Could this election usher in a new era of meaningful Palestinian political participation?

Tuesday’s election took place amid deep polarisation in Israeli society between those seeking to keep Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in power and those determined to remove him. This divide may make little difference to Palestinians on fundamental issues concerning the future of their cause, but it could bring immediate changes to their living conditions, both within the Green Line – the 1949 armistice line separating Israel from the territories it occupied in 1967 – and beyond it. These changes chiefly concern a reduction in the current escalation, which Netanyahu’s government has fuelled since taking office in 2022, particularly following the events of 7 October the following year.

What could mark the beginning of a more profound change, however, is the scale of Palestinian participation in this election. Preliminary estimates put Palestinian turnout at around 80 per cent; between 1999 and 2022, it ranged from a high of approximately 75 per cent in 1999 to a low of 44.6 per cent in 2021. What prompted Palestinian citizens of Israel to turn out in such large numbers? Did elites play a role in the success of this mobilisation? More importantly, what role might the Palestinian vote play in future decision-making within a state where Palestinians constitute roughly one-fifth of the population, yet which makes no attempt to conceal its drive to entrench religious purity?

A study examining Palestinian towns within the Green Line suggests that Palestinian voter turnout in Knesset elections is closely linked to political considerations. It found a substantial decline in turnout in the elections following the Al-Aqsa Intifada at the beginning of this century, attributing the decline to political exclusion and the repercussions of the events of October 2000, when Israeli police killed 13 Palestinian protesters, for relations between Palestinians and the state.

By contrast, Arab turnout rose markedly in the first election after the Oslo Accords, held on 29 May, 1996, reaching approximately 77 per cent, compared with 69.7 per cent in 1992, an increase of 7.3 percentage points. Palestinian participation in the current Knesset election is being described as historic, with preliminary turnout figures reaching 80 per cent.

Palestinian citizens of Israel have faced........

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