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Can Israeli Arabs settle political score with Netanyahu?

The Arab Joint List is ready to cooperate, even with Yisrael Beitenu’s Avigdor Liberman, to pass a law preventing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from forming a new government.

Ahmed Tibi, leader of the Arab Movement for Change (Ta'al) party that is part of the Joint List alliance, speaks to reporters at their electoral headquarters in Israel's northern city of Shefa-Amr on March 2, 2020, after polls officially closed. - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appeared to lead his main challenger following elections with multiple exit polls putting his right-wing Likud several seats ahead of the centrist Blue and White party. Exit polls by three Israeli television networks, rele
Ahmed Tibi, leader of the Arab Movement for Change (Ta'al), part of the Joint List alliance, speaks to reporters at their election headquarters after polls officially closed, Shefa-Amr, Israel, March 2, 2020. — AHMAD GHARABLI/AFP via Getty Images

At the Ynet studios on Feb. 27, a week before elections in Israel, Joint List Chairman Ayman Odeh found himself in a heated discussion with Culture Minister Miri Regev over the Likud campaign’s attempt to delegitimize the country’s Arab Knesset members. Amid the hurled accusations, Odeh told her, “You [the Likud] won’t remain in power, and that will be because of the Joint List. You’re all corrupt! We’re sick of you!”

With the votes now tallied, it looks like Odeh might be vindicated. The Joint List won 15 seats, while the right-wing/ultra-Orthodox bloc walked away with 58 seats, three short of the 61 needed for a majority. In other words, for the moment, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu does not have enough seats to form a government that could extricate him from his impending trial on corruption charges.

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