The Joint List was a historic electoral alliance of Palestinian-majority parties. Ten years after its formation, this experiment in Palestinian unity inside Israel — and its ultimate collapse — shows the need for carefully cultivated alliances.
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Ten years ago, Israel’s four Palestinian-majority parties achieved an unprecedented breakthrough by forming the Joint List — a historic electoral alliance that aimed to bridge the ideological gaps and interpersonal rivalries dividing the community’s fragmented leadership.
While short-lived, this experiment ignited rare political enthusiasm among Israel’s Palestinian citizens who had long yearned for unity and influence. Within five years, the Joint List became Israel’s third-largest party and the most substantial challenge to mainstream Zionist politics.
The List’s influence peaked during Israel’s 2019-2022 political crisis, when multiple inconclusive elections left the country in deadlock. Suddenly, Palestinian lawmakers found themselves in the unlikely position of potential kingmakers — their support crucial for forming any government that could replace Netanyahu’s rule.
A decade after the Joint List’s promising start, Palestinian politics in Israel has fractured beyond recognition. The List’s unified leadership has splintered back into competing factions, paralyzed by ideological divides, strategic disagreements, and personal rivalries — some long-standing and others new. This disintegration fueled Palestinian citizens’ disillusionment with both the Israeli political system and their ineffectual leadership, with voter participation and parliamentary representation plummeting as a result.
And in the streets, a climate of fear prevails. Amid the horrors unfolding in Gaza, Palestinian citizens of Israel watch with demoralized silence. While some have vocally resisted the war, most are afraid to speak out against it, and equally terrified of its potential spread across the Green Line.
Demonstrators call to end the war in Gaza, at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, May 12, 2025. (Flash90)
Demonstrators call to end the war in Gaza, at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, May 12, 2025. (Flash90)
The long road to unity
For Palestinian citizens of Israel, the Joint List’s formation was long overdue. For the first time since Israel’s establishment in 1948, the community could claim a unified leadership with legitimate authority to speak for all.
During Israel’s early years, as Palestinians struggled to recover from the Nakba’s trauma, military rule (1948-1966) deliberately suppressed political organization. The Israeli Communist Party (Maki) eventually emerged as the dominant political force in the 1960s-70s, mobilizing Palestinian voters through its binational framework. Yet while popular, it failed to represent the community’s full ideological diversity.
In the late 1980s, nascent ideological streams were expressed for the first time, when liberal reforms within Israel allowed the foundation of new Palestinian parties like the National Democratic Assembly (Balad). Though fragmented, Palestinian leadership enjoyed unprecedented influence in this era, supporting Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s 1992-95 government — the most liberal in Israel’s history — without being formally included in his ruling coalition.
In the aftermath of the Second Intifada, the fragmented Palestinian leadership was pushed to the margins of Israeli politics, while its natural allies on the Jewish left gradually shrank to electoral irrelevance. Meanwhile, a hardening right-wing bloc tightened its grip on the Knesset, making calls for Palestinian political unity increasingly urgent.
At first, the Palestinian leadership resisted these calls, even as voter apathy grew and turnout declined. The decisive turning point came in 2014, when far-right politician Avigdor Lieberman, then serving as foreign minister, engineered a crucial electoral reform. His proposal to raise the Knesset threshold from 2 percent to 3.25 percent — transparently designed to eliminate smaller Palestinian parties — finally compelled the fractured leadership to set aside its differences in the face of this new existential threat, and form the Joint List.
Members of the Joint List address supporters at the party headquarters in the Northern israeli town of Nazareth, as the exit polls in the Israeli general elections for the 20th parliament are announced on March 17, 2015. (Basel Awidat/Flash90)
Members of the Joint List address supporters at the party headquarters in the Northern israeli town of Nazareth, as the exit polls in the Israeli general elections for the 20th parliament are announced on March 17, 2015. (Basel Awidat/Flash90)
While Joint List leaders saw their alliance as a tactical response to Israel’s new electoral restrictions, its creation sparked an unprecedented wave of grassroots enthusiasm. Most recognized the List wasn’t a cure-all — the growing divide between Palestinian citizens and the Zionist mainstream remained vast. Yet the 2015 campaign kindled genuine hope among Palestinians, particularly as some Jewish-Israeli leftists also envisioned the List as potential kingmakers in a post-Netanyahu center-left government.
