Israel's Arab-led parties in spotlight after inconclusive election

KUFR QASI, Israel — In recent years many Palestinian citizens of Israel shunned elections, believing there was little to gain from participating in the politics of a state which, they say, regularly marginalizes their communities and oppresses their fellow Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.But last month, Palestinian Arabs in Israel came to the ballot boxes in record numbers, helping strip Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's most far-right government in Israel's history of its majority, and giving Arab-led parties the votes they needed to become a powerful force in Israeli politics."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."Neither Netanyahu's coalition, nor his main challenger Gadi Eisenkot's center-right opposition, reached the threshold of 61 seats needed to form a government.Arab-led parties won 19 out of 120 seats – enough to give them a critical role in the negotiations that will now determine who governs Israel at this turbulent moment in the country's history.The election results strike at the heart of the decades-long questions about how Israel defines itself and the role of Palestinian Arabs in its society.At a park in the Palestinian-majority town of Kufr Qasim two days after the election, hundreds of people gathered for the annual commemoration of residents gunned down in 1956 by Israeli border police on the opening day of the Suez Crisis in the violent early years of the state, when Israel, Britain and France attacked Egypt after it nationalized the Suez Canal."And today we stand here, 70 years later," the speaker told the large crowd from a podium: "And the story still isn't over."The crowd at this event, mostly dressed in black — some wearing the keffiyeh, the black and white stitched scarf symbolizing Palestinian resistance...