Palestinian Citizens of Israel: Voting Rights Amidst Systemic Dispossession and Shifting Political Landscape

A campaign billboard featuring Palestinian Israeli lawmaker Mansour Abbas, head of the United Arab List, is visible from a busy road in Haifa on October 12, 2022. For most Israelis, the general election on October 27 presents a choice between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the opposition forces led by former general Gadi Eisenkot. However, for Palestinian citizens of Israel, who constitute 20 percent of the population, the upcoming polls pose a different challenge. As the political mainstream in Israel increasingly leans to the far right, Palestinian citizens are confronting escalating threats to their political and collective rights. Palestinian communities within Israel are experiencing heightened violence, with settlers encroaching on their territories. The recent surge in policing and the militarization of civilian life further contribute to growing anxiety among the Palestinian population. In this environment, the anti-Netanyahu bloc does not appear to offer a path toward policy reversal or significant change. Consequently, many Palestinians are questioning the efficacy of voting in Israeli elections to make any meaningful difference.

Recolonisation of 1948 Palestine

Since the Nakba in 1948, Palestinians who remained in their homes in the territory declared as the new State of Israel have faced a distinct reality compared to Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. Granted Israeli citizenship in 1952, and with martial law lifted in 1966, their participation in politics through voting rights has not insulated them from a pervasive system of dispossession and attempts to alter their Palestinian identity and national belonging. The Israeli state has employed land confiscation and the regulation of education and culture to sever Palestinians from their historical roots and collective past, promoting an "Arab Israeli" identity separate from their Palestinian and Arab national context. Formal citizenship has failed to ensure substantive equality, as Palestinians contend with discriminatory laws, chronic underfunding of essential services, and political and socioeconomic marginalization. Rather than direct violence, the Israeli state has, in many instances, "outsourced" brutality to criminal networks, leading to killings, shootings, bombings, and arson within Palestinian communities, often with a perceived lack of action from Israeli law enforcement. This issue has intensified recently, with organized crime groups acquiring advanced weaponry, allegedly from Israeli army stockpiles or through smuggling, resulting in hundreds of lives lost due to the escalating militarization of organized crime. Concurrently, Israeli settlements adjacent to Palestinian communities have expanded, accompanied by accelerated land seizures. This process of "recolonization," initially observed in mixed cities like Jaffa and Lydd where religious-nationalist settler groups began establishing themselves in Palestinian neighborhoods in 2021, has accelerated since October 2023. In August, Israel's Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich revealed his party's plan to "Judaize" the Naqab and northern Israel, proposing the addition of one million Jewish residents, the establishment of 40 new settlements and numerous farms, and the expansion of existing settlements with hundreds of thousands of new housing units. This initiative aims to extend territorial control models from the occupied West Bank into the Naqab and northern Israel, areas with significant Palestinian populations. There are also indications that the policing of Palestinian towns and villages may increasingly fall under the purview of the National Guard, a force established under National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir. The concept for this force emerged following the May 2021 protests, known as the Dignity Uprising, which occurred across Palestinian communities in Lydd, Haifa, Umm al-Fahm, and other towns and villages. Ben-Gvir has been a proponent of enhancing the state's capacity to quell such unrest. While the National Guard's exact functions and operational framework are still being defined, its potential deployment against mass protests raises serious concerns regarding the right to protest and the safeguarding of democratic freedoms. The government has bolstered settler security squads and integrated them into a wider security framework, fueling concerns about the increasing involvement of armed civilian groups in controlling Palestinian communities. Simultaneously, Ben-Gvir has liberalized access to personal firearms, issuing 300,000 gun licenses since assuming office. These measures collectively normalize civilian policing and intensify the militarization of daily life, reinforcing the unequal distribution of coercive power in a society built upon the dispossession and subordination of Palestinians.

The Palestinian Response

Parties representing Palestinian citizens of Israel, such as the United Arab List (Ra’am) led by Mansour Abbas, have historically contended that parliamentary engagement and support for the anti-Netanyahu bloc could dislodge the far right from power and thwart its settler-colonial agenda. However, the party's own history suggests this premise may be flawed. Ra’am joined the coalition government formed after the 2021 elections, which excluded Netanyahu, but it did not achieve fundamental improvements in the conditions of Palestinian citizens. The coalition was inherently unstable and frequently disrupted by profound ideological conflicts. In 2022, Mazen Ghnaim, a Ra’am member, acknowledged his inability to advance policies beneficial to the Palestinian population, despite his party's participation in the ruling coalition and prior assurances. He also expressed frustration with the criticism he received during visits to Palestinian communities. Ra’am's experience within that coalition highlighted the difficulties of maintaining Palestinian political participation in a government composed of parties adhering to exclusionary nationalist policies. The issue, therefore, transcends Netanyahu himself; Palestinian support for the anti-Netanyahu camp has proven insufficient to translate into meaningful policies that challenge the underlying structures of discrimination and dispossession faced by Palestinian citizens of Israel. While voting might offer a means to decelerate this trajectory, it cannot reverse the deeper societal transformation occurring within Israel. The cultural shift towards what some describe as fascism extends beyond the government and its leadership, becoming increasingly ingrained in social attitudes and everyday life. Nevertheless, the prospect of another four years of far-right rule poses an immediate threat to Palestinian communities and their rights, prompting a decision to vote in the upcoming election. However, Palestinians must recognize that electoral participation needs to be complemented by a more radical political response capable of confronting the structures and ideologies driving this transformation. This necessitates, among other measures, reforming the High Follow-Up Committee for Arab Citizens of Israel and strengthening its connection to Palestinian society through popular committees and grassroots organizing. It also requires a broader commitment to democratization and de-Zionisation across historic Palestine, as part of a larger political project aimed at constructing an alternative future through different institutions, mechanisms, and forms of collective action. Regardless of the Israeli state's assertions, the destiny of Palestinian citizens of Israel is intrinsically linked to that of the broader Palestinian population, a realization that Palestinian political leaders must finally embrace.