Arab voters in Israel turn out in force, win new Knesset seats
A united effort helped Arabs in Israel claim two more parliament seats that they hope will translate to a better quality of life.
RAMALLAH, West Bank — Nermin Mawaad of Nazareth boycotted the April 2019 Israeli legislative election, but was determined to vote this month.
She told Al-Monitor that because Arab parties ran this time with a unified slate of candidates and because of the dangers haunting Palestinians in the territories in the wake of Washington's peace plan for the Middle East, she felt driven to vote and persuade others to do so too.
These reasons led thousands of Palestinians inside Israel to vote, some of them for the first time in their lives. As a result, the Arab-majority Joint List political alliance won 15 seats — two more than it got in the September elections and five more than it won in April — in the Knesset, Israel's parliament.
This was Israel's third legislative election in less than a year, after repeated failures to form a consensus government.
