This morning I sent out a positive article regarding the Israel election. This article is definitely more negative. You be the judge ! Nancy
Netanyahu’s party calls record Arab turnout the ‘Islamization of Israel’
– Special to The Washington Times –What to know
- Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s party faced setbacks in discrediting Israel’s recent elections.
- Arab parties gained 19 seats in the Knesset, a significant increase.
- Mr. Netanyahu’s bloc lost 15 seats in the elections.
RAHAT, Israel — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his backers suffered major setbacks Sunday in their bid to discredit last week’s elections in Israel when police released two suspects accused of bribing voters and a top judge said the irregularities cited, even if substantiated, would not be enough to overturn results.
Mr. Netanyahu and his Likud party supporters said last week that Arab-led parties “stole” the elections in which Mr. Netanyahu’s bloc lost 15 seats in the 120-member Knesset.
After an unprecedented turnout in the Oct. 27 elections, the Jewish state’s minority Arab population is set to control 19 seats — enough, on paper at least, to form a ruling coalition with supporters of either Mr. Netanyahu or top challenger Gadi Eisenkot, an opposition leader whose Yashar bloc is competing to form the next government.
In reality, though, adding Arab lawmakers to a coalition will likely mean losing supporters elsewhere. Both Jewish blocs say they will not deal with the Arab parties, but Mr. Netanyahu has gone further, suggesting it would be treasonous of Mr. Eisenkot to form a coalition with Israel’s Arab parties.
Likud said the record turnout that yielded 19 Arab-controlled seats — a net gain of nine — was driven by foreign actors seeking the “Islamization of Israel” and the overthrow of right-wing rule.
“They stole the elections in Israel,” the party said in a statement posted last week on Mr. Netanyahu’s account on X.
However, Supreme Court Justice Noam Sohlberg, head of Israel’s elections committee, said in a video released Sunday that the committee’s position “is that even if the suspicions are substantiated, this would not undermine the integrity of the electoral process or the election results as a whole.”\
Likud cited a handful of cases, including the arrests of three activists found carrying envelopes of cash before the polls opened. On Sunday, however, a judge released one of the men subject to unspecified conditions, and another was ordered held on house arrest. The detention of a third activist was extended for two days.
The 19 representatives of the Arab parties will wield power whether or not they are invited into a coalition. When the new Knesset is sworn in Nov. 10, the opposition and the Arab parties are expected to combine their votes to take the speaker’s chair from Likud and to force an independent inquiry into the security failures before the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack that precipitated the war in the Gaza Strip.
Mr. Netanyahu has resisted that inquiry for two years.
Israel will be navigating a complicated political landscape as the U.S. is poised for its own watershed midterm elections Tuesday.
Arab-Israelis constitute about 21% of Israel’s 9.8 million citizens, or about 2.1 million people.
National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir demanded the arrest of Arab party leaders Thursday. He called the vote “a political October 27.” Other Israeli hard-liners have accused Qatar and Turkey of orchestrating voter fraud efforts.
Qatar categorically denied interfering, calling the claims an “excessive obsession.” Qatar and Turkey are both American allies. About 8,000 American troops serve at Al Udeid Air Base outside Doha, the hub for U.S. Central Command. Turkey belongs to NATO.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog called for a thorough investigation but warned against tarnishing “an entire community that sought to exercise its right to vote.”
The three political activists accused of bribing voters were arrested, along with four others, in Negev Bedouin towns in the days leading up to the elections. Police said they seized thousands of dollars in cash and ballot slips bearing the logo of Ra’am, also known as the United Arab List, an Islamist political party.
A Bedouin resident said activists have for years handed poor households 200 to 300 shekels, about $65 to $95, before elections. The money is delivered as help, he said, and the voter is expected to return the favor at the ballot box.
The Arab parties did not invent it, he said. “We learned it from Shas,” he said of the ultra-Orthodox party in Mr. Netanyahu’s coalition. “I don’t understand what all the fuss is about.”
