Is Israel’s Arab Joint List breaking up ahead of March elections?
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu campaigns in Nazareth for the Arab vote.
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Israeli Arabs make up 21%, or about 2 million, of Israel’s approximately 9.2 million citizens. These numbers do not include the more than 5 million Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza, who are not Israeli citizens and do not vote in Israeli elections.
About 90% of the Israeli Arabs who take part in elections vote for members of the Arab Joint List, the coalition of four Israeli Arab parties in the Knesset.
In the March 2020 elections, the Joint List got 15 seats — the most in its history — out of the 120 seats in the Israeli parliament. That may not seem like much, but it is — Israel has lots of small parties, and postelection politicking to put together a majority coalition can come down to just a handful of seats. The Joint list is the third-largest faction in the parliament.