The List’s election campaign channeled this energy. Leaders appeared united in joint press conferences, and on billboards in Israel’s Palestinian towns and cities. The results shattered expectations: previously disengaged members of the electorate displayed List merchandise on social media, while volunteer-led get-out-the-vote efforts boosted Palestinian turnout from 56 percent (2013) to 63 percent. Most dramatically, the unified list gained 13 seats — two more than the individual parties had won separately in 2013.
The 2019-2022 crisis
The Joint List’s initial success soon gave way to internal dysfunction, with the Palestinian representatives failing to capitalize on the momentum from their 2015 breakthrough. Ideological clashes and personal rivalries fostered an atmosphere of mutual suspicion that alienated their base culminating in a temporary split in 2019. The consequences became starkly evident in that year’s elections, when voter turnout among Palestinian citizens plummeted below 50 percent — a historic low — and the fractured parties won just 10 seats combined.
Yet Israel’s political chaos between 2019 and 2022, marked by five consecutive elections and an electorate divided almost evenly between pro- and anti-Netanyahu camps, gave the Joint List an unexpected second life. Reconstituted ahead of the September 2019 vote, it immediately regained its 13 seats. Then, in March 2020, it achieved a historic milestone, becoming Israel’s third-largest party with 15 seats — the highest ever for Palestinian representation. Turnout rebounded, while support for Zionist parties among Palestinian voters collapsed from 28 percent to just 12 percent.
Members of the Joint List arrive for a meeting with Israeli president Reuven Rivlin following the results of the general election, at the President's Residence in Jerusalem, September 22, 2019. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)
Members of the Joint List arrive for a meeting with Israeli president Reuven Rivlin following the results of the general election, at the President’s Residence in Jerusalem, September 22, 2019. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)
Crucially, the List expanded its reach beyond its Palestinian base, campaigning in Jewish-majority cities and framing its message around Arab-Jewish solidarity. This outreach, though modest, doubled its Jewish support to roughly 20,000 votes — a narrow but decisive margin that secured an extra seat. For a brief moment, the List proved that a unified Palestinian voice could reshape Israeli politics. But without deeper institutional unity, these gains would prove fleeting.
The Joint List attempted to parlay its newfound influence into forcing the Jewish center-left’s hand. Their calculus was clear: with Netanyahu’s removal requiring their seats, they hoped to extract concessions on Palestinian inclusion. But this strategy misread Israel’s political metamorphosis. What might have been negotiable in Rabin’s era had become unthinkable in the 2020s political climate.
Faced with the prospect of including an anti-occupation, non-Zionist Palestinian bloc into the coalition, the Israeli center-left preferred self-destruction. They chose round after round of costly elections and eventual political oblivion over legitimization of Palestinian political demands.
Then-Blue and White party chariman Benny Gantz meets with Joint List MKs Ayman Odeh and Ahmad Tibi to discuss the possibility of establishing a minority government backed by Israel's Palestinian-led parties, October 19, 2019. (Ofek Avshalom)
Then-Blue and White party chariman Benny Gantz meets with Joint List MKs Ayman Odeh and Ahmad Tibi to discuss the possibility of establishing a minority government backed by Israel’s Palestinian-led parties, October 19, 2019. (Ofek Avshalom)
While critics rightly noted the Joint List’s strategy faced insurmountable barriers in Israel’s ethnonationalist political climate — evidenced by the center-left’s refusal to even consider their most modest demands — this narrow focus misses the coalition’s quieter achievements. The List proved surprisingly effective at unifying the Palestinian community’s fragmented civic and grassroots leaderships. Its establishment lent legitimacy to politicians and associated activists, who could now credibly claim to speak in the name of the entire Palestinian community.
Moreover, the Joint List’s impact extended beyond parliamentary politics, reshaping Palestinian civil society in Israel. Like other marginalized communities operating within neoliberal Western countries, Palestinian citizens rely on a network of NGOs and activist organizations that provide critical services — policy research, advocacy, and grassroots mobilization. But while these groups had always maintained some level of coordination, their efforts were hampered by having to compete with each other for limited resources.
Before the List’s establishment, every decision — which member of Knesset to invite as a speaker, which organizations to partner with — carried the risk of alienating rival factions or jeopardizing funding. The Joint List changed this calculus entirely. By providing a cohesive political framework, it allowed civil society to focus on their work and collaborate without the constant burden of partisan calculations.
We should not minimize the difficult circumstances the Joint List faced, including its exclusion by potential political allies. Nor should we discount the ways Netanyahu and the Israeli right incited against, intimidated, and co-opted the List, contributing to its eventual downfall. But to grow and rebuild unity, Palestinians — and the Israeli left — must also learn from the List’s mistakes.
