Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spent election day running a parallel campaign — not against his rival Gadi Eisenkot, but against Palestinian citizens of Israel exercising their franchise. In a series of posts on X, Netanyahu described Arab voters as "Muslim Brotherhood supporters" who were "raiding the polling stations and stealing the elections," and urged right-wing Israelis to vote Likud as "a matter of life and death." The incitement was not spontaneous. Netanyahu posted a photo of a long queue at an Arab-majority polling station and reframed civic participation as invasion. This is a recycled playbook — in 2015, Netanyahu warned that "Arab voters are heading to the polling stations in droves," a line that became one of the most notorious moments in Israeli electoral history. The 2025 version is blunter and more direct. Arab-led party leaders responded in real time. Yousef Jabareen of the Joint List said Netanyahu knew "we can put an end to his bloody reign." Mansour Abbas of the United Arab List called the posts a "scare tactic to mobilise right-wing voters." Sami Abu Shehadeh of Balad turned the framing around, calling the turnout images encouraging and urging continued participation. Beyond rhetoric, Adalah — the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel — reported systemic friction at Arab-majority polling stations: queues moving "very slowly" or stopping altogether, missing Arabic-language ballot slips, and direct attempts to discourage Arab voters from casting ballots. Adalah reported these incidents to Israel's Central Elections Committee and Regional Elections Committees. The structural logic is stark. Netanyahu simultaneously delegitimizes Arab political participation (framing it as theft) while operational barriers slow that participation at the point of entry. Whether coordinated or coincidental, the effect is the same: Arab turnout is cast as illegitimate even as it is made harder. Notably, Netanyahu's stated fear — that Eisenkot would govern with Arab party support — is contradicted by Eisenkot himself, who has explicitly ruled out working with any Arab parties, citing "a lack of shared values." The incitement narrative does not require factual grounding; it requires emotional activation among right-wing voters. This is a zero-sum electoral extraction: one group's democratic participation is framed as another group's existential threat, converting civic engagement into a mobilization weapon. The 20% of Israeli citizens who are Palestinian Arab are positioned not as a constituency to be courted but as a threat to be neutralized.
