Three of the four major Arab parties, Hadash, Ta’al, and Balad, failed to reach an agreement on running together in a Joint List ahead of the upcoming elections after Ta’al leader MK Ahmad Tibi rejected the proposed Knesset slate for the alliance on Sunday.
The collapse of the negotiations could change the dynamics of how the Arab parties run in the October 27 elections. Polls have shown that the parties could win more seats if they run together than if they run separately.
The fallout came after the internal Arab-led Reconciliation Committee, which helped form the Joint List in 2015, presented how the alliance would be divided.
Hadash, Ta’al, and Balad had empowered the committee to determine the final makeup of the joint slate to avoid prolonging negotiations after disagreements.
The proposal showed the Ta’al party receiving the second and ninth slots on the slate.
“There has been a breakdown in the talks,” a Hadash spokesperson told The Jerusalem Post, following the announcement of the Reconciliation Committee’s proposal.
Both Hadash and Balad leaders had welcomed the proposal and agreed to work in accordance with it, leaving Tibi as the sole party leader rejecting the proposed slate.
According to a KAN News report, two members of the Reconciliation Committee announced their resignations after the breakdown of negotiations.
In the proposed agreement, Hadash chairman, Yousef Jabareen would first on the list followed by Tibi
The committee’s proposal stated the order of who would be on the list, with the newly appointed Hadash chairman, Yousef Jabareen, first on the Joint List and Tibi in the second slot.
Jabareen replaced longtime party leader MK Ayman Odeh in leading the Hadash list after primaries were held in May.
The Hadash party stated that it welcomed the decision of the Reconciliation Committee and that, throughout the process of negotiations for the Joint List, “we made every effort to reach the broadest possible agreement, out of a commitment to respecting the public’s wishes.”
“Now, the responsibility lies with all of us to move forward without delay and prepare for the joint campaign, increase voter turnout among the Arab public, and ensure the strongest and broadest political representation possible,” Hadash added.
Jabareen stated that only “a large and strong Joint List will work with all its might to send the Netanyahu/Ben-Gvir/Smotrich government home.”
Jabareen told the Post last week that Hadash, Ta’al, and Balad had been negotiating the order of the reestablished Knesset slate, navigating “certain difficulties that arose over the parties’ demands.”
He also told the Post that the door would remain open for the fourth main Arab party, Ra’am, to join the three-party alliance until the deadline for parties to submit their Knesset lists, despite stalled negotiations with the party.
Even if negotiations between the three parties had not failed over the slate, Ra’am, led by MK Mansour Abbas, had not agreed to join the list.
His refusal had marked a setback in efforts to reunite all of the major Arab parties under a single electoral slate.
Currently, the two Arab-Israeli parties in the Knesset are Ra’am and Hadash-Ta’al. The latter is a reduced Joint List that agreed to run together in the 2022 election.
The Balad party, which is not in the Knesset, continues to fail to pass the electoral threshold in polls.
Arab parties achieved their greatest electoral success when running together
In past elections, the Arab parties had the greatest outcomes when running together, with a peak in success in the 2020 elections when the Joint List received 15 seats.
In 2021, the Ra’am party joined the coalition during the Naftali Bennett-Yair Lapid government, marking the first time an Arab party was a formal member of a governing coalition.
Though Ra’am seeks to be part of the coalition again, most opposition parties in the bloc seeking to replace Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have rejected the possibility of forming a government with any of the Arab parties.
Regarding the relations with Abbas, Jabareen also told the Post last week that there were currently no ongoing negotiations with Ra’am to join the three-party alliance.
The last major development for the four-party alliance was in January, when all the leaders, including Abbas, signed a commitment to work toward reestablishing the Joint List bloc.
Since the agreement was signed, Abbas had said he would form an alliance with the other Arab parties as a purely technical bloc, which could split up in the Knesset after the elections, opening the possibility for Ra’am to be part of a coalition again.