Rahat has surpassed Nazareth as Israel’s largest Arab city, with about 78,000 residents. Turnout locally hit 82%. Turnout across Arab towns reached about 80%, exceeding the national rate of 77.9% for the first time and standing 27 points higher than in 2022. More than 800,000 people voted for the two Arab parties, a 60% increase over the last election. Bedouin citizens make up almost 40% of the Negev’s population, and roughly 60% of them are younger than 18.
“For the first time I am seeing this kind of turnout in a Knesset election,” said Talal al-Krinawi, the mayor of Rahat. “The elections are clean and real. They are mounting an onslaught on Bedouin society.”
He supports looking into every claim but said residents lined up from early morning without being paid.
In Kuseife, where cars backed up along the road to the polling station Tuesday, Aatef Abu Ajaj observed the scene. He teaches Middle East studies at Ben-Gurion University and grew up there. Bedouin towns usually reach 90% turnout in local elections but 40% or less in national ones, he told The Washington Times.
“This traffic jam is a statement by the people, who come out and shout that we want a good life, we want crime dealt with, we want recognition for our villages, and we want to be part of this country.”
Mansour Nasasra, who teaches politics at Ben-Gurion University, said voting became a tool for defending villages and stopping house demolitions. “It’s also another way of political protest, if you want,” he told The Washington Times.
Young activists in the unrecognized villages told Mr. Nasasra before the vote that they would turn out to change the government and “tell Ben-Gvir and others that we will stop you politically, because you have been demolishing our houses for the last four years.”
Beersheba recorded a voter turnout of 65.8%, well below the national figure. Otzma Yehudit, Mr. Ben-Gvir’s far-right party, took 21% in Netivot, where it finished second, and won seven seats nationally after campaigning in the Negev on a platform of cracking down. His ministry reported more than 5,700 demolition and enforcement orders in 2025, up 81% from three years earlier.
“If it’s illegal, we’ll demolish your home,” he told a Knesset committee in July. “I’m doing what hadn’t been done for 40 years.”
Two weeks before the vote, bulldozers leveled about 80 structures at al-Dahiya, displacing some 400 people. Mr. al-Krinawi said a mosque was demolished along with the structures and about 250 of the displaced were children. The government does not recognize the village or about three dozen others in the Negev, none of which have electricity, running water or bomb shelters. Engineers who live in them rely on Starlink, the satellite internet service owned by Elon Musk’s SpaceX, for connectivity.
Al-Dahiya is socially and economically part of Rahat, Mr. Nasasra said. “They have families in Rahat. They do their shopping in Rahat. They send their kids to study in Rahat. But the government didn’t sign the document that they are part of Rahat’s borders.”
“We are holding our ground and setting up tents like back in the day,” said Hisham Abu Wadi, 30, a resident.
Gaza is 15 miles to the west. Twenty-one Bedouin citizens were killed in the Oct. 7 attack and the rocket fire that followed, and six were taken hostage. Four were from one Rahat family, seized while working on a kibbutz at the border. Mr. al-Krinawi said that many houses in his city still lack shelter.
Residents of Tarabin, a Bedouin town, said days before the vote that they would not back Mr. Netanyahu. “Abu Yair — a nickname for Mr. Netanyahu derived from his son’s name, Yair — will not get our votes,” one said, blaming Mr. Ben-Gvir’s appointment.
Mr. Netanyahu has promised to keep him. “We are together, and we are staying together,” he told Mr. Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich on Wednesday.
Mr. Eisenkot accused Likud of an “orchestrated and organized campaign to delegitimize the election results.” He has said the Arab parties will not join his government, and has not said whether he would govern with their votes from outside it.
Mr. Herzog must name someone to form a government by Nov. 11, the day after the Knesset convenes. Whoever is named has 28 days to form a government. If no one succeeds, Israelis vote again.
“The rise in voting is because of one thing: the failed minister who did damage in the Negev, Ben-Gvir,” said a relative of one of the men arrested over the cash. “So, of course, the Bedouin went out to vote. There was fear for their lives.”
