In this Monday, Feb. 23, 2015 file photo, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu walks past a window overlooking the Old City of Jerusalem during statements to the press.Sebastian Scheiner/The Associated Press
With just two weeks left for the parties to campaign, a crucial election in Israel remains too close to call. But in an unexpected turn of events, it is the country's Arab voters who could determine the outcome. Most Israelis today could never imagine Arab Israelis as part of a government.
When Israel's founders convened in the late 1940s to decide on an electoral system for the new state, they agreed on having a proportional representation system with a very low threshold for any party to have a member of its list of candidates elected to the legislative assembly (soon to be named the Knesset). The reason, they said, was that the electorate was so divided, hailing from so many different countries and walks of life, that they needed to give everyone a chance to have a say in the 120-seat assembly.
As a result, 21 parties ran for office in the inaugural 1949 election and 12 of them garnered at least 1 per cent of the vote, enough to have at least one member in the parliament. No party, not even founding father David Ben Gurion's Mapai party (precursor to the Labour Party), received enough votes to form a majority.
Indeed, though the electoral threshold has risen over the years – it will take 3.5 per cent of the vote to elect any of a party's candidates in this election – not once has a party been elected with the requisite 61 seats needed for a majority.
This latest election will be no different. According to the most recent public opinion polls – and in Israel they tend to be quite accurate – Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud Party is running neck and neck with the opposition Zionist Union, which is an amalgam of the Labour Party led by its new chief, Isaac Herzog and the smaller Hatnuah Party of former foreign minister Tzipi Livni. Both Likud and the ZU are expected to capture only about 24 seats, with the next closest parties taking only about half that many.
As is so often the case, the winning party will be the one that can put together a coalition of 61 or more seats.
As first glance, most observers will tell you, Mr. Netanyahu has the better chance of assembling a coalition of right-wing, centrist and religious parties than Mr. Herzog and Ms. Livni have of sculpting a majority from the left, centre and religious.
But that's because they don't count the independent Arab vote, gathered together in this election under the banner of one electoral bloc known as the Joint List. That list is tied for third place in the polls along with the extreme pro-settlement Jewish Home party, led by Naftali Bennett, and the centrist Yesh Atid party of Finance Minister Yair Lapid. While Mr. Netanyahu can count on the support of the settler party's dozen or so seats, Mr. Lapid's similar-sized band will be willing to sit in government with either Likud or the ZU.
As for the 12 or more seats coming from the Joint – mostly Arab – List, they remain a non-factor, for now. Most Israelis today will tell you that Arab parties are "never" part of an Israeli government. But that's because they don't know their history.
While no Arab party has been in a coalition government for the past 37 years – not since Yitzhak Rabin's first Labour-led government was defeated by Menachem Begin's Likud bloc in 1977 – that hasn't always been the case.
Indeed, in that inaugural 1949 election, an Arab-Israeli party – the Democratic List of Nazareth – received 7,387 votes, or 1.7 per cent of the total, enough for two members in the Knesset, and Mr. Ben Gurion brought them into the country's first coalition government.
Truth to tell, that Arab party was a satellite of Mr. Ben Gurion's Mapai party, whose constitution allowed for only Jews to be party members. But, in bringing the Nazareth party into government – and he made it and three other Arab parties elected in subsequent elections a part of every government he formed – the prime minister said he wanted to prove that Jews and Arabs could co-exist peacefully and productively.
All in all, Arab Israeli parties were in 16 of the first 17 coalition governments – only Golda Meir declined to include them.
In more recent times, Arab Israeli parties supported Mr. Rabin's 1992 government even though they were not part of the coalition. Instead, the five seats held by the Arab Democratic Party and Hadash formed what became known as a blocking vote, preventing the opposition from toppling the government even when it had a fraction more votes in the Knesset than the government. This proved vital to the passage of the Oslo Accords, a peace plan between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization.
While Arab parties in today's Joint List have said they do not want to be part of any Zionist coalition, some of their leading members have recently raised the prospect of forming a blocking vote, should the opposition ZU be able to form a coalition that comes close to a majority.
"Our goal is toppling the right," said Ahmad Tibi, who holds the number four spot on the Joint List that is expected to elect at least 12 members.
By the way, Mr. Netanyahu's controversial address to the U.S. Congress next week is unlikely to have a major effect on the March 17 election in Israel. His remarks, which will focus on the threat of Iran's nuclear program, are being delivered over the bitter objection of the Obama administration. But, in Israel, for every potential Likud supporter who decides not to vote for Mr. Netanyahu because of his imperilling Israeli relations with the United States, there will be one other Israeli who elects to support the Prime Minister for daring to thumb his nose at Washington.