Arab Parties Projected to Win Record 18 Seats as Israeli Turnout Hits Highest Level Since 1999

Israel's Arab-led parties are projected to win 18 seats in the country's parliament, according to exit polls, after participation among Palestinian citizens of Israel climbed to its highest level in decades.

Exit polling from Tuesday's vote indicated that the two leading Arab-led parties, the Joint List and Ra'am, are on track to hold a record number of seats in the 120-member Knesset. Updated figures showed the opposition bloc led by Gadi Eisenkot's Yashar party, a former Israeli military chief of staff, tied at 51 seats with the bloc led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud.

Israel's Channel 12 reported early indications that turnout among Palestinian citizens of Israel was around 80 percent, a figure that breaks the 1999 record. Overall turnout was also historic, reaching 77.7 percent, the highest since 1999, according to the Central Elections Committee. Palestinian citizens make up about 21 percent of Israel's 10 million people and have traditionally voted at lower rates than Jewish Israelis.

Mansour Abbas, leader of Ra'am, also known as the United Arab List, said he hopes the final results will let the anti-Netanyahu bloc, including his party, reach the 61 seats needed to form a government. "With the numbers we have now, there is no government," he told Channel 12. Ra'am currently holds five seats and was part of the coalition that governed Israel from 2021 to 2022. Abbas added that both main blocs approached his party before and after the election.

Alon Pinkas, a former Israeli ambassador, told Al Jazeera that forming a government could be hard for parties such as Eisenkot's, which earlier exit polls had put narrowly ahead, because they pledged during the campaign not to enter coalitions with Arab parties. "There's a price to pay," Pinkas said, because the "Arabs can't be kept outside and only being considered and co-opted when you need their votes." He added that Arab-led lists will make demands a Jewish-led coalition may not support.

Netanyahu and his far-right coalition made last-minute efforts on Tuesday to rally their own supporters, pointing to rising turnout among Palestinian citizens. Arab politicians denounced the tactic as racist and inflammatory. Witnesses said cars carrying Likud flags drove through Jerusalem playing the Islamic call to prayer through loudspeakers and urging people to vote because "Arabs are voting."

On social media, Netanyahu highlighted long lines at polling stations in Arab communities and shared an image he said showed Arab voters, including women in the niqab, waiting to vote. "If we don't wake up now, we'll find ourselves with a government of Mansour Abbas and Ahmad Tibi," he said, naming two leading Palestinian members of the Knesset.

Al Jazeera's Nour Odeh, reporting from Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, described the vote as "an existential moment for Palestinian-Israelis." She said the turnout drew in even voters who would usually boycott elections because they doubted it would change their reality or the systemic discrimination they face. Odeh noted that the Knesset has passed more than 100 laws discriminating against Palestinian citizens of Israel, who also face discrimination in receiving state funds.