The Joint List’s experience revealed both the necessity and difficulty of building inter-ethnic partnerships in Israel’s fractured political landscape. While its outreach to the Zionist center proved futile, it overlooked potential alliances with what remained of the Jewish left — particularly Meretz and Labor, whose shrinking bases included members open to equal partnership with Palestinian leaders.
Joint List MK Ahmad Tibi alonside Meretz MK Tamar Zandberg, in the Knesset, in Jerusalem, June 2, 2021. (Olivier Fitoussi/Flash90)
Joint List MK Ahmad Tibi alonside Meretz MK Tamar Zandberg, in the Knesset, in Jerusalem, June 2, 2021. (Olivier Fitoussi/Flash90)
As the Knesset’s third-largest party, the List was well-positioned to breathe new life into this camp, perhaps even assume its leadership. Ayman Odeh, the List’s leader and chairman of its socialist faction, the Democratic Front for Peace and Equality (known for its Hebrew acronym Hadash), made tentative strides in this direction: accepting invitations to speak in Jewish-majority cities, writing op-eds for liberal Israeli outlets, and outlining his vision for a new Israeli “democratic camp” opposed to ethnic hierarchy. But beyond these symbolic gestures, little was done to harness and transform Palestinian electoral momentum into a binational democratic movement premised upon full national and civic equality.
The Joint List experiment showed that true political alliances cannot flourish without careful cultivation. While the List’s leaders shared fundamental objectives, they failed to overcome interpersonal and ideological barriers. The absence of conflict resolution mechanisms, deliberative decision-making structures, and codified power-sharing agreements left the alliance vulnerable to the very ideological and personal tensions it was meant to transcend.
Rather than treating the List as a framework for Palestinian unity and cooperation, its leadership viewed it merely as a technical workaround to Israel’s high electoral threshold. This, perhaps, was the List’s fatal flaw, turning what should have been a transformative platform into a fragile arrangement constantly on the brink of disintegration. Future Palestinian coalition-building — whether within Israel, across the occupied territories, or throughout the diaspora — must learn from this experience: substantive unity requires more than declarations of solidarity, and cannot survive without building strong institutions that would foster consensus, coordination, and cooperation.
A movement in waiting
Israel’s political landscape has deteriorated sharply since the Joint List’s 2022 collapse and the outbreak of war in Gaza. While global attention rightly focuses on Gaza’s devastation, Palestinians inside Israel face escalating persecution — intensified surveillance, arrests, police violence, and suppression of dissent — as Jewish allies are targeted and fragmented.
Attempts to revive the Joint List or forge new “big tent” alliances have stalled. Some of its former leaders proposed splitting the four majority-Palestinian parties into two blocs to clear the electoral threshold, arguing that this would satisfy voters’ demand for unity. But Palestinian voters, who remain highly diverse and as disillusioned as ever with leadership squabbles, are unlikely to rally behind such “technical” arrangements with the same energy they once did.
Recent efforts by the National Democratic Assembly and other parties to unite anti-Zionist factions, while commendable, face the same old strategic, ideological, and interpersonal divisions — gaps that run even deeper among leaders than at the grassroots.
Yet it is precisely at the grassroots where hope remains. Palestinian citizens of Israel, despite systemic discrimination, retain unique leverage: access to Israeli institutions, economic networks, and the ability to disrupt the status quo. Fear and anger currently paralyze mobilization, but these emotions could be channeled into a powerful movement — one that challenges apartheid from within while connecting struggles across historic Palestine and the diaspora.
What’s needed is leadership bold enough to build substantive unity — not just electoral alliances, but a shared vision that bridges Palestinian factions, the progressive Jewish diaspora, and the small but determined anti-apartheid Jewish-Israeli left, without compromising on core demands: an end to the Israeli occupation in the West Bank and Gaza, the dismantling of apartheid, and equality from the river to the sea.
Rida Abu Rass is a Palestinian citizen of Israel and a political scientist originally from Tayibe, now based in Kitchener, Canada.
+972 Magazine is an independent, online, nonprofit magazine run by a group of Palestinian and Israeli journalists. Founded in 2010, our mission is to provide in-depth reporting, analysis, and opinions from the ground in Israel-Palestine. The name of the site is derived from the telephone country code that can be used to dial throughout Israel-Palestine.
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