Israel’s Joint List says Arab turnout denied Netanyahu a majority

By Tarek Chouiref

ISTANBUL (AA) - Israel’s predominantly Arab Joint List political alliance said late Wednesday that mass participation by Arab voters had kept Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s bloc short of a parliamentary majority, pledging to use its projected gains to help remove his government.

In a statement following Tuesday’s election, the alliance said preliminary figures showed that the Arab turnout had played a decisive role in preventing Netanyahu and his “fascist camp” from reaching the 61 seats needed for a governing majority.

Voters answered incitement and intimidation at the ballot box, it said, rejecting a “government of butchers” and its policies of home demolitions, racism and war crimes.

The Joint List said its electoral support reflected demands for political unity and a force capable of defending Arab citizens’ rights without concessions.

It pledged to work to remove Netanyahu’s government and prevent its return, saying it was ready to cooperate toward an alternative government.

Such cooperation, it said, required opposition figures willing to offer a genuine alternative to the government’s policies, reject the exclusion of Arab citizens and their representatives, and commit to their rights and demands.

The alliance cautioned that final election results had yet to be announced.

After all regular ballots were counted, Netanyahu’s bloc was projected to secure 53 seats compared with 48 for the opposition bloc led by former Army Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot and 19 for Arab parties, Channel 12 reported.

Neither main bloc was projected to reach the 61 seats needed for a majority in the 120-member Knesset.

The Joint List was projected to win 12 seats and the United Arab List (Ra’am) seven, bringing their combined representation to 19, up from 10 in the 2022 election.

More than 500,000 special double-envelope ballots remained to be counted, potentially changing the distribution of seats. These include votes cast by soldiers, diplomats and others voting away from their registered polling stations.

More than 7.3 million Israelis were eligible to vote in Tuesday’s election, the first since Israel launched its genocidal war on the Gaza Strip in October 2023.