Only Israel's Arab parties can restore democracy

TEL AVIV — Before Israel’s election, I warned that no one should pin high hopes on the outcome. Sadly, that advice has been vindicated. An electorate deeply split along tribal and cultural lines did not hold Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accountable for multiple prolonged wars, overseeing countless war crimes, and decimating Israel’s global standing. Instead, the vote delivered a deadlock.

To be sure, Netanyahu’s opponents won more seats in the Knesset than his right-wing coalition did — 67, compared to 53. But whereas such an outcome might have sparked celebration in another democracy, it does not necessarily augur change in Israel. Of those 67 seats, 19 went to two Arab-led parties, with which the anti-Netanyahu bloc, headed by former Chief of the General Staff Gadi Eizenkot, has vowed not to cooperate.

This means that Eizenkot’s bloc might seek to form a national unity government, with Eizenkot and Netanyahu rotating as prime minister. The scale of the compromise should not be underestimated: past experience suggests that, in such a scenario, Netanyahu would outmaneuver his “partners.” Alternatively, Netanyahu might circumvent Eizenkot’s bloc altogether by striking a deal with Ra’am, one of the two Arab parties, as he attempted to do in 2021.

Eizenkot should beat Netanyahu to it and form a coalition with Arab-led parties. A grand Jewish-Arab historic alignment is the only way to topple Netanyahu’s racist and violent autocracy and to win, at last, the struggle for the soul of Israel. After all, this struggle hinges on the question of what place Israel’s Palestinian citizens — 21 percent of the population — occupy in its social and political life.

Arab Israelis have been doing everything they can to show that they belong. Unlike Israel’s sizeable Jewish Orthodox community, which contributes little while living on lavish subsidies, its Arab citizens have pursued productive integration. Israeli Arabs account for 25 percent of the country’s physicians, 27 percent of its nurses, and 49 percent of its pharmacists. A modest but growing cohort of young Palestinians is engaged in Israel’s high-tech industries.

This trend has continued even as they have watched the Israel Defense Forces carry out atrocities against Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. What else are they supposed to do to prove their loyalty to Israel?

In a democracy, parliament is the institution through which citizens advance their visions and interests. If Israel’s Palestinian citizens conclude that, despite their formidable display of democratic civility, they are denied the opportunity to do so, they might eventually seek to circumvent it. Is this what the “liberals” in Eizenkot’s bloc want?

Building a coalition with Arab parties is the only credible way to defeat not only Netanyahu, but also the ideology he embodies — an ideology that positions Jewish Israelis as being entitled to use any amount of violence to assert their dominance. Such a coalition should pursue a full political reset in the occupied territories, beginning by ending Jewish terror in the West Bank. To ensure accountability, the coalition should also establish a judicial commission to investigate the blunders that led to the Gaza War and the crimes that have been committed in its conduct.

But Eizenkot’s bloc must act fast. The new Knesset will convene on November 10, and despite not having yet formed a government, the opposition has promised to introduce multiple bills. In particular, it will seek to repeal the Netanyahu government’s controversial judicial overhaul, which would undermine the judiciary’s independence, and to limit the prime minister’s tenure to two terms or eight years.

None of this will be possible before the opposition elects a new Knesset speaker — a process Netanyahu’s coalition will probably try to stymie. The lengths to which Netanyahu is willing to go to stay in power were already beginning to show before the election, when he reportedly pushed for a joint U.S.-Israel strike on Iran that could lead to an escalation that would disrupt the vote.

Two Netanyahu allies, Mossad Chief Roman Gofman and Shin Bet Chief David Zini, supported the plan. But IDF Chief of the General Staff Eyal Zamir reportedly resisted it, and US President Donald Trump, facing elections of his own, rejected it.

Now, Netanyahu and his Likud party are scrambling to discredit the election results, claiming against all evidence that the Arab parties “stole” the vote. While the Knesset’s current speaker, Likud’s Amir Ohana, has said he will allow debate on his replacement if the majority request it, there is a risk that he will use these fabricated claims to justify blocking the vote or refusing to open the session at all.

Of course, if he does, a petition will be submitted to the High Court of Justice, which will order Ohana to move forward with the vote. But there is precedent for his continued refusal: in March 2020, another Likud speaker, Yuli Edelstein, defied just such an order.

In the meantime, every day that passes provides an opportunity for Netanyahu to find a way to impede a political transition. He is probably hoping that, now that the U.S. midterm elections are over, Trump will approve an escalation in Iran, giving Netanyahu the excuse he needs to postpone the opening of the Knesset and the swearing-in of its newly elected members. An assault on the Knesset by Netanyahu’s most fanatical loyalists—inspired by the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol by Donald Trump supporters—also cannot be ruled out.

Despite his awareness that internecine rifts helped in the past to bring Jewish sovereignty to ruin — one of the bitter lessons of Jewish history — Netanyahu made the exploitation of Israel’s tribal divisions a cornerstone of his political career. In his desperate struggle to hang on to power, he is recklessly playing with the prospect of civil war.

Israel’s recent election did not deliver the transformation for which many had hoped. Nonetheless, if Eizenkot’s liberal bloc builds a coalition with the Arab-led parties, it could open the way to restore Israeli democracy. But the road ahead will be arduous, and before a single step can be taken, Netanyahu must be removed from power.

Shlomo Ben-Ami, a former Israeli foreign minister, is the author of “Prophets Without Honor: The 2000 Camp David Summit and the End of the Two-State Solution” (Oxford University Press, 2022). This article was distributed by Project Syndicate.