Of all the political parties being dragged against their will to a third round of Israeli elections, only the Arab Joint List is rubbing its hands in anticipation, perhaps not with displays of glee, but at least with great satisfaction. The Joint List, an alliance of four Arab parties, garnered 13 of 120 Knesset seats in the September elections. Ahead of the March 2020 voting, it is gearing up for an even bigger showing.

A short reminder: The alliance was formed in 2015 after Yisrael Beitenu leader Avigdor Liberman sponsored legislation raising the electoral threshold to 3.25% in a bid to exclude Arab parties from the legislature. Liberman, who over the past year has become the “kingmaker” of Israeli politics, portraying himself as the only responsible adult in the current political chaos, has for years based the identity of his Yisrael Beitenu party on hatred of the state’s Arab citizens, in general, and of their elected representatives, in particular. In hindsight, he definitely deserves the title of “founder of the Arab Joint List.”

With the raising of the electoral threshold, not only did the Arab parties not disappear from the political map, they joined forces to become the third-largest Knesset faction and a political bloc that can no longer be ignored. It happened first in the 2015 elections for the 20th Knesset, when the Hadash, Balad, Ra’am and Ta’al parties, which together had 11 Knesset seats, united and ran together on one ticket, garnering 13 seats. Ahead of the April 2019 elections for the 21st Knesset, internal squabbles led to its dismantling. Hadash and Ta’al reached understandings at the last minute and ran together, as did Ra’am and Balad, which realized that in order to cross the bar they had to join forces despite their tremendous ideological disparity. The Hadash-Ta’al list won six seats but Ra’am-Balad barely won the four seats required to get into the Knesset. In other words, together they barely got 10 seats and lost three of their 2015 seats.

Luckily for the Arab lawmakers, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave them another chance. Attentive to the harsh criticism of their voters, who punished them for dismantling by staying home, the four parties settled their differences and reunited. On their way to the ballot box in September, they benefitted from significant “help” from Netanyahu, who kept up his incitement against them with unfounded accusations that they had “stolen” the April elections and with a failed attempt to deploy cameras at polling stations in Arab communities. Masses of angry Arab voters rushed to the ballot boxes in September and restored the Joint List to its position as the third-largest Knesset faction.