CommentIn Israel, democracy and the Arabs have won

The Western left, including some foolish left-wing Jews, likes to refer to Israel as an “apartheid state”. The current parliamentary elections have shown just how unfounded this defamation is. For there, the Arabs—and with them, democracy—are the big winners.

By Sacha Wigdorovits

Following last Tuesday’s Knesset elections on October 27, it remains to be seen who will govern Israel. With all votes counted, the current governing coalition led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is in the lead with 53 seats; by contrast, the Zionist opposition bloc has only 48 seats.

This comes as a surprise, since most polls had predicted the opposite outcome. It is not surprising, however, that neither the governing coalition nor the opposition has the 61 seats needed to secure a majority in Israel’s 120-seat parliament and form a new government.

The Arab parties were most successful in mobilizing their voters

To do so, the opposition would have to form an alliance with the four Arab parties, contrary to its original announcement. These parties had run as a unified three-party list and as separate lists. With the exception of Yair Golan, the leader of the “Democrats” party, all other opposition leaders had rejected a coalition with the Arab parties in the run-up to the elections. If they stick to this stance, they will have little choice but to call for new elections. This is because the four Arab parties collectively hold 19 seats in parliament: eleven for the three-party list and eight for the “Ra’am” party, which ran independently.

Israeli Arabs, who turned out to vote in unprecedented numbers, are thus among the big winners of the parliamentary elections in the Jewish state. So is the “Yashar” party led by former Chief of the General Staff Gadi Eisenkot, which won 21 seats in its first election. The united three-party list, together with “Ra’am,” will become the third-strongest force in the Knesset. With 21 seats, “Yashar” will be the second-strongest faction in the Israeli parliament.

Likud and Beyachad are the big losers

“Likud” remains the largest party. However, Prime Minister Netanyahu’s party lost 5 seats and now holds only 27 seats. As a result, it bears some responsibility for the fact that the current governing coalition has lost a total of 15 seats and now holds only 53 seats in the Knesset, down from 68. This means that, under the current circumstances, it can remain in power only on an interim basis until a new government takes over or until new elections are held.

On the opposition side, the biggest loser is “Beyachad,” the party alliance led by former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid. The number of “Beyachad” seats in Parliament has been cut in half, from 24 to 12.

Accusations of apartheid have been reduced to absurdity

The election results not only leave the question of Israel’s future unanswered; they also forcefully refute the accusation—maliciously spread by the Western left—that Israel is an apartheid state.

The term “apartheid,” which is associated with decades of discrimination against South Africa’s black population, is invoked by opponents of the Jewish state in reference to the unequal treatment of Israel’s Arab population.

Given that more than 80 percent of Israeli Arabs voted in the recent Knesset elections and won about one-sixth of all parliamentary seats, this accusation of discrimination has been definitively reduced to absurdity.

Democracy has been proven

On the contrary, the participation of Arab voters shows that democracy in Israel is working. This is evidenced, for one thing, by the fact that Election Day passed without incident. Above all, however, this is illustrated by the high overall turnout in this pivotal election: 77.9 percent of all Israeli citizens rushed to the polls on October 27 to cast their votes—about 70,000 of them returned home from abroad to do so. By comparison, voter turnout in the 2023 Swiss federal elections was 46.7 percent.

In addition to the four Arab parties, democracy is therefore also the big winner of the Israeli elections. This is true regardless of whether the opposition ultimately decides to form a governing coalition capable of securing a majority with the Arab parties.

Sacha Wigdorovits is President of the Fokus Israel und Nahost association, which runs the website fokusisrael.ch. He studied history, German and social psychology at the University of Zurich and has worked as a US correspondent for the SonntagsZeitung, was editor-in-chief of BLICK and co-founder of the commuter newspaper 20minuten.