Israeli center-left reaches out to Arab voters

“No more, it’s over," Meretz chair Nitzan Horowitz declared, naming activist Ghaida Rinawie Zoabi from Nazareth to the fourth place on the party’s candidate list and former Knesset member Esawi Frej to the fifth. "Meretz is implementing change: Two leading Arab society candidates in the top five slots.”

His motion was approved Jan. 4 in an online session by 80% of the members of the party’s top decision-making body, making Meretz Israel’s only Zionist party with Arab representation at the top. The move was nothing short of amazing, given that just months ago, the party sidelined Frej, its only Arab Knesset member at the time, moving him to 11th place, an unrealistic spot on the combined Labor-Meretz-Gesher slate that ran in the March 2020 elections.

A new wind is undoubtedly blowing from the political center left toward the country’s 21% Arab minority ahead of the March 23 elections. It provides a stark contrast to the prevailing climate of the three previous elections of the past two years, which saw all Jewish parties and candidates distance themselves from Arab voters in a bid to curry favor with Jewish voters and thus oust Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. That tactic backfired, galvanizing an unprecedented Arab turnout in the March 2020 elections.

The outcome has prompted the center-left as well as Netanyahu himself to change course and reach out to Arab voters. Netanyahu, in a strategic about-face, has been stumping for votes in Arab towns in recent weeks and is even said to be considering the appointment of Nail Zoabi, a Muslim Arab from the northern village of Nein, to a top slot on his party’s Knesset list. Zoabi is politically affiliated with the political right, the Likud in particular, and his recent resignation from his job as a school principal could point to a planned Knesset run.