Israel’s Arab list weighs up a kingmaking role

colony. “I’d like to see Netanyahu disappear for many, many years. The most important issue is relations with the Palestinians,” she said.

Gideon Yaacobi, 60, complained: “There is never any real change. They call it right, left, nothing changes on issues like the Palestinians.”

The new premier will have to deal with daunting domestic and foreign policy challenges including Iran’s nuclear programme, repairing ties with the United States and maintaining economic growth.

And then there are the tricky issues of ties with the Palestinians following the collapse of peace talks last year, instability left over from the 2014 Gaza war and a looming legal challenge at the International Criminal Court.

Around six million voters were eligible to take part in the election for Israel’s 120 members of parliament.

There were 25 lists battling it out for seats, in a reflection of Israel’s diverse political map, but only 11 were forecast to enter the Knesset.

Under Israel’s proportional representation system, any party can enter parliament if it receives more than 3.25% of the vote.

The task of forming a new government does not automatically fall to the party with the largest number of votes, but to the party leader with the best chance of forging a coalition with a parliamentary majority of 61.

President Reuven Rivlin has seven days to entrust a party leader to forming the next government. — AFP

UNITED for the first time and set to become Israel’s third largest parliamentary, Israel’s Arab parties may play a key role in forming the country next government.

The Joint List grouped Israel’s main Arab parties, including representatives from across the political spectrum, alongside the Jewish-Arab communist party Hadash.

The head of the list, Ayman Odeh, a 40-year-old lawyer, was well aware of the “great responsibility” upon his shoulders. Odeh is a member of Israel’s Arab minority who number more than 1.3-million and account for some 20% of the population of the Jewish state.

Arab Israelis are the Palestinians who stayed on their land when the state of Israel was established in 1948.

The Arab parties united this year after parliament approved a law raising the threshold for entry to the Knesset from two to 3.25% of the national vote.

At the time, the move was widely denounced as a ploy to keep the Arab parties out of parliament.

Instead it forced them to unite in a move Odeh said would allow them to offer a real alternative to main blocs such as the nationalist camp led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud and the centre-left led by the Zionist Union.

“We will be an alternative camp, the democratic camp — where Arabs and Jews are equal partners, not enemies,” he said in an interview with The Guardian newspaper.

But perhaps its biggest impact could come in its role in forming the next government.

Israel’s election system means one party winning an outright majority is rare. The prime minister is not the head of the party that gains the most seats but rather the individual who can form alliances to create a majority coalition.

Predicted to win 13 seats — third behind the Zionist Union and Likud — the Joint Arab List will have to decide whether to take part in a coalition government or to remain in opposition.

While joining with parties that wage war on the Palestinians is out of the question, analysts say the Arab parties could consider teaming up with the Zionist Union.

Although the two diverge over key issues — including the right of return for Palestinian refugees — the Zionist Union and Arab parties could find common ground in seeking renewed dialogue between Israel and the Palestinians.

Although Israel claims Jerusalem as its capital, its position is not recognised by the international community.

Israel’s destiny is also tied up with the Palestinian territories it occupied after the 1967 war: the West Bank, which it took from Jordan, and the Gaza Strip from which it withdrew in 2005. It continues to maintain troops and settlers in the West Bank. — AFP