The Joint List’s success in the 2020 election was entirely unprecedented. The two Arab parties that competed in the April 2019 election (Hadash-Ta’al and Ra’am-Balad) won 10 seats, while the Joint List (composed of four essentially Arab parties: Hadash, Ta’al, Ra’am and Balad) won 13 seats in September 2019. Now the Joint List has 15 seats. Similarly, there was a noticeable rise in the percentage of eligible voters in Arab and Druze villages, who actually went out to vote. Their number increased from 49% in April to 59% in September to 65% now.

Two of the most prominent characteristics of this success are the desire, which many young Arabs have, to integrate into Israeli society, resulting in more Arabs voting, and a real increase in the number of Jews, who voted for the Joint List. According to the party’s own data, some 20,000 Jews voted for it. This amounts to about half a seat.

In Tel Aviv-Jaffa, for instance, 8,446 people voted for the Joint List in September, while 11,410 voted for it now. This represents an increase of 35%. The political explanation for this is the merger of Meretz, Israel’s left-wing party, with the Labor and Gesher parties, which was done to ensure that none of the three parties fell below the electoral threshold. But this merger also meant that diplomatic issues like the peace process were barely raised at all in the Labor-Gesher-Meretz campaign, nor were attitudes toward Arab society. Furthermore, the merger pushed former Knesset member Issawi Freij, an Israeli Arab from the town of Kafr Kassem and one of the most prominent voices in Meretz, out of a realistic slot on the list. In an article he published March 4 in Haaretz, Freij claimed that the 15 seats won by the Joint List are evidence of the Jewish left’s failure to serve as a bridge to the Arab public.

Ilan Harel, 24, of Herzliya, tells Al-Monitor that he voted for Meretz in the past because its platform reflects his positions regarding peace and equality, but also because it could have had some impact on the government. He says now that Meretz has joined together with a center-left party with certain right-wing elements — referring to Orly Levy-Abekasis and Gesher — “I could not come to terms with it. The Joint List represents the Arab public, but it also represents the ideological struggle for equality that every Democrat should support. There are times when it is difficult for me to listen to some of the things said by the leaders of the Joint List. I served in a combat unit in the [Israel Defense Forces]. Still, our positions about needing to end the occupation as part of a process to reach peace with the Palestinians and grant them their independence are completely identical.”