One hour before polls close and several hours after Israeli media predicted historically low Arab voter turnout in Tuesday's national elections, the Arab-majority Hadash-Ta'al alliance said the turnout rate had jumped to 44%.
Arab-Israeli lawmakers on Tuesday afternoon proclaimed "an emergency" after prominent pollsters warned of what could be the most depressed Arab voter turnout rate in the history of Israeli elections.
In 2015, 64% of Israel's Arab population turned up at the polls, after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu famously warned his right-wing constituents on election day that "the Arabs were coming to vote in droves," compared to a national percentage of 70.
This election, there are two major Arab lists: Hadash-Ta'al and Ra'am-Balad.
While Hadash-Ta'al presents itself as a secular outfit, Ra'am-Balad is a joint list of candidates from a nationalist party (Ra'am) and an Islamic movement (Balad).
The most recent polls showed the two lists receiving a combined 11 seats, with Hadash-Ta'al expected to earn slightly more votes, despite expectations that half of Israel's Arab population would choose not to vote.
Over one-fifth of Israeli citizens are Arabs, some of whom actively or ambivalently boycott the Jewish state's electoral process in protest against what they view as a government that does not represent their national interests.
"Successive Israeli governments have ostracized the Arab population," Sondos Saleh, who is running on the Hadash-Ta'al list, recently told supporters in Acre.
In 2015, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development reported 50% of Arab Israelis lived below the poverty line, compared to 13.5% of Jewish Israelis (not including ultra-Orthodox.)
A'as al-Atrash, a Palestinian analyst based in Nazareth, told the Times of Israel this week that Arab-Israelis aged 18 to 30 are more likely than older generations to support a boycott.
On Friday, popular Palestinian rapper Tamer Nafar released a music video for his new song that depicts an internal battle between the part of himself that plans to vote in Israeli elections and another that intends to boycott.
According to Israeli law, initial election results are not allowed to be published until after polls close at 10 p.m. However, hours before, a number of Israeli media outlets vaguely referred to exit polls, noting a dramatic decrease in Arab turnout from previous elections.
At 3:30 p.m., Hadash-Ta'al released a statement saying only 20% of Arab voters in Israel had cast their vote.
Hadash chairman MK Ayman Odeh called the very low turnout "an emergency situation," in a video posted to Facebook Tuesday afternoon.
Meretz party leader Tamar Zandberg and parliament member Esawi Frej traveled to Kafr Qasim to encourage residents to vote.
The left-wing party filed a request with the Central Elections Committee to keep polls open for an additional hour, arguing the Likud party's use of hidden cameras represented a purposeful attempt to suppress Arab votes.
Earlier Tuesday, the Central Elections Committee filed a complaint with the police after 1,200 right-wing activists from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party were reportedly discovered at polling stations in predominantly Arab areas equipped with hidden cameras to "ensure a fair vote."
The party later admitted to outfitting the activists, with Netanyahu attempting to spin it the report in his favor, passing the covert measure as a means to uphold transparency.
The Hadash-Ta'al alliance confirmed it had presented an urgent complaint to the elections committee demanding the "illegal" cameras be immediately removed.
This article was originally published by i24NEWS. Read more at https://www.i24news.tv/en.
