Ahead of the 2026 elections, Ayman Odeh is pushing to reunite Israel’s Arab parties
‘There is no doubt the majority of the Arab population wants one and only one joint slate,’ says Hadash party chair, calling it crucial for defeating the ‘fascist messianic right’
Sam Sokol is the Times of Israel's political correspondent. He was previously a reporter for the Jerusalem Post, Jewish Telegraphic Agency and Haaretz. He is the author of "Putin’s Hybrid War and the Jews"
In the early hours of June 12, the coalition’s Shas and United Torah Judaism parties backed away from their threats to bring down the government over the issue of ultra-Orthodox military service, preventing early elections and preserving, at least for now, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s grip on power.
Less than a day later, the Israel Defense Forces launched military strikes on Iran’s nuclear program, prompting the premier’s political opponents to shelve their disagreements for the sake of national unity.
But while Jewish parties across the political spectrum emphasized their support for Netanyahu on the issue of Iran, MK Ayman Odeh, leader of the predominantly Arab Hadash-Ta’al alliance took a different tack, submitting a no-confidence measure against the government and accusing the opposition of allowing itself to be “dragged along” by Netanyahu “time and time again, in a quiet and shameful surrender.”
And despite the Haredim giving Netanyahu political breathing room, the veteran Arab politician — who earlier this month drew calls for his impeachment when he declared that “Gaza has won and Gaza will win” — is still focused on preparing for elections, currently slated for October 2026, with an eye to “prevent[ing] the fascist messianic right from returning to power again.”
As part of this effort, Odeh is working to reestablish the so-called Joint List, a unified slate of Arab parties with sharply varying views and a track record of energizing Arab voters and bringing the community unprecedented political power.
Around 2.1 million, or 20.9 percent, of Israel’s nearly 10.1 million citizens are Arabs. In the 2015 elections, the newly formed Joint List won 13 seats out of 120 in the Knesset, while boosting turnout in Arab-majority locales to 64 percent — a significant rise over the 55% turnout recorded two years earlier.
However, while the joint slate was successful at the polls, political infighting cleaved the Arab parties, with the heads of the alliance’s various constituent factions coming to blows over representation.
Bitter arguments over the allocation and rotation of Knesset seats eventually led Mansour Abbas’s United Arab List (Ra’am), an Islamist party, to break away in 2021. Abbas eventually joined Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid’s short-lived interregnum.
This left Odeh’s Hadash, a joint Jewish-Arab leftist faction incorporating Israel’s old Communist Party, allied with MK Ahmad Tibi’s Ta’al and the secular nationalist Balad party.
Balad — an anti-Zionist party that had been disqualified from running on several occasions but had won every appeal to the Supreme Court to be reinstated — split off from the alliance in 2022. Running on its own, Balad failed to pass the threshold for entry into the Knesset, leaving the Arab parties with only 10 seats overall.
After the fall of Bennett and Lapid’s government, Abbas was scornful of his former partners, asserting that because of Tibi and Odeh, whom he dismissed as “dogmatic,” Israel’s Arabs had “missed a historic opportunity.”
But despite these tensions, Odeh is working hard to rebuild the Joint List, telling The Times of Israel in an interview last week that the upcoming elections will be “existential” for Arab voters, requiring “a lot of responsibility from us now.”
“There is no doubt the majority of the Arab population wants one and only one joint list. In other words, this increases the chances that more Arab citizens will vote, and this, from our point of view, is crucial [for] preventing the fascist messianic right from returning to power again,” he said.
Odeh and other Arab politicians have harshly criticized the current government for, among other things, failing to curb rising crime in the Arab sector and for holding up funding for Arab municipalities.
They have also decried legislation aimed at making it easier to disqualify Arab candidates by, among other things, barring them for isolated comments deemed supportive of terror.
Such issues are the reason why “all the struggles between us should become small in the face of this greater threat,” Odeh said.
Odeh added that he had reached out to Abbas “five or six times” over the past six months in order to try and achieve reconciliation.
“We are absolutely forbidden from running like last time, with three slates,” he insisted. “So the minimum should be two slates with a surplus-vote sharing agreement between them in order to get the maximum out of the Arab population’s electoral power.”
Abbas “is personally not convinced yet, but in Ra’am there is a large majority that is convinced of this and wants it,” said Odeh.
A spokesperson for Abbas did not respond to a request for comment.
Odeh said he is also speaking with Balad, arguing that its failure to enter the Knesset cannot be repeated because it was a massive waste of Arab votes.
Even if Odeh manages to unify the Arab parties, he will not be leading a new Joint List, having announced in May 2023 that while he would remain in office until the end of the current Knesset, he does not intend to run again.
In a statement, Hadash-Ta’al noted that Odeh was stepping down because “a leader knows when to make room for the next generation.”
At the time, he said that he would remain involved in Arab public life and fight to build “unity in Arab society and with our Jewish partners, and peace between the two peoples.”
Even if he were to remain in the Knesset, his own personal political future would still remain up in the air, with the Knesset House Committee scheduled to gather on Tuesday to discuss his potential impeachment over a statement he made appearing to equate Israeli hostages with Palestinian security prisoners.
A recent Channel 13 poll found that if elections were held today, Hadash-Ta’al would get six seats and Ra’am would get four, while Balad would again fail to clear the electoral threshold of 3.25%.
A February survey by the pro-coexistence Abraham Fund Initiatives found a majority of Arab voters support the idea of a new united ticket, Dr. Thabet Abu Rass, until recently the group’s co-director and an advocate for unity, told The Times of Israel on Sunday.
However, the Arab sector is not a monolith, and it contains wildly different voter bases, ranging from Abbas’s rural, religious supporters to Odeh’s urban, secular backers. But despite these differences, and competition between Arab politicians as to who would head such an alliance, the voters are “really eager” to see such a slate come together, Abu Rass said.
“They don’t care about differences. We are in an emergency situation. This is what the people are in the streets are saying.”
JTA contributed to this report.
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