Israel's opposition must break its promise, rely on Arab parties to oust Netanyahu - opinion

ByDAN PERRYOCTOBER 30, 2026 15:54

As in previous elections, the opposition can only point to a majority in the Knesset when the seats won by Arab parties are included in the electoral count. This was the case with the parliamentary camps that backed Yitzhak Rabin in 1992, Ehud Barak in 1999, and Yair Lapid in 2021.

The precise circumstances of those earlier governments differed, but the underlying principle was the same: Arab citizens vote in Israeli elections, their representatives sit in the Knesset, their seats count toward the parliamentary balance, and they do not approve of the Likud and its racist, ultra-nationalist fellow travelers.

However, there is one spectacular complication. Leading opposition politicians promised during the campaign that they would not form a government dependent on Arab parties. Having (pathetically) accepted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s contention that such dependence would somehow taint a government, they may now find themselves unable to take office without violating their solemn commitments.

It’s understandable, up to a point. Gadi Eisenkot, Naftali Bennett, and other opposition leaders reassured right-wing voters that replacing Netanyahu would not mean relying on parties with positions on the Palestinian conflict and Israel’s national identity that many of those voters find objectionable. It is hard to dismiss this as meaningless campaign rhetoric.

Which campaign promises will the opposition break?

But the opposition also made a far more consequential promise, one that constituted the very essence of its campaign: to replace Netanyahu and reverse the direction in which his government has taken Israel.

If the only parliamentary route to do so requires Arab support, the two commitments cannot both be honored. The question is whether fidelity to a tactical electoral pledge should outweigh the broader responsibility that opposition leaders themselves placed at the center of the election.

The practical circumstances make the dilemma especially unusual. Arab political leaders have indicated that they are prepared to support an alternative minority government from outside the coalition, without demanding cabinet positions.

Their support would not be unconditional, but their concerns are very reasonable: representatives of the Joint List have raised demands regarding crime in Arab communities and the Palestinian question.

Whether breaking the promise can be justified raises a question philosophers and statesmen have debated for centuries. Promises underpin political legitimacy, yet circumstances can make honoring them more damaging than breaking them. The question is whether fidelity to one’s word outweighs responsibility for its consequences.

Niccolò Machiavelli argued in The Prince that rulers cannot always honor commitments when circumstances change and doing so threatens their interests. The German sociologist Max Weber offered a more ethically serious framework in Politics as a Vocation, contrasting an ethic of conviction with an ethic of responsibility. The former emphasizes fidelity to principle; the latter demands accountability for foreseeable consequences. 

Edmund Burke approached the question differently. In his famous 1774 address to the electors of Bristol, he argued that representatives owe voters judgment, not blind obedience. A politician who clings to an earlier position despite recognizing its harm may be sacrificing the very judgment voters elected him to exercise.

History provides examples in which the tension involved matters considerably more serious than an abandoned tax pledge or an inconvenient coalition agreement.

Abraham Lincoln entered office in 1861 explicitly assuring the Southern states that he had no intention of interfering with slavery where it already existed. Yet in 1863, he issued the Emancipation Proclamation, declaring enslaved people in areas then in rebellion to be free.

Possibility of Netanyahu remaining prime minister

This brings us to the disastrous possibility that honoring their promise leaves the opposition clearing the way for Netanyahu to stay in power. The man who was in charge on October 7, who risks lives every day by blocking an inquiry meant to prevent a similar disaster, who is undermining Israeli democracy and enabling the outrages of the haredim to continue, who is on trial for corruption, and who is dedicated to sowing divisions, will get away with it and continue causing the nation his destructive harm.

There is also a rather delicious irony in any notion of honesty and the main quality in any context featuring the prime minister. Netanyahu’s political career has featured repeated lies, distortions, betrayals, and prevarications.

This is a person who promised that Itamar Ben-Gvir would never be a cabinet minister; who promised (in a court affidavit!) to recuse himself from interfering with the courts; who enthusiastically backed term limits; who called on prime minister Ehud Olmert to resign over a mere police investigation (while he himself is actually on trial); and who broke his promise to rotate the premiership with Benny Gantz.

Hilariously, he is also the man who, having lost the election in 2021, negotiated with Mansour Abbas to bring the Arab party Ra’am in a government based on a completely new political alignment. It was only the veto by Bezalel Smotrich that blew up that machination – and yet today he dares argue that Ra’am (led by an Arab who has emphatically accepted Israel as the Jewish state) is beyond the pale.

Arab citizens constitute roughly one-fifth of Israel’s population, vote under the same electoral laws as Jewish citizens, and elect representatives to the same parliament.

Their parties hold positions on the Palestinian conflict and national identity that many Jewish Israelis oppose, and those disagreements would create genuine difficulties for a government dependent on their support. But they must be embraced if this country is to have any sort of future. They will never sing “Hatikva” with great gusto, but they have not caused damage and have been remarkably loyal citizens.

Boycotting them is not just stupid politics for the opposition; it is devastating to the future of Israel as a functional country.

Besides, Netanyahu has long relied on ultra-Orthodox parties whose demands concerning military service, education, and public spending have profound consequences for Israel’s security, economy, and social cohesion. Some of those parties are non-Zionist, yet their seats are treated as an entirely normal component of the parliamentary arithmetic.

The opposition should stop overthinking, get out of its own way, thank the Arabs for their support, and get on with saving the country.

The writer is the former Cairo-based Middle East editor and London-based Europe/Africa editor of the Associated Press, the former chairman of the Foreign Press Association in Jerusalem, and publisher of danperry.substack.com.

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