Israel's Arab Parties Win Votes, Face Coalition Wall

With 85 percent of the vote counted, Arab parties were projected to win a record 19 seats in Israel’s 2026 election, yet the country’s main political leaders were refusing to form a coalition with them. The vote gave Arab parties potential leverage in a parliament without a clear winner. The leaders of both major blocs have signaled that leverage may not translate into a place in government.

The arithmetic of exclusion

Israel’s Central Elections Committee put Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s bloc ahead with at least 53 seats and the opposition bloc led by Gadi Eisenkot on 48. Both fell short of the 61 seats needed to govern. Netanyahu said Israelis had chosen a strong right-wing government; Eisenkot said voters had chosen change. Neither bloc had the numbers to govern alone, while Arab parties’ projected record showing made their support potentially decisive.

Sami Abu Shehadeh, leader of Balad, told Al Jazeera that Palestinian citizens of Israel—about a fifth of the population—were being treated as illegitimate partners despite their turnout. “This is racism,” he said. “We are a legitimate elected leadership of the national minority. The vast majority of our people decided that we are their leadership.” The election produced a stark split between votes cast and coalition access: Arab parties could gain seats, but the leading blocs were not offering them a share in government.

Abu Shehadeh leads Balad, one of the Joint List’s three parties, but wasn’t a candidate. The elections committee voted to disqualify him after accepting petitions arguing that he supported armed struggle and denied Israel’s Jewish and democratic character. He rejected those grounds and withdrew in October after a majority of the Supreme Court panel appeared willing to approve the disqualification. The ballot and the candidate list were both shaped by political and judicial institutions; Abu Shehadeh’s account of that process was pointed: Israel has “two different judicial systems, one for the Jews and one for the Arabs”.

Seats without a seat at the table

Al Jazeera’s Nour Odeh, reporting from Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, said Netanyahu “has scared off everybody from talking to the Palestinian Israeli parties”, leaving him best placed to “call the shots”. Eisenkot and his allies had indicated they wanted a Zionist government and “do not want to form a government” with Arab parties, she said. The exclusion isn’t only a question of who has enough seats. It’s also a question of which elected representatives the blocs will accept as partners.

Danny Ayalon, a former Israeli ambassador to the United States, described Arab turnout as “really unprecedented numbers” and said the parties “are going to have some significant clout”. He said Eisenkot’s bloc could mathematically join forces with the two Arab parties and pass the threshold, though it would take “political wizardry”. Yousef Jabareen, who leads the Joint List, has said the alliance’s “hands are extended” to oust Netanyahu. The offer meets a political boundary: the opposition bloc has indicated it wants a Zionist government and won’t form one with Arab parties.

What the vote can’t settle

Abu Shehadeh said the community’s first promise to voters was to prevent “this gang of criminals” from returning to power, naming Netanyahu and far-right ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir. “So our first promise, we can keep it from now,” he said. He also said Palestinian citizens opposed “genocide” and “apartheid” and wanted “to promote a different political alternative, one which is based on the values of freedom, justice and equality for both people who are living between the river and the sea”.

He called Netanyahu “a war criminal”. The projected seats, the coalition refusals and the disqualification proceedings leave the central contradiction in plain view: Arab voters can turn out in high numbers and choose representatives, while the major blocs still decide whether those representatives count as partners in power.