The results of Israel’s election tell us that Benjamin Netanyahu lost but was not defeated.
He will feel that what he proposed to the Jewish voters - to continue the wars, to maintain the state of emergency - has been accepted.
Netanyahu told voters that the 7 October 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel was not his fault, and that blame lay on the military instead.
In his telling, Netanyahu stepped in after the failure of the military leadership and made Israel much safer than it was before 7 October. I think it resonated.
Of course, Netanyahu and his allies lost votes compared to the last election in 2022. His coalition appears to be down between eight to 10 seats and short of a majority needed to form a government.
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But he has helped force his opponents in the so-called “change campaign” into a minority themselves.
The main event in this election, and it is a positive one, is not only the success of the Joint List alliance of Palestinian parties, but the gains of Mansour Abbas’ Raam, though to a lesser extent.
Together, they are predicted to get as many as 19 seats in Israel’s 120-seat parliament, the Knesset.
The Jewish secular liberal camp has two choices: live forever under Netanyahu... or come to an understanding with the Arab parties and voters
That is a record for Arab participation and important for the internal relations of Israel’s Palestinian political community.
Abbas broke from the Joint List seeking opportunities to ally with Jewish Zionist parties and secure gains for the Palestinian community. He has had some success in recent elections doing so.
But, importantly, the Joint List has received maybe twice the number of votes that Raam did.
Israel’s Palestinian minority - which makes up 20 percent of the population but is almost always frozen out of Israeli governments and politics - is now centre stage and has shown agency.
Even if Netanyahu forms a unity government with opposition leader Gadi Eisenkot, the Palestinian bloc will have succeeded because it is unlikely that such a coalition could include Jewish supremacists Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich.
I think the Palestinian voters went to the polls in such huge numbers mainly in order to drive away these two racists.
But perhaps more importantly, the Palestinian citizens of Israel have taught the liberal secular Zionist camp a lesson.
These opposition parties were under the illusion that they could win a majority by being nationalistic, opposing the ultra-Orthodox community and associating themselves with the military.
Now it is very clear that they cannot win an election without the Arabs. Only the Palestinian citizens of Israel can save them from a new Netanyahu government, because if the Palestinians hadn’t have voted in such large numbers then the prime minister’s coalition would have won with relative ease.
This may open an understanding among the Jewish secular liberal camp, that has openly rejected allying with Palestinian parties, that it has two choices: live forever under Netanyahu or someone of his ilk or come to an understanding with the Arab parties and voters.
It is too early to say what will happen. The success of the Palestinian parties could prompt the right wing to do everything in its power to make sure Arab voters cannot impact elections like these ever again. That is certainly what Smotrich, Ben Gvir and probably Netanyahu will be thinking right now. Maybe they will find ways to do this.
Or, the liberal secular camp can turn away from its racist heritage.
This would not be any ideological shift. Israel’s liberal secularists are not going to now understand that Zionism is a settler-colonial project and that Israel has wronged the Palestinians.
But they could abandon their hostility for practical reasons, and in history sometimes the big changes occur when interests are involved and not when ideology changes.
Israel's Palestinians send a message
These results also tell us something important about the Palestinian community in Israel.
Abbas and his Ra’am party have essentially told voters that their priority must be to work with the Israeli state and establishment political forces to secure material gains for their community.
This involves a degree of decoupling Israel’s Palestinians from those suffering in Gaza, the occupied West Bank and elsewhere.
Abbas essentially told Palestinian citizens of Israel: we are too weak to save our brethren elsewhere, the Israeli state is too strong, but what we can do is secure ourselves rights, education, development and security.
The Joint List, on the other hand, has not abandoned the moral responsibility it feels towards Palestinians under occupation and in the diaspora.
The Palestinians will have to work out what they will do with their new political power
On Tuesday, Palestinian voters, by two to one, appeared to back the Joint List’s vision of their identity and priorities.
Yes, we want better services. We want, of course, less discrimination against us. We want better housing. We want a safer society with no organised crime and murders, which authorities have allowed to pervade Palestinian communities in Israel. But we cannot give up our identity as Palestinian.
This means that if and when the Joint List and Abbas sit down with Eisenkot and Bennett to discuss any kind of cooperation, the issue of Palestinian identity and Palestinians under occupation will be on the table.
Notably, during the election campaign, Yousef Jabareen, chair of the Joint List, set out four conditions to support a government to replace Netanyahu: combat crime, develop and expand Palestinian communities, secure civil rights for Arabs, and establish a clear process that works towards an independent Palestinian state.
The Palestinians will have to work out what they will do with their new political power. For the first time they may have a say in who the next prime minister will be.
So I think they will have to ask themselves: how do we phrase demands that could be accepted by the Jewish Zionist parties and public without giving up our identity and our basic demands for Palestinian statehood and an end to the occupation?
It will be a challenge for both Israel’s secular centrists and its Palestinian citizens.
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