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After Gantz, will Israeli Arabs ever return to the ballot box?

Blue and White leader Benny Gantz forming a unity government with Benjamin Netanyahu has deflated the hopes of Arab Israelis of participating in national politics as equals, raising doubts that they will follow the urging of their representatives to take part in future elections.
RAMAT GAN, ISRAEL - MARCH 01:  Benny Gantz, Blue and White Party leader leaves after making a statement to the press on March 1, 2020 in Ramat Gan, Israel. Israelis will head to the polls tomorrow for the third time in less than a year.  (Photo by Amir Levy/Getty Images)

Knesset members have been switching party allegiances and moving from one party to the other. Some parties are splitting, while other parties merge. The jaw-dropping series of events over the last few days has left many voters stunned, not to mention upset. So many election promises tossed aside as a novel coronavirus bears down. Even the most creative mind could not have imagined Blue and White splitting into two factions (Hosen Yisrael, which will retain the Blue and White brand, and Yesh Atid-Telem) and four of its Knesset members switching from one faction to another.

All this transpired because Blue and White leader Benny Gantz swore before the March 2 election that he would never sit in a government with someone under criminal indictment, but has now abandoned the effort to form a government of his own — even though President Reuven Rivlin granted him a mandate to do so — and decided instead to form a government with interim Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. More than 2 million people voted in protest against Netanyahu, hoping that they could prevent him from forming an “immunity government” that would protect him from a trial on the criminal charges against him. This week they learned that they had really voted for a government to extract Netanyahu from his troubles.

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