Joint List chief: ‘We’re ready to pave the way to oust the Netanyahu government, and send them home’

Joint List chairman Yousef Jabareen says any party seeking to replace Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government will have to engage with his faction, as partial election results show Arab-led parties potentially winning an unprecedented 19 Knesset seats.

“Anyone who wants to offer a substantive and genuine alternative to Netanyahu’s government of bloodshed will have to talk to us in order to pave the way for the change that the Israeli public longs for,” Jabareen tells Channel 13.

“It is either continued racism, continued exclusion and continued supremacy, or genuine Jewish-Arab partnership,” he asserts.

Speaking separately to Ynet, Jabareen vows to “leverage our political power to advance the values we believe in,” adding that his party is prepared to “pave the way for ousting the government of Netanyahu, Ben Gvir and Smotrich, and send them home.”

With 76.8 percent of ballot boxes counted as of 10:58 a.m., partial results published by the Central Elections Committee give 54 seats to Netanyahu’s bloc and 47 to the bloc led by Yashar chairman Gadi Eisenkot. The two Arab-led parties are projected to win a combined 19 seats — a historic high — with 13 for the Joint List and six for Ra’am.

The results underscore the pivotal role Arab-majority parties could play in determining the next government, as Gadi Eisenkot’s Zionist anti-Netanyahu bloc, including Naftali Bennett’s B’Yachad, Avigdor Liberman’s Yisrael Beytenu and Yair Golan’s Democrats, cannot secure a Knesset majority without either their internal or external support.