50K Israelis join campaign calling for a government with Arab Parties
Around 50,000 Israelis have joined a campaign calling for a new coalition government in Israel with the support from the Arab Parties.
[Israelis calling for Jewish-Arab government participated in demonstrations across Israel (Image: Haaretz)]
Tel Aviv: Around 50,000 Israelis have joined a campaign calling for a new coalition government in Israel with the support from the Arab Parties.
The Israeli Parliament, Kensett, has a total of 120 seats. With all votes counted, Netanyahu-led ruling coalition has secured 53 seats - 8 short of the half way mark needed to form a new government.
Gadi Eisenkot led opposition bloc has won 48 seats.
On the other hand, the Arab parties - the Joint List and Ra’am (UAL), have together won a total of 19 seats.
This means the ruling as well as the opposition blocs need the support of the Arab parties to form a new government. But, some of the constituents of the opposition bloc are wary of forming the government with the support of Arab parties.
Amidst this deadlock, a strong campaign was launched calling for the opposition parties to to form the new government with the support of the Joint List and Ra'am (UAL).
According to the Israeli daily Haaretz, the campaign received the support from around 50,000 Israelis besides others. Nearly half signed up after the election results were even announced, according to Zazim, the civic movement behind the initiative.
Zazim is urging the opposition leaders to recognize the Arab parties as legitimate coalition partners.
"Public support for Jewish-Arab political cooperation is much greater than the political debate suggests," said Zazim CEO Raluca Ganea. "Likud itself previously held coalition negotiations with the United Arab List, an Arab party. Polls show that most opposition supporters favor cooperation with Arab parties, while most Arab voters want their representatives to participate in government."
"Arab citizens' votes carry the same weight as those of every other Israeli citizen. Arab parties must be treated as legitimate political partners. This election has shown that the future of Israeli democracy will be decided by the question of Jewish-Arab political partnership", Raluca added.
Meanwhile, demonstrations supporting Jewish-Arab political cooperation have also been held across Israel, and more such demonstrations are expected in the coming days.
“Netanyahu must step down”
Meanwhile, Yashar leader Gadi Eisenkot, while pledging to establish the next government after Israel’s October 27 elections, has urged Benjamin Netanyahu, who is a caretaker Prime Minister after the Oct 2026 elections, to step down.
“The public has chosen change. The coalition of failure has lost the people’s trust. The Israeli public voted against Benjamin Netanyahu continuing as prime minister”, he said in a speech billed as “victory speech” after the October 2027 Israel national elections.
“A leader worthy of the name would accept the people’s verdict and announce today that he is leaving political life”, he added.
“And Netanyahu — do not dare use Israel’s security for your own political ends”, he warned.
“A win is a win”
Yair Lapid of B’Yachad Friday declared that the anti-Netanyahu bloc “won” the election despite not achieving an outright victory, and asked the public for patience as it begins working to try and cobble together a government with no clear path to majority rule, according to the Times of Israel.
The anti-Netanyahu bloc received a combined 67 seats out of a possible 120, which would be a comfortable majority if three of the four Jewish-led parties, Yashar, B’Yachad and Yisrael Beytenu, hadn’t ruled out sitting in coalition with the predominantly Arab Joint List and Ra’am.
Lapid, in a post on social media site X, acknowledged that Netanyahu’s opponents “wanted a clear, immediate victory, the kind you can go to sleep with. But that isn’t what we got.”
But he said the opposition bloc still won in several ways.
“Netanyahu received 53 seats. A collapse. And even within that low number, 13 of those seats belong to parties that consider themselves anti-Zionist,” he wrote, referring to the ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism and Shas, which won seven and six seats, respectively.
“He is left with 40 [seats],” Lapid assessed. “That’s what he has. No matter what he does, he doesn’t have any way to form a government.”
“So we won,” he declared. “It wasn’t a knockout. It was a win on points. But points count too. A win is a win.”
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