BAQA AL-GHARBIYYE,  Israel — One week after the general elections, Israeli Arab politicians are still trying to recover from the results. Both Ra’am and Hadash-Ta’al succeeded getting into the parliament, but Balad failed to pass the Knesset-entry threshold. The Arab electorate, some 21% of Israel’s population, now have only 10 Knesset members representing them. These future 10 Knesset members now represent some 21% of Israel’s Arab population. In the previous Knesset, non-Jewish lawmakers held 14 seats.

With such disappointing results, no wonder that most senior Israeli Arab politicians have been quiet on social media ever since the elections. Only Balad leader Sami Abu Shehadeh tweeted Nov. 4, “That’s the way it is in the Jewish demographic state. Whoever votes for equal and justice for all citizens becomes the enemy.”

The three Arab parties ran separately at the Nov. 1 election, for the first time since the voter threshold was raised to 3.25%. At the election before that, Balad ran together with Hadash and Ta’al, and before that, the four parties all ran together on the Arab Joint List ticket.

Opinion polls before the elections all predicted low voter turnout in Arab towns and villages. Thus, the Arab parties knew what to expect running separately. Panicked over the possibility of not passing the threshold, Hadash-Ta’al ran through the week prior to the election a save-us-campaign titled “Gevalt” ("Have merci on us," in Yiddish). The campaign seemed to work, and voters started quitting Ra’am in favor of the two other Arab parties. Panicking in his turn, Ra’am head Mansour Abbas countered that campaign with his own “mother of all Gevalts” plea, warning that the party was in danger of being left out of the parliament.