In the run-up to Israel’s high-stakes election, few parties have featured more often in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s attacks on rivals than Ra’am and the Joint List. Together, the two parties representing the Palestinian citizens of Israel, who make up about 20 percent of the population, are projected to win 13 seats. If this is confirmed at the October 27 polls, the Arab-led lists could be critical to any post-election coalition, regardless of its political stripe.
In 2021, Ra’am made history by becoming the first Arab party to enter an Israeli government after joining a broad coalition that briefly removed Netanyahu from power. Netanyahu had previously shown himself ready to negotiate terms for a potential government with Mansour Abbas, the leader of Ra’am, or the United Arab List. But instead, Abbas joined forces with the coalition of Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid to try to drive through some of the measures he had campaigned for.
This time, both the Netanyahu camp and most leaders of the self-styled Zionist opposition bloc have ruled out forming a government with the parties representing Palestinian citizens. Still, Netanyahu and his allies have sought to portray their political opponents as beholden to the Arab-led lists, while the opposition has been attacking them for their reliance on the minority ultra-Orthodox parties to maintain their own power base. Opinion polls have consistently indicated that Netanyahu’s Likud party and the far-right coalition it leads are running neck-and-neck with the Zionist opposition bloc, with neither side on track to win an outright majority in the 120-strong Knesset.
In the lead-up to the polls, Likud has repeatedly used hard-hitting attack adverts to warn that if Netanyahu is voted out, it will be the Arab parties that would emerge as kingmakers in a new government potentially led by former army chief Gadi Eisenkot, the leader of the Yashar party. The alliance, which also includes the Hadash and Balad factions, has said it could provide a so-called safety net to the anti-Netanyahu coalition by agreeing not to stand against it in a confidence vote, even if the alliance does not join the government. In return, it has said it would demand certain conditions, including a path to Palestinian statehood and fighting organised crime.
Combatting the wave of violent crime that has been allowed to engulf Palestinian communities, as well as addressing discriminatory government policies, including on housing, have also been the focus of Ra’am ahead of the election. Established in 1996, the party has already distanced itself from its religiously conservative foundations. In December 2025, Abbas said the party’s political decision-making body would separate from its religious council.
Eight months later, it selected its electoral list independently for the first time and placed the Jewish Zionist Yoav Segalovitz, a former senior police commander and deputy public security minister in the Bennett-Lapid government, second on its slate. Describing Ra’am as “one of the most interesting parties” of this year’s election, Mekelberg said: “Through Mansour Abbas, they are continually reinventing themselves without appearing opportunist.” The upcoming election is the first since the Hamas-led attack in southern Israel of October 7, 2023 that led to the killing of an estimated 1,200 people, and triggered Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza. The war has also sped up a political shift to the right, with Arab-led parties increasingly targeted by right-wing figures seeking to cast them as complicit in the October 7 assault.
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