President Isaac Herzog faces a consequential decision on Sunday about who should attempt to form Israel's next government, but the real story lies not in the mechanics of coalition-building—it lies in what the current impasse says about how Israel treats its Palestinian citizens. While Gadi Eisenkot has secured endorsements from 67 out of 120 Knesset members during consultations that ended Thursday, he achieved this only because Palestinian-led parties representing a record 19 seats in October's election backed him. Yet Eisenkot has ruled out bringing these parties into government, a position that exposes a fundamental contradiction at the heart of Israeli democracy.
The numbers tell a stark story. The Arab-led parties—the Joint List with 11 seats and the United Arab List (Ra'am) with eight seats—hold the mathematical key to forming a viable government. Eisenkot could secure exactly 61 seats needed for a majority by combining his four Jewish-led parties' 48 seats with the two ultra-Orthodox parties. Ra'am has signaled willingness to join an Eisenkot-led government, while the Joint List offered support from outside. Yet Eisenkot has refused to bring either into government unless they meet conditions including recognizing Hamas as a 'terrorist organisation'—a demand that Ra'am leader Mansour Abbas, whose party was the first representing Palestinians to enter Israeli government in 2021, has declined to accept in those terms.
This creates an untenable situation where Palestinian citizens of Israel are expected to deliver votes but denied a seat at the table. Senior Joint List member Ahmad Tibi captured the essence of the problem when he told The Associated Press that rejecting partnership would prove Israel is 'an ethnocracy, not an absolute democracy for all citizens.' The Joint List framed its endorsement of Eisenkot as answering a 'public demand' to stop Netanyahu's return, yet the party itself harbored reservations about an opposition that had not shown readiness to confront Netanyahu's approach or incitement against Palestinian citizens.
What makes this particularly troubling is that Palestinian-led parties are not asking for unreasonable concessions. They seek guarantees including an end to house demolitions and incitement, action against crime, and a political horizon for Palestinians. These are baseline requests for equal treatment, not separatist demands. Yet many of Eisenkot's allies have opposed reliance on Palestinian lawmakers, while Netanyahu's Likud has threatened that cooperating with Arab-led parties would be 'dangerous to Israel'—language that frames Palestinian citizens themselves as a threat rather than constituents deserving representation.
If Herzog tasks Eisenkot with forming a government on Sunday, he should make clear that including Palestinian-led parties is not merely permissible but necessary to restore legitimacy to Israel's democratic process. Excluding them while accepting their electoral support undermines the fundamental principle that all citizens deserve equal voice. The path forward requires not just a coalition that wins votes, but one that respects the democratic rights of all Israelis, regardless of their ethnicity.