Arab-majority Hadash, Ta’al and Balad parties agree on joint run after Tibi comes back in

The Arab-majority Hadash, Ta’al and Balad parties announce that they have agreed to run on a joint list in the upcoming Knesset election.

Hadash chairman Yousef Jabareen will head the list, followed by Ta’al chief Ahmad Tibi and Balad chair Sami Abou Shahadeh.

The three parties have been in talks for weeks, but Tibi had been holding out, as he sought better terms for himself and a second lawmaker from his party. Ta’al is seen as the least popular of the three parties.

Balad is a secular, hardline, nationalist party, while Ta’al and Hadash are seen as more moderate, with the latter also being socialist.

As Ta’al held out on joining the joint list, it reportedly explored a potential merger with Makom Lekulanu, a fledgling left-wing party that prides itself in being a true partnership between Arab and Jewish activists.

However, internal polls indicated that such a party would barely cross the electoral threshold, leading Tibi to agree to join Hadash and Balad.

The three parties last ran together in 2021, when the then-Islamist Ra’am party headed by Mansour Abbas decided to break off and run independently.

They still kept the name, Joint List, which was born when the four Arab-majority parties first ran together in 2015.

Polls have indicated that Arab Israelis would be more likely to vote in higher numbers if the parties representing them run together as opposed to splintering into several different factions.