes analysis, Umm al-Fahm rose from 38.29% in 2022 to 79.92%. Nazareth rose from 48.29% to 73.42%, and Rahat from 60.61% to 84.79%. Sakhnin reached 86.20%. Election-night reports also gave Kafr Qasim 84.9%, Kuseife 81.2% and Hura 79.1%. Umm al-Fahm, the city with the lowest turnout of the three in 2022, saw the largest rise. It is also the home town of the Joint List's leader and the most notorious city among Israeli Jews, where many of them stay away from the village. (For details on Umm al Fahm: teapawt.org/dunya_basol/status/208…) A late surge of this size fits the mobilisation style of family and community networks, simply relatives checking who has not voted yet and driving them to the polls. The obstacles make the result more impressive. In the Bedouin town of Segev Shalom, voters waited more than four hours. Some gave up and went home. The town's polling stations also served residents of unrecognised villages, some of whom travelled dozens of kilometres. Power was cut in Kuseife and Ar'arat an-Naqab.The structural cause is old. Since the mid-1980s, no polling stations have been placed in unrecognised villages. Of course, the rise cannot be attributed entirely to local candidates. Opposition to the government and the wider political atmosphere also mattered. Nevertheless, the stronger use of local networks was a major organisational advantage. It may become a lasting feature of future national elections, if parties keep recruiting candidates who can mobilise support through family and community ties. 12. Ra'am's transformation: from Islamic Movement to civic party Ra'am's 2026 campaign is usually reduced to one big surprise. A Jewish former police commander, Yoav Segalovitz was appointed as its number two, but Segalovitz was the second step of a deeper transformation, not the first. Ra'am had long been the political wing of the Southern Branch of the Islamic Movement. The movement's Shura Council influenced the party's votes in the Knesset. In December 2025, Mansour Abbas announced that Ra'am would separate from it and become a "civic party". The separation was finalised in July 2026. On 5 January 2026, the party opened membership to all Israelis and declared that it wanted to recruit Jewish politicians. For the first time, party members, not religious institutions, chose the candidates. Segalovitz is a former head of the Israel Police Investigations and Intelligence Division. He served as deputy public security minister in the Bennett–Lapid government and later sat in the Knesset for Yesh Atid. He made his move conditional on Ra'am recognising Israel as a Jewish state. According to i24NEWS, polls showed he was the only Jewish politician Arab citizens trusted. On 31 August 2026, in Nazareth, Abbas presented him as number two on the list, the first Jewish candidate in Ra'am's history. Segalovitz joined the slate and the parliamentary faction but not the party itself. He kept the freedom to vote independently on religion and state, national security and LGBTQ rights. Abbas said Ra'am would seek responsibility for fighting crime if it returned to government, with Segalovitz at the centre of that effort. The recruitment presented Ra'am as more than an Arab or Islamic party concerned mainly with identity. It offered a practical image: crime prevention, public security and participation in government. It may have appealed to Arab voters who do not put identity at the centre of their choice, including some who had previously voted for non-Arab parties. The Moshe Dayan Center's May 2026 survey offers an important clue. 77.2% of Arab respondents supported an Arab party joining a governing coalition. Of these, 43.3% supported joining any government, while 33.9% preferred a centre-left government. Much of the Arab electorate wants influence over decisions, not permanent opposition Comparing Circassians voting patterns with the latest election also will give interesting outcomes of Ra’am’s success. For the first time in my life I heard very openly from some of my Circassian friends about Abbas and Ra’am nice things. (For voting patterns of Isreali Circassians, check: teapawt.org/dunya_basol/status/210…) 13. What now? The results expose a coalition paradox. Netanyahu's bloc has about 53 seats, and the Change block 48. Add 19 Arab seats and the anti-Netanyahu camp reaches 67, above the 61 needed to govern. Yet this is a majority on paper, not a coalition. Eisenkot promised a "Zionist government"; Liberman rejects cooperation with Ra'am or the Joint List. Yair Golan's Democrats favour it. The opposition has the numbers to replace Netanyahu, but not necessarily the willingness. Opposing Netanyahu is not the same as agreeing on a prime minister, a coalition programme or the role of Arab representatives. The Arab parties also differ. Abbas is ready for Ra'am to join a coalition; the Joint List is willing to support one from outside, without ministries. Tibi's demands focus on fighting crime and halting Bedouin home demolitions. After a record result, their immediate priorities are the everyday grievances that brought voters to the polls, not only Gaza or Palestinian nationalism. There are precedents. Rabin's minority government survived with external Arab-party support after Shas left in 1993, and Ra'am joined the Bennett–Lapid coalition in 2021–22. The obstacle is political, not constitutional. External support, formal coalition membership and backing on individual votes are different arrangements. They offer Arab parties different degrees of influence and impose different political costs on their partners. That is also why Abbas recruited Yoav Segalovitz, a Jewish former police commander, as Ra'am's number two, to broaden its appeal and make coalition cooperation easier. But will Jewish-led parties treat Ra'am as a legitimate partner? Even those prepared to accept its votes may hesitate to offer cabinet positions or a formal agreement. Eisenkot could rely on Arab parties from inside or outside government, seek another arrangement among Jewish-led parties, or fail to form a coalition and trigger another election. The deeper issue is what this means for Arab participation. Low turnout has often reflected a belief that voting changes little. This election challenged that view. Arab voters showed up in record numbers and won unprecedented parliamentary weight. If even 19 seats cannot influence policy, frustration may return. If their representatives secure improvements in safety, housing, municipal funding and infrastructure even from outside government that could prove participation matters. The test is no longer just how many seats Arab parties hold, but whether those seats can improve daily life. Arab voters have done their part. Now the question is whether the political system will allow their votes to count beyond election day.