📍 Israel’s ruling parties target Arab polling stations as Palestinian votes could decide who rules next

Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich’s Religious Zionism parties plan to station nearly 2,000 activists as observers at polls in Arab areas in the Oct.27 Knesset elections, according to The Times of Israel.

👉 The deployment is ostensibly needed to flag irregularities in voting and counting - despite Israel’s Central Elections Committee maintaining that electoral fraud, if it occurs, is marginal.

Critics speculate the move is designed to intimidate Palestinians with Israeli citizenship. Likud fears a strong turnout among Palestinians could tip the election against Netanyahu. The party has already failed in its bid to disqualify the two main Palestinian-led lists, Ra’am and the Joint List, which polls project may win around 14 seats combined.

Since neither Netanyahu’s coalition nor the main Jewish opposition parties are expected to secure the 61 seats needed for a majority on their own, that makes Arab turnout a potential game-changer.

🔶 Ra’am helped tip the balance toward an anti-Netanyahu government in the 2021–22 coalition

🔶 Likud placed cameras in Arab communities in 2019 in a move widely seen as an attempt to deter voters

🔶 Netanyahu rallied his base in 2015 by warning that Arab voters were “heading to the polls in droves”

🔶 opposition figures, including Naftali Bennett, have since pledged to form a Zionist unity government without relying on Palestinian parties

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