One of the biggest surprises of the Israeli elections was the success of the two Arab-led political parties, Raam and the Joint List. They collectively won 19 of the 120 seats in the Knesset, Israel’s Parliament.
Raam is an Islamist party and the Joint List is an alliance of three factions that includes leftists and Palestinian nationalists.
Raam has sought to gain acceptance from other opposition parties in Israel by putting less emphasis on the plight of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza and focusing more on issues plaguing Arab citizens of Israel, like violent crime and discriminatory housing policies.
While the Joint List has also fought for the rights of Arab citizens of Israel, it frequently criticizes Israel’s treatment of Palestinians and has called itself “a genuine democratic alternative to the racist Zionist consensus.”
The outcome of the voting excited many Arab voters, and both parties have said they are willing to work with the Israeli opposition in taking down Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government. But many members of the Jewish-led opposition have ruled out cooperating with the Arab parties to form a new government, and strongly object to a number of their views. Many Israelis fear Arab parties wielding influence over foreign affairs and security issues, and disagree on how to address the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Here is a look at the positions of the Joint List — an alliance of the Hadash, Balad and Taal parties — and Raam.
Hadash
Hadash is a leftist Arab-Jewish faction whose name is an acronym that stands for the Democratic Front for Peace and Equality.
The party’s website says it supports Israel withdrawing from the West Bank, Gaza and the Golan Heights, returning Israel to its pre-1967 border and recognizing “the right of the Arab Palestinian people to its self-determination and establishing its independent state.”
It also calls for resolving the Palestinian refugee issue in accordance with United Nations resolutions. U.N. General Assembly resolution 194 calls for allowing Palestinian refugees to return to their homes, while offering compensation to those who elect not to return for lost or damaged property.
Unlike other members of the Joint List, one of Hadash’s elected representatives is Jewish.
Hadash, founded in 1977, also supports “total equality for Arab citizens”; reducing military expenditures; ending funding for settlements in the Israeli-occupied West Bank; recognizing Arab citizens of Israel as “a national minority on the political, social and cultural levels”; passing legislation to reinforce the equality of women; and banning weapons of mass destruction, according to the party’s website.
Party leaders have criticized the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel. Ayman Odeh, who was the chairman of Hadash until May, referred to “Hamas’s murderous attack” in an opinion article for The New York Times.
His successor is Yousef Jabareen, a human rights lawyer who studied law at Georgetown University in Washington.
On Friday, he said in an interview that the Joint List was hoping to work with other opposition parties to remove Mr. Netanyahu from office.
“The years of Netanyahu, Ben Gvir and Smotrich have been awful,” he said, referring to two far-right government ministers. “So our top priority is to get rid of their government.”
Balad
Balad is a Palestinian nationalist party whose name is an acronym for the National Democratic Assembly. The party, founded in the mid-1990s, has emphasized that Israel should become “a state for all of its citizens” — a position that is anathema to many Israelis, who say that it seeks to undermine Israel’s Jewish character.
Many of Balad’s positions are similar to those of Hadash. It also wants Israel to withdraw to its pre-1967 borders and to recognize Arab citizens as a national minority.
Balad officials have said they want Arab citizens to have autonomy over their educational system, including the ability to develop their own curriculums.
Lawmakers from Balad have sometimes found themselves entangled with the Israeli authorities. In 2007, Azmi Bishara, a founder of the party, was accused by the Israeli authorities of spying for Hezbollah, the Iran-backed armed group. He has denied wrongdoing and has since relocated to Qatar, where he serves as director general of the Arab Institute for Policy and Research Studies.
Haneen Zoabi, another former Balad member of Parliament, was temporarily blocked from participating in Knesset discussions in 2011 after being on board a Turkish flotilla raided by Israeli commandos as it tried to breach the naval blockade of Gaza. And Sami Abu Shahadeh, the current chairman of Balad, faced scrutiny after he wrote an article describing the Oct. 7 attack as “an important historic event in the military sense.”
He later condemned the attack, after the Israeli Supreme Court discussed disqualifying him from running for Parliament. At the urging of the court, he withdrew from Balad’s slate of candidates in this election.
Taal
Taal is an Arab party led by Ahmad Tibi, who has served in the Knesset for more than 25 years. The party’s name is an acronym that means the Arab Movement for Change.
Mr. Tibi, who founded Taal in the mid-1990s, has long expressed support for the establishment of an independent Palestinian state and an Israeli withdrawal to pre-1967 borders. Like other Arab parties, he has also advocated solutions to rampant crime in Arab communities in Israel.
In the 1990s, he served as an adviser to Yasir Arafat, the leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization.
After joining the Knesset in 1999, Mr. Tibi told The Times about the complexity of pledging allegiance to Israel. “I can live with it,” he said. “I didn’t pledge allegiance to the Zionism of the state, but to the State of Israel that I would like to be mine, as a citizen.”
In the aftermath of the Oct. 7 attacks, he said Arab citizens were opposed to targeting civilians.
On Wednesday, he said the Joint List was “ready to swallow frogs to take down Netanyahu’s government.”
Raam
Raam is a socially conservative Islamist party whose name is an acronym for the United Arab List. Mansour Abbas leads the party and has spearheaded its efforts to play a more influential role in Israeli politics.
In 2021, Raam became a member of the governing coalition — a watershed for a mainstream Arab party in Israeli politics. Mr. Abbas faced intense criticism for the decision, but he has continued to call for playing a direct role in decision-making, even if that means being saddled with blame for policies that Arab citizens find objectionable. “We are ready to pay the price,” he told The Times during the most recent election campaign.
Raam was founded in 1996 by a branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel, which works to strengthen Muslim identity and empower the country’s Arab minority.
In August, Mr. Abbas and Yoav Segalovitz, a veteran Zionist politician and former police commander, announced that Mr. Segalovitz would run for the Knesset on Raam’s list. In teaming up, they offered themselves as an example of Jewish-Arab cooperation.
“There are people who are afraid of partnership,” Mr. Abbas said. “There are parties that are afraid of partnership. They are afraid of what people will say, afraid of what they will lose. Raam is not afraid of partnership. Raam advances it.”
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