The main reason for the dramatic increase in the number of Arab voters in the Sept. 17 election was the desire of Israeli Arab voters to take revenge on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the polls for his incitement against them. The leaders of the Joint List — a unified slate of predominantly Arab parties — even say openly that the Likud and the prime minister’s incitement campaign and the attempt to depict them as election stealers moved voters to flock to the polls. “Listen Abu Yair (meaning Netanyahu), incitement has a price,” tweeted Joint List Chairman and Knesset member Ayman Odeh on the morning of Sept. 18. In another tweet the next day, Odeh reveled in the Joint List’s ability to determine who would be charged with forming the next government. “For your information, the balance of a scale in Arabic is bidt al-kaban,” he wrote.

Seemingly, it’s quite logical that the Joint List would recommend to Israel’s President Reuven Rivlin to charge Blue and White party leader Benny Gantz with forming the government. But when other political calculations are added to the equation, it’s not clear that this will happen. Recommending Gantz, that is, realizing the will of the Israeli Arab voters to take revenge at Netanyahu for incitement against the Arab public, has a political price for the Joint List. Thus, it intends not to recommend anyone and will choose to wait for the second round, with the assumption that the initial person recommended would fail in the task of forming a government.

The first reason for not recommending anyone is Balad, one of the parties making up the Joint List. Balad opposes recommending “the generals’ party” — Blue and White. The Blue and White party includes three former Israel Defense Forces (IDF) generals. This hurdle could perhaps be overcome since Balad is only a quarter of the whole list, but there’s another, tactical, reason. A senior source in the Joint List explained in a conversation with Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity: “If we recommend now and the president indeed charges Gantz with forming the next government, he would form a unity government with [Yisrael Beitenu leader Avigdor] Liberman and the Likud. In such a case, none of the demands to benefit the Arab public would be implemented.”

After the election, Gantz spoke on the phone with Odeh and Arab Knesset member Ahmad Tibi. Blue and White senior Yair Lapid also contacted them and tried to understand “if we can depend on them.” He didn’t get an explicit promise, and it was determined that the leaders of the Joint List would meet with the leaders of Blue and White in the coming days. At the expected meeting, the Joint List leaders would present their demands to Blue and White before they reach a decision to recommend Gantz to the president.