Those who are concerned for Israel’s democracy rightly focus on Benjamin Netanyahu’s attacks on the judiciary, law enforcement and the media. The assumption is that he is simply a wannabe elected authoritarian in the mold of Donald Trump. But there may be something more strategic at play: Israel’s right wing wants to disenfranchise the Israeli Arab parties that are a critical part of the opposition.
Historically, Arab parties have won the votes of the overwhelming majority of Israel’s 2 million Arab citizens—20 percent of the population. If such parties were banned from participating, while individuals would be free to vote, say, for dovish mainstream parties, the most plausible outcome would be that most Arab voters would boycott the election, whether from anger at the move or discomfort with the Jewish parties’ support for Zionism.
As things stand now, the Arab voters, and their parties, are essentially part of the opposition to Netanyahu’s right wing-religious bloc. Although they make up only 8 percent of Knesset seats, since elections in Israel are so close, even a moderate reduction of the Arab vote could well be decisive. A boycott or close to one would essentially guarantee continued right-wing rule.
If true, this strategy could explain the government’s seeming indifference to public opinion at present. Poll after poll shows that about 70 percent of the public is opposed to prolonging the Gaza war at the expense of the hostages, enabling Haredi draft evasion, refusing to establish an inquiry commission into the October 7 disaster, and more. A government that must face the voters next year might be expected to care about being so vastly unpopular.
But those polls include Israel’s Arab voters and assume the current electorate. If those Arab voters were mostly sidelined, and their existing political representation banned by a compliant court system, the right wing’s chances of overcoming the unpopularity of its current policies would become far better.
This apparent strategy is not an official policy. You won’t find Likud press releases calling for it, and no one in Netanyahu’s inner circle is foolish enough to state it outright. But the writing is on the wall, and private conversations I’ve had with everyone from right-wing politicians to their ordinary supporters make it pretty clear that this is the intention.
After all, for several election campaigns now the right has been trying to organize such bans. In 2019 and 2022, the Knesset Election Committee sought to ban Arab parties (Balad in 2019 and 2022 and the United Arab List in 2019, along with candidate Ofer Cassif), typically by accusing them of “supporting terrorism” or “denying Israel’s identity as a Jewish state.” Each time, the Supreme Court has overturned the move.
From the right’s perspective, then, the high court must be weakened—with control of judicial appointments and an “override clause”—to enable the parliament to overturn inconvenient decisions.
Sidelining the Arab parties would be a game-changer because of the peculiarities of Israel’s system and landscape. Arab parties have played a crucial role in the formation of center-left coalitions in Israel since 1974; without them, the center-left would not have achieved a majority since that time. (Once majorities are achieved, the Arab parties have typically not formally entered the coalition—but without them, there would be no opportunity to form one.)
In Israel’s parliamentary system, since no one party can achieve a majority, coalitions are formed with the help of historic “blocs”—basically, despite variations and strategic maneuvering, the right wing and religious parties on one side, and the moderate, leftist and Arab parties on the other. A prime minister can be appointed and stay in power as long as a majority of Knesset members does not vote to bring down the government, so minority coalitions are possible. And Arab parties have always backed the center-left, although only once, during the previous 2021-2022 government, did one of them formally enter the coalition.
In Israel’s highly fractured body politic, the Arab parties’ position in the opposition is in a way a mirror of the right’s own dependence on the ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) parties. They too represent a sector that is something of a separate ghetto within Jewish Israel, and historically they have also been formally opposed to Zionism (and their flock generally evades the military). But the Likud has not once had enough seats to form a government without them; even when it chose “unity governments” instead, Likud led those governments because of their natural bloc with the Haredim. Such is Israel’s strange equivalent of a two-party (or rather, two-bloc) system.
But while the ultra-Orthodox are viewed as legitimate coalition partners by both the government and the opposition, Arab parties are often treated with deep suspicion. The double standard is glaring.
Why? Because for many Israelis, the Arab citizens, although they make up a fifth of the population, are seen as a potential fifth column. They are, after all, the same ethnicity as the peoples of Israel’s neighbors: Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt (and of course the Palestinians), all of whom were, at various times, at war with the Jewish state. That historical and ethnic proximity has fed a persistent anxiety that Arab citizens might one day side with external enemies.
And yet, the reality is astonishingly different. Despite deep social inequality, a justifiable sense of being second-class citizens and a far lower voter turnout (generally around 50–60 percent, compared to 70 percent or more for Jews), Israel’s Arab citizens remain largely committed to the state. They are increasingly integrated into the economy, the healthcare system, the legal world and even the police force. Many identify as “Arab Israelis” (as opposed to “Palestinians”) and express loyalty to the state, even as they advocate for greater equality. Some serve in the military, and some, such as Arab Israeli journalist Joseph Haddad, have staunchly defended the war.
Of course, there are real challenges to complete integration. Arab towns suffer from skyrocketing crime. Arab parties have struggled to respond to charges of dual loyalty, and their leadership has often seemed, to Jewish Israeli observers, sympathetic mostly to the Palestinians. On occasion there have been individuals from within the community involved in terror attacks. But none of this justifies the blanket suspicion Arab political parties routinely face. Indeed, Israel has a clear interest in winning over such a large and potentially destabilizing minority.
So far, the judiciary has acted as the firewall. The Supreme Court has not only overturned efforts to disqualify Arab parties, citing the importance of political pluralism and the rights of all citizens, but in general has protected their rights—both of the citizens and of the parties. These rulings are not acts of “judicial activism.” They are expressions of the core principle of liberal democracy: that the majority cannot silence or exclude a minority simply because its views make them uncomfortable.
And this is a central reason why Netanyahu’s push to dismantle judicial independence is so dangerous. The effort, begun days after the government took office in late 2022, was on hold until recently because of the war, but it has resumed. Just last month, the government passed a law giving politicians decisive control over the appointments of all judges to the 15-seat body. That will likely be used to block the appointments of Israeli Arab judges such as current member Chaled Kabub; Salim Jubran, who for a time oversaw Israeli elections; or George Karra, who sentenced former Israeli President Moshe Katsav to 7 years in prison for rape and sexual assault 14 years ago.
Last October, Netanyahu’s coalition made the first move by passing a law that expanded the criteria for justifying the banning of parties to include “support for terror”—a definition that could be fluidly and broadly applied and is clearly aimed at Arab parties.
But the true sign that Netanyahu is serious about this plan will be if and when he moves to revive the effort to pass as law an “override clause” that would enable the Knesset to overturn decisions of the Supreme Court. This was part of the “judicial reforms” proposed in 2023 that caused such a massive uproar in the country. The proposal is on hold for the moment, theoretically because of the Gaza war.
An override clause would enable the banning of the Arab parties even if the judiciary is not fully under control by election time next year (a vote must be held by October 2026). There would then be nothing stopping the Knesset majority from excluding Arab parties under the guise of national security or ideological purity. (Of course, the court could try in turn to block the passage of an override clause, possibly bringing on a constitutional crisis, or the government could resort to other scare tactics to dissuade the Arab population from voting, such as placing surveillance cameras at polling stations.)
This is not speculation. It’s pattern recognition. We’ve already seen Netanyahu’s allies attempt to rewrite Israel’s Basic Laws, pass legislation targeting Arab NGOs, and elevate Jewish supremacy as a legal principle through the Nation-State Law. Add to this the repeated incitement of public anger against Arabs voting—Netanyahu famously warned in 2015 that “Arab voters are heading to the polls in droves”—and an underlying intent to disenfranchise Arab voters altogether becomes harder and harder to deny.
This should worry every Israeli who cares about democracy. A system in which 20 percent of the population is politically disenfranchised is not a democracy. It is a managed ethnocracy. And it won’t stop with Arab parties. Once the principle is accepted that certain parties can be banned for ideological reasons, others will follow.
Dan Perry is the former chief editor of The Associated Press in Europe, Africa and the Middle East, the former chairman of the Foreign Press Association in Jerusalem, and the author of two books about Israel. Follow his newsletter “Ask Questions Later” at danperry.substack.com.
Top image credit: Mark Neyman/Government Press Office of Israel (CC BY-SA 3.0)