Israels furious Arab parties could oust Netanyahu if the opposition will break an election promise

Israeli-Arabs could sway the balance of power in Israel’s general elections next week as the country’s two major parties are predicted to fall short of a majority in the Knesset.Nearly all of Israel’s polls ahead of Tuesday’s election indicate that the parties aligned with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and opposition leader Gadi Eisenkot each get around 50 of Knesset’s 120 seats, falling short of the 61 needed to form a government.The outcome would force both leaders to curry favor with the smaller parties in government to win.A big question remains whether the opposition will work with Joint Arab List and the United Arab List, which are predicted to get at least 13 seats.Eisenkot, a former Israel Defense Forces chief, and other opposition parties have said they will not form alliances with the Arabs.Israel’s Arab minority — who make up 20% of the population — are expected to have a high turn out in the polls to send a message to Netanyahu and lawmakers about the needs of their community, Thair Abu Ras, a researcher at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, said Thursday during a Brookings Institute discussion on the election.Unlike the 5.5 million Palestinians in the West Bank or Gaza Strip, the 2.1 million Israeli Arabs have full citizenship of the Jewish state and are governed by the Knesset.While the Arab parties have typically avoided coalition politics to avoid associating themselves with leadership occupying Gaza and the West Bank, Abu Ras said the parties are now looking to play ball with Eisenkot’s Change coalition under an “ad-hoc cooperation” policy.

“So ad-hoc cooperation is basically to work with the Eisenkot coalition, the Change coalition, on a number of issues that they’re generally in agreement with them on,” Abu Ras explained.This would include fighting Netanyahu’s judicial reform to reduce the power of the country’s Supreme Court, and establishing term limits for lawmakers that would prevent the prime minister — ...