Arab-led parties hold the key to Israel's next government after winning 19 seats

Palestinian citizens of Israel voted in record numbers in the country's general election. Arab-led parties won 19 of the 120 seats in parliament on those votes, giving them a powerful position in Israeli politics.

In the results, neither Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's coalition nor his main challenger Gadi Eisenkot's center-right opposition reached the 61 seats needed to form a government. Arab-led parties will therefore play a critical role in the negotiations that will now determine who governs.

"We blocked the government of Netanyahu from continuing," said Jamal Zahalka, chairman of the High Follow-Up Committee, the main umbrella body representing Palestinian citizens of Israel. "It's a historical achievement. I think our community found its strength."

Palestinian citizens of Israel are descendants of those who remained when the state of Israel was established in 1948, when a majority of the prewar population was forcibly expelled or fled. They now make up about 20 per cent of the population.

According to the Central Elections Committee, Arab-led parties received a 64 percent increase in votes compared to the last elections. In recent years many Palestinian citizens had shunned elections, believing there was little to gain from participating.

Residents of Kufr Qasim said worsening rights inside Israel was one reason so many went to the ballot boxes. Intisar Sarsur, 65, said: "There is no freedom anymore. We are seeking for our basic rights as human beings." She added: "Everybody that I know participated in the elections. Not one person stayed home."

Two days after the election, hundreds of people gathered at a park in the Palestinian-majority town of Kufr Qasim for the annual commemoration of residents gunned down in 1956 by Israeli border police on the opening day of the Suez Crisis. "And today we stand here, 70 years later," the speaker told the crowd, "and the story still isn't over."

The crowd mourned not only the relatives lost all those years ago. Also in their minds were the sharp rise in discrimination against their communities in Israel since the Hamas-led attacks of October 7, 2023, Israel's war in Gaza that has killed more than 74,000 Palestinians, and settler violence in the occupied West Bank.

Netanyahu and his allies made the large Arab turnout a rallying cry. On election day, Netanyahu posted a video calling it an "emergency". Far-right national security minister Itamar Ben Gvir filmed his own appeal at the entrance to Kufr Qasim, saying people should get out and vote if they wanted the country to remain Jewish and Zionist.

As results came in, Netanyahu's Likud party went further, claiming Arab parties had "stolen" the election through bribery, threats and forgery, and later warned of a foreign takeover of the Knesset and the "Islamization of Israel". The party has made no evidence public. Police say they found no basis for the claims, and election officials say there was no widespread fraud.

The head of the elections committee separately asked the Shin Bet security service to investigate suspected foreign funding of efforts to boost Arab turnout. But he and the attorney general say the vote was conducted properly and the results were not compromised.

Eisenkot is not a natural ally for Arab parties either. The former military chief of staff, whose son was killed fighting in Gaza, served as an observer in Netanyahu's war cabinet early in the war. He is credited with formulating the "Dahiyeh doctrine" in 2008, using "disproportionate force" against villages from which militants fire on Israel.