Israel's October 27 election is structurally deadlocked. Polls show Netanyahu's Likud-led far-right coalition and the Zionist opposition bloc running neck-and-neck, with neither side approaching the 61 seats needed for a Knesset majority. The arithmetic gap can only be filled by the parties both blocs have spent the campaign vilifying: Ra'am and the Joint List, representing Palestinian citizens who constitute roughly 20 percent of the population. The cynicism is bipartisan and total. Netanyahu's Likud ran attack ads warning voters that opposition leader Gadi Eisenkot cannot govern without Joint List's Ahmad Tibi — 'There is no Gadi without Tibi' — while simultaneously, Likud and Itamar Ben-Gvir's Otzma Yehudi petitioned to disqualify both Arab-led lists from the election entirely. The opposition, for its part, publicly rules out governing with Arab parties while quietly understanding that the Joint List's offer of a 'safety net' — declining to vote against a coalition in a confidence motion — may be the only viable path to power. The disqualification campaign collapsed on October 2 when the Supreme Court unanimously overturned the bans on Ra'am and the Joint List, and reversed Hadash's Ofer Cassif's disqualification by 7-2. Balad's Sami Abu Shehadeh withdrew his candidacy the day before, reading the court's likely ruling. Cassif's assessment was blunt: the reversal was 'a political decision far more than a judicial one,' driven by 'fear that they're going to need us.' The court, in other words, protected the pieces the political class will need on the board after the election. Ra'am's evolution is the most structurally interesting subplot. Founded in 1996 as a religiously conservative party, it made history in 2021 by becoming the first Arab party to enter an Israeli government under the Bennett-Lapid coalition. In December 2025, Mansour Abbas separated Ra'am's political decision-making from its religious council. By August 2026, the party selected its electoral list independently for the first time and placed Yoav Segalovitz — a Jewish Zionist, former senior police commander, and former deputy public security minister — second on its slate. Chatham House analyst Yossi Mekelberg calls it 'one of the most interesting parties' of this election cycle, noting Abbas is 'continually reinventing' Ra'am 'without appearing opportunist.' The ultra-Orthodox parties, Shas and United Torah Judaism, are the mirror image of the Arab lists: insiders who became liabilities. Long Netanyahu's most dependable coalition partners, both broke with Likud in 2025 over its failure to legislate a military draft exemption. UTJ left the coalition entirely; Shas quit the government but kept its 11 MKs nominally in the parliamentary coalition before boycotting coalition bills. Opposition leader Yair Lapid accused the government of sending billions 'to the corrupt and draft dodgers,' while Avigdor Lieberman likened Shas and UTJ to the Taliban over their lack of female representation. Each is polling at seven or eight seats — enough to matter, too toxic for anyone to embrace openly. The Joint List's Orly Noy, a Balad candidate and the first Jewish politician voted into the party's top five, offered the clearest strategic read: 'Even if we're excluded, we can still gain concessions from any coalition in return for our support. That might not mean ending the occupation, which of course would be ideal, but there's a lot we can still do that will make people's lives better.' The demands are concrete: a path to Palestinian statehood, combatting violent crime in Palestinian communities, addressing housing discrimination. What emerges is a political system that needs its minority parties to function but has constructed an elaborate performance of rejecting them. Netanyahu would work with Ra'am 'in a heartbeat, if it meant staying in power,' as Mekelberg put it. The opposition would 'accept the support of the party they'd previously vilified without thinking of how that will undermine their government.' The extraction runs in both directions: Arab citizens provide essential votes and coalition math while bearing the cost of delegitimisation, disqualification attempts, and policy neglect. The ultra-Orthodox provide reliable seats while drawing accusations of parasitism. The system consumes its own structural supports.
