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Israel elections: More Arab votes, same Zionist consensus

By Mouin Rabbani | The New Arab | November 2, 2026

Israel’s 27 October election, we were repeatedly informed, would be the “most consequential” in the state’s history. Why, however, this was the case was left unstated.

Indeed, Israel’s most consequential policies, most prominently its illegal occupation of Arab territories, its apartheid regime, and a genocide against the Palestinian people now in its fourth year, were not up for debate between the main candidates. A continued rejection of Palestinian rights, and an increasingly aggressive and expansionist regional posture, in fact represented one of the few areas of agreement between the rival coalitions.

The issues that most bitterly divided them, namely the future of the Israeli judiciary, the military conscription of ultra-Orthodox religious youth, and the formation of a state commission of inquiry into the 7 October 2023 attacks, may be of significance to the Israeli Jewish public. But taken together, these hardly qualify for the dramatic characterisation of the elections adopted by so many foreign journalists.

A better explanation for the superlatives is that it was widely anticipated that the Israeli voter would put a definitive end to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s career, and additionally rebuke National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, his compulsively extremist partners in crime. In performing its assigned role, the electorate would restore the Beautiful Israel of the liberal imagination, “the only democracy in the Middle East” with “the most moral army in the world”.

Has anything really change?

Shorn of Israel’s toxic leaders, the Gaza Genocide could be consigned to the memory hole, and things return to normal, where Israeli crimes could be glazed over with statements of “concern” and platitudes about the Zionist state’s “right to defend itself”, “right to exist”, and right to do as it pleases.

If the initial exit polls appeared to validate such aspirations, the actual results revealed the above scenario to be yet another exercise in wishful thinking by those who refuse to recognise Israeli realities. Netanyahu’s Likud, although diminished, comfortably emerged as the largest party, and those even further to the right successfully retained their previous levels of popular support and parliamentary representation.

Put differently, the Israeli Jewish public liked what it saw during Netanyahu’s most recent premiership and, as a gesture of appreciation, gave his party and the coalition it leads more votes than its Zionist rival. Netanyahu became Israel’s longest-serving leader in 2019. Noxious as he is to the rest of the planet, Netanyahu is today the embodiment and personification of the state he leads.

The above notwithstanding, the Likud-led coalition failed to achieve victory because it did not secure a parliamentary majority. Although parties that ran on a platform of removing Netanyahu from office will collectively have the numbers to achieve this objective, the rival coalition led by Gadi Eisenkot received fewer votes and fewer seats than Netanyahu’s.

The incumbent did not win, but the challenger clearly lost.

The explanation for this anomaly is to be found in Israel’s Jewish supremacist regime. From the outset, Eisenkot made clear that he rejected the inclusion of any Palestinian-led party in his coalition so as not to tarnish its Zionist credentials.

Under normal circumstances, the structural exclusion of Israel’s Palestinian citizens from meaningful political participation is a prerequisite for electoral success. But these are not normal times.

The Arab vote

The ceaseless demagoguery, incitement, and vicious repression towards this community by Israel’s outgoing government, particularly when viewed through the prism of the Gaza genocide and rampant pogroms throughout the West Bank, raised genuine fears that Israel has more in store for its Palestinian citizens than the apartheid regime that has ruled over them since the late 1940s.

Responding to this existential challenge, Palestinian citizens voted in unprecedented numbers, and the parties that represent their interests secured enough seats to deprive either coalition of a working majority.

In any other country, refusing to govern with minority parties as a matter of racial and political principle would be called by its proper name. But for Israel there is always an exception to established norms, and in this case it extends to the use of common vocabulary. Thus the former US peace processor Aaron David Miller, ever Israel’s dutiful lawyer, helpfully explained to his readers that Israel is a “preferential democracy”. Think of it as the political equivalent of three Michelin stars, and never say apartheid.

Where things go from here is hard to predict and will be shaped by a mix of opportunism, backroom dealing, back-stabbing, and U-turns.

Eisenkot, for example, is not averse to partnership with Netanyahu, and was in fact a key member of Israel’s genocide cabinet during 2023-2024. If Netanyahu can prevail upon him to join forces once again, for example in response to the widely anticipated resumption of Israel’s war against Iran, this would have the added benefit of taking much of the wind out of the opposition’s sails.

This is also said to be Washington’s preferred scenario, which views such a coalition as a formula for stable government. If so, the Trump administration doesn’t seem to understand, or perhaps understands only too well, that Netanyahu will use it as a transitional steppingstone to new elections from which he anticipates emerging with an expanded mandate.

Alternatively, either Netanyahu or Eisenkot could engineer defections from the opposing coalition. While this is entirely plausible, the numbers required for success are difficult to reach. More to the point, in a reality where everyone detests everyone else, gaining a new partner may well mean losing an existing one. That would mean back to square one.

The simplest solution, of course, would be for Eisenkot to incorporate the Palestinian-led parties into his coalition, which would give him an unassailable parliamentary majority. Their requirements for joining are rather modest, and although he has replaced his slogan of “a Zionist government” with an openness to any party that accepts four specific conditions, these are, arguably by design, a non-starter for at least one of these parties in a reality where he would need the support of both.

In other words, it remains very far from clear that Eisenkot would rather win with Palestinian backing than lose without it.

The Palestinian question

The irony is that it was none other than Netanyahu who, at the beginning of this decade, was the first Israeli leader to offer an Arab party participation in government. Doubly ironic when one considers that the party in question, the United Arab List led by Mansour Abbas, has its roots in the Muslim Brotherhood.

The gambit to partner with an offspring of what we are repeatedly told is the devil incarnate failed, but as a result, Abbas became a minister without portfolio in the right-wing government formed by Naftali Bennett.

Short of forming a government, Eisenkot may seek to forge informal parliamentary majorities, including the Palestinian-led parties, to pass legislation and appoint parliamentary officials to bolster his coalition’s prospects in new and early elections. Even this may, however, prove too much for certain parties in this “preferential democracy”.

More importantly, the conventional wisdom is that the main beneficiary of another election will be Netanyahu. Not least because the combination of ceaseless demagoguery, incitement, and repression against Israel’s Palestinians citizens, including disqualifications by its discredited judiciary and growing demands that “Arabs” be stripped of their voting rights, will have an impact.

Together with the deliberate marginalisation from the political process by both coalitions, a significant reduction in Palestinian voting numbers is widely expected.

Perhaps the most important takeaway from Israel’s recent elections is that the uniparty has once again triumphed. Its key leaders may be bitter rivals on matters affecting Israeli Jewish life, but when it comes to relations with the Palestinians, whether the millions disenfranchised and actively persecuted in the occupied territories, or the millions who are citizens of Israel but not considered legitimate members of its body politic, one struggles to identify a meaningful distinction.

Ultimately, Israeli politics do not operate in a vacuum. Decades of impunity have conditioned the Israeli electorate to believe that extremism pays handsome dividends and comes without consequence.

It is high time to discard illusions about the Zionist state, deal with it as it actually exists, and end the state of exception it has enjoyed once and for all.

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Mouin Rabbani is Managing Editor of Jadaliyya and author of Gaza Apocalypse (OR Books 2026).

Follow Mouin on X: @MouinRabbani

November 2, 2026 - Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | Israel, Palestine, Zionism