In Israel election, Palestinian citizens weigh fear against disillusionment With polls at a knife’s edge, Palestinian citizens of Israel weigh principle against strategic voting in a system stacked against them. Occupied East Jerusalem – Laila Atamneh, 19, remembers her parents arguing at the dinner table every time Israel would hold an election. Among the rare Palestinian Jerusalemites who are Israeli citizens and eligible to vote, her father would make the case for casting a ballot for an Arab
10/22/26 • 53 Mga view
With polls at a knife’s edge, Palestinian citizens of Israel weigh principle against strategic voting in a system stacked against them.
Occupied East Jerusalem – Laila Atamneh, 19, remembers her parents arguing at the dinner table every time Israel would hold an election.
Among the rare Palestinian Jerusalemites who are Israeli citizens and eligible to vote, her father would make the case for casting a ballot for an Arab-led electoral list. Her mother, by contrast, always abstained.
“She thinks it feeds into the idea that Israel is a democracy and Palestinians have the same rights here – only to get extremely humiliated, and then get one of the worst governments ever, and be surrounded by fascists,” said Atamneh, who hails from the neighbourhood of Beit Hanina.
On October 27, the 19-year-old will vote for the first time in Israel’s general election. She sees it as a responsibility to the millions of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip, who will have no say in the next Israeli government but, she believes, bear the brunt of its occupation, ethnic cleansing and genocide.
“I feel like I have to be these people’s voice,” said Atamneh. “Not that one person is really capable of that much – but if this gives them one percent hope, then I will do it.”
But Atamneh, who speaks Arabic, said she struggles to follow election coverage in Hebrew. “I personally feel excluded from everything, that we’re not even a part of the discussion,” she added. “It feels like none of the parties really address our generation of first-time Palestinian voters.”
Her mixed feelings capture the mood among Palestinian citizens of Israel – about a fifth of its population – ahead of the election. Few believe the system will serve them, but many fear another government led by Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, who has overseen Israel’s genocidal war against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip since 2023. Whether fear outweighs disillusion may decide a contest in which opinion polls suggest neither Netanyahu’s far-right-led bloc nor the self-styled Zionist opposition alliance will be able to govern without Ra’am and the Joint List, the two Arab-led parties.
And if no one can form a majority in the 120-seat Knesset, new elections will be called – keeping the current Netanyahu government, the most hard right in Israel’s history, in place until then.
For Palestinian citizens of Israel, the animating force of the election is the acceleration of the hard-right assault on Palestinian rights, livelihoods and land in recent years.
Mga Kaugnay na Artikulo
