Senior officials of Arab parties in Israel have told Al-Monitor that the Joint List will be revived to run a single Arab list in the Sept. 17 elections for the 22nd Knesset. According to various assessments, the parties will within two weeks resolve the disputes that had led to the party disbanding in January. The effort to reunify was expected, which was why lawmakers from Hadash, Ta’al, Balad and Ra’am voted last month in favor of dissolving the 21st Knesset after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu failed to form a new government.

The political center-left, mainly the Blue and White, had hoped that at the least Hadash and Ta’al, which aspire to Jewish-Arab political cooperation, would have voted against Netanyahu’s proposal to disband the Knesset. In that case, Netanyahu would have had to return the mandate for forming a government to President Reuven Rivlin, who might have then asked Netanyahu's rival and Blue and White Chair Benny Gantz to try his hand at it. True, the four Arab parties would probably not have provided the majority needed to prevent the Knesset from dissolving even if they had voted against it, but they could have created a semblance of commitment to Jewish-Arab political unity against the political right. The latter, obviously, did not happen.

The results of the April 9 Knesset elections demonstrated to the Arab parties that running separately, in two blocs — Ta’al and Hadash on one ticket, Balad and Ra’am on the other — had weakened them. The Knesset dissolving and scheduling new elections has provided them a golden opportunity to rectify their mistake. There is, however, a catch: The four Arab parties reunifying will come at the expense of a joint Arab-Jewish run for the Knesset. Although Ayman Odeh and Ahmad Tibi, the leaders of Hadash and Ta’al, respectively, have spoken eloquently of political cooperation with the Jewish “liberal camp,” at the decisive moment, they opted to reunite with Balad.

At the end of May at Gantz’s invitation, Odeh had addressed an anti-government rally in Tel Aviv. Ahead of the event, he tweeted, in Hebrew, “The struggle against Netanyahu’s attempts to destroy the democratic public space is a joint struggle by all democratic forces. An alternative to a corrupt and destructive regime will not be possible without broad cooperation among all citizens, Jews and Arabs.” In an interview with Al-Monitor after the rally, Odeh said that the die had been cast and asserted, “From now on, what is needed is a courageous partnership between true leaders.” His meaning was clear. Odeh believed that his days of being ostracized were over after being invited to speak as an equal at an opposition protest, so the path was now clear for Jewish-Arab cooperation, to strengthen the left-wing bloc and benefit the country’s 21% Arab minority. Actions, however, speak louder than words.