Palestinian Parties Knesset Seat Surge to 17-18 Reshapes Coalition Talks After Israeli Election
Exit polls from Tuesday's Israeli general election project Palestinian parties winning 17 to 18 Knesset seats, up from 10, as Gadi Eisenkot's opposition bloc holds a narrow lead over Benjamin Netanyahu's governing coalition.
Palestinian Parties Knesset Seat Surge to 17-18 Reshapes Coalition Talks After Israeli Election
Projected seat gains for the Joint List and Ra'am
Exit polls from Tuesday's vote put the two Palestinian groupings at a combined 17 to 18 seats, more than doubling their previous total of 10, with counting continuing overnight into Wednesday. The same polls gave a narrow lead to Gadi Eisenkot's opposition bloc over the governing coalition of Benjamin Netanyahu.
The breakdown looks like this:
- The Joint List is projected to take 10 or more seats.
- Ra'am (an acronym for the United Arab List) is estimated at seven seats as the smaller of the two groupings.
- On these numbers, a pact with Ra'am alone is unlikely to produce a majority government.
Ra'am's leader, Mansour Abbas, is no stranger to coalition politics: he previously served in Naftali Bennett's right-leaning government, and Bennett now sits as a junior partner in Eisenkot's bloc. Abbas, who has a Jewish Zionist deputy, said on Tuesday his priority is to "bring down Benjamin Netanyahu, [Bezalel] Smotrich, and [Itamar] Ben-Gvir in this election".
Eisenkot's conditions versus Shbita's response
Eisenkot has set four conditions for negotiations with the Joint List:
- Recognise Israel as a Jewish and democratic state.
- Accept the values expressed in Israel's declaration of independence.
- Accept conscription for Palestinian Israeli citizens who are exempt.
- Denounce Hamas as a terrorist organisation.
Amjad Shbita, general secretary of Hadash, the largest faction in the Joint List, said on Tuesday that Eisenkot would be in no position to impose terms for coalition talks.
"Laying down conditions won't work with the Joint List," Shbita said. "We will negotiate as equals because we need each other."
Paths to a government
If the narrow lead is confirmed, President Isaac Herzog would have discretion over who he asks first to try to form a government. The tasking comes with a deadline: a candidate who cannot succeed within six weeks sees the challenge pass to the next option, while Netanyahu's coalition stays on in a caretaker role throughout.
The options facing Eisenkot's bloc are narrow:
- Negotiate a coalition with the Joint List and Ra'am, under the terms now disputed between Eisenkot and Shbita.
- Govern as a minority government, relying on informal vote-by-vote agreements with the Palestinian groupings.
A minority government would be unstable and make another election likely, which would give Netanyahu a chance to rally conservative support and claim to have been vindicated in his campaign slogan, "the Right or Palestine", which rhymes in Hebrew. Netanyahu's Likud could still emerge as the strongest single party in the new Knesset despite his bloc's narrower overall tally.
Whichever path is chosen, the projected surge in Knesset seats for the Palestinian parties moves them from the margins of the arithmetic to the centre of the coalition negotiations that follow.
