Rise of Palestinian parties in Knesset will redraw Israel’s political landscape

Exit polls indicate opposition leader Gadi Eisenkot will have to work with Arab-Israeli leaders to have a hope of governing

The big gains made by Palestinian parties in Israel’s general election pose an urgent and fundamental challenge to the country’s mainstream opposition: either cooperate with Arab Israelis or hand Benjamin Netanyahu a roadmap to political survival.

In the wake of Tuesday’s exit polls, the leader of the opposition bloc, Gadi Eisenkot, declared them a victory for “Israel’s Zionist national majority” but the real outcome looks as if it will be far more complex than that.

The greatest change between the new Knesset and the old will be the dramatically increased representation of Palestinian parties, which are projected to win 17 to 18 seats, up from 10. That redraws the battle lines on Israel’s political landscape. Arab Israelis will not so easily be sidelined and ignored.

The exit polls gave a narrow lead to Eisenkot’s opposition bloc over Netanyahu’s governing coalition and its supporters, though the prime minister’s Likud party could still be the strongest single party.

If confirmed by actual results, that would give Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, discretion over who he asks first to try to form a government. If one candidate cannot succeed in six weeks, the challenge is passed on to the next option. It could be an extremely long process, and all this time Netanyahu’s coalition would stay on in a caretaker role.

Eisenkot will argue that he commands the bigger overall bloc and has the better chance of negotiating his way to a Knesset majority. To do so, however, he and his partners in the “change” bloc would be obliged to sit down to talk with the Palestinian groupings, the Joint List and Ra’am (an acronym for the United Arab List).