Like a goal-line pileup in football, with half the players signaling a touchdown and