As election portends gridlock, Democrats’ Golan urges coalition with Arabs to oust Netanyahu

As near final election results published Wednesday indicated a looming political deadlock, the Democrats party chairman Yair Golan urged his fellow members of the opposition “change bloc” to reverse their election pledges and ally with the Arab-led Joint List and Ra’am parties to oust Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from power.

The Central Elections Committee announced that with some 93 percent of ordinary ballots, which is 85.6% of the total, Netanyahu’s bloc had 53 seats, while the opposition bloc led by Yashar leader Gadi Eisenkot had 48. The Arab parties have 19 seats, a historic high.  At least 61 seats are required for a majority in the 120-member Knesset.

In a statement, the CEC said the remaining 7% of the ordinary ballots will require additional oversight, while some 600,000 so-called double envelope votes — cast by soldiers, diplomats, prisoners and others who could not vote near their homes — have yet to be counted. These are expected to be added to the tally in the next couple of days.

“Netanyahu lost. I know how to count to 120. Sixty-five is more than 55. That’s how Israeli democracy works. Period,” Golan wrote on X.

The results underscored the pivotal role Arab-majority parties could play in determining the next government, as Eisenkot’s bloc, including Naftali Bennett’s B’Yachad, Avigdor Liberman’s Yisrael Beytenu and the Democrats, would not be able to secure a Knesset majority without either their internal or external support. With the exception of the Democrats, the other parties have said they would not include the Arab parties in a coalition.

“The reality must teach us one resounding lesson: We have no future here if we don’t stop being afraid. And if we don’t stop with the racism. We must no longer accept Netanyahu’s racist division between Jewish votes and Arab votes,” Golan said in his post.

“And now let’s talk about Zionism. In Netanyahu’s bloc sit 16 Knesset members from non-Zionist Haredi parties, who promote mass draft evasion while our children are fighting and dying,” wrote Golan, a former deputy chief of the Israel Defense Forces.

“If Netanyahu insists on counting only a Zionist majority, let him first subtract from his own bloc the 16 Knesset members from the non-Zionist Haredi parties. They won’t preach to us about Zionism,” he said.

“The change bloc has a Zionist majority: 49 against 39. The change bloc has an Israeli majority: 65 against 55,” he continued, citing earlier figures.

“We have a majority. We have responsibility. And we have an opportunity to form a government of change in partnership with Israel’s Arab citizens. A government that will serve all Israeli citizens. Now we need courage. It takes leadership. It takes stopping the fear and starting to act,” he said.

Joint List leader: Ready to ‘pave the way’ to oust PM

Joint List chairman Yousef Jabareen, meanwhile, said in a statement: “We are ready and willing to pave the way for the Netanyahu government’s removal.”

“In the face of the government of bloodshed, of a politics of supremacy, racism, and exclusion, we are offering a totally different alternative. The change runs through Jewish-Arab partnership — real, equal partnership. Not less than that, and not more than that,” he said.

Speaking separately to the Ynet news site, Jabareen vowed to “leverage our political power to advance the values we believe in.”

MK Ahmad Tibi, who leads the Ta’al faction within the Joint List, told the Saudi Al-Hadath newspaper on Wednesday that “there is a real chance to replace the Netanyahu government,” and that “Gadi Eisenkot is the candidate closest to forming a government.”

Liberman, chair of Yisrael Beytenu, and Bennett, chair of B’Yachad, have pledged not to rely on the Arab parties to form a government. They would have to break that promise to achieve a majority in the Knesset. Both previously sat in a short-lived government with Ra’am from 2021 to 2022.

Eisenkot himself has made statements that would appear to rule out a coalition with both Ra’am and the more Palestinian nationalist Joint List.

The former party, considered more moderate, includes a Jewish former lawmaker from the mainstream Yesh Atid party (which is now part of Bennett’s B’Yachad) on its list, and has won plaudits from right-wing parties in the past.

At the same time, its chairman, Mansour Abbas, has avoided calling Hamas a terror organization or calling for its destruction, despite condemning atrocities the group committed against civilians in its October 7, 2023, invasion and massacre in southern Israel. Additionally, one of the party’s MKs, Iman Khatib-Yassin, initially denied evidence that children had been killed or women raped during the attack; she later apologized for her remarks, saying she didn’t mean to minimize or deny “the terrible acts against women, babies, or the elderly.”

Commentators have also suggested the possibility of a unity government, with some combination of parties from both blocs. But opposition parties have vowed not to work with Netanyahu or the ultra-Orthodox parties; Bennett and Golan have ruled out including any member of the current government.

The prime minister made the opposition’s supposed alliance with the Arab parties a key feature of his campaign, including with large banners depicting AI-generated images of Joint List and Ra’am leaders alongside the leaders of the anti-Netanyahu bloc, and a slogan reading: “It’s the right, or Palestine.”

The opposition, meanwhile, has assailed the current coalition for working with its two ultra-Orthodox parties to codify long-standing exemptions granted to most Haredi men from mandatory military service. Some key spiritual leaders of these two parties identify as non-Zionist, expressing a theological objection to the state’s claim on Jewishness for reasons unrelated to regional conflicts.

Despite the lack of clarity as to forming a new government, Channel 12 reported on Wednesday that the anti-Netanyahu parties are looking to use their overall majority of seats — including the Arab parties — to replace Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana, a member of Likud, and thus take control of the incoming Knesset’s agenda.

The parties have not yet settled on a candidate, according to the report, though Yisrael Beytenu MK Oded Forer, and Elazar Stern of Yashar, were named as options being discussed.