There were several winners from Israel's recent elections – from Benjamin Netanyahu, who returned to the premiership, through to the astonishing achievement of the Religious Zionist Party, and the impressive leap made by Shas. But the big winner, the one that really stood out, was Mansour Abbas and his party, Ra'am (United Arab List). The results not only justified and rewarded the exceptional political move that he took, but also made him the most important political figure in the Israeli Arab community, as well as someone with significant influence on the political system overall.
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At first glance his achievement could be overlooked: With 195,000 votes, Ra'am won five seats in the Knesset, the same number as the joint Hadash (Communists) and Ta'al (Arab Movement for Renewal) who together received 180,000 votes. Balad (National Democratic Alliance) and didn't pass the electoral threshold: it received 140,000 votes, which would have been equal to three Knesset seats, if the threshold were lower. In other words, Ra'am received some 40% of the votes for Arab parties and the remaining 60% were divided between the three other parties. The significance of the numbers is that Ra'am, by quite a margin, is the largest Arab party, and the only one that passed the electoral threshold on its own.
Its success comes in the wake of the move taken by Abbas after the 2021 elections – a move that was controversial in the Arab sector – when he declared his willingness to be a partner in a coalition with Zionist parties and held negotiations both with Netanyahu and the opposing camp. In the end, Abbas joined forces with the Bennett-Lapid coalition in the face of stern opposition within the Arab sector and even within his party.
This move may have ended in his political downfall, but in fact the opposite occurred. The Arab electorate didn't reject the move but rewarded him with its votes, which gave Ra'am the status of the largest Arab party and crowned Abbas as the leader of the sector.
The results were not just a reward for a political maneuver. They also broke a 40-year veto that the Arab parties had imposed on any real cooperation with the Zionist parties.
That wasn't always the case. In the first 30 years of the state, a number of Arab parties joined forces with the ruling party. Until 1981, only Jews were members of Mapai and Labor, while its supporters from the Arab sector established satellite parties that joined various coalitions over the years, among them the Democratic List for Israeli Arabs (1951-1959), Progress and Development (1959-1973) and the Arab List for Bedouin and Villagers (1973 to 1981). These parties received the majority of the votes in the Arab sector, this at a time when the Communist Party was still mostly Jewish.
Things changed after 1977 when the Likud government ended regime pressure on radical elements in the Arab sector and at the same time the Labor Party turned directly to Arab voters. The result was the elimination of the moderate Arab parties and the rise of radical elements to the leadership of the Arab sector.
After a 40-year-long veto the feeling among many in the Arab Street is that things have reached a dead end. Abbas was the first leader to express this explicitly when he declared that Israel is a Jewish state. This declaration was aimed at abrogating the conflictual approach of radical groups among Israel's Arabs according to which direct conflict will lead the Zionist state to slowly capitulate and to its elimination. In Abbas' view this is a delusional position that is not only disconnected from reality, but risks throwing Israel's Arabs into a battle they cannot win. The backing given by Arab voters to his position enables Abbas to shunt his rivals aside and put his party on the path to becoming an Arab version of Shas.
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