The High-Stakes gamble for the future of Arab-Jewish politics

JVL Introduction

A fascinating if at times opaque account of political manoeuvring among Arab parties and on the left in the forthcoming Israeli elections.

In 2020 Arab parties running as the Joint List won 15 seats in the Israeli Knesset. It has fragmented since then, but three of of four parties will berunning together again this year.

In June Standing Together, founded in 2015 as a binational organisation and social movement within Israel, said it would form a political party, A Place for All, to compete in the elections as well.

In this article on his blog Pessimism of the Will, Shmarles Shmenchner tries to make sense of what is going on. At stake is what role Palestinian citizens can play in the future of the struggle and what role they might have in the overall Palestinian struggle for national self-determination.

Spoiler alert: as we post this, news has just come in that A Place for All’s leaders have “decided to withdraw from the election ‘out of a sense of responsibility and to avoid wasting opposition votes,’ after their attempts to join the newly revived Joint List failed”.

This article was originally published by Pessimism ot the Will on Sun 6 Sep 2026. Read the original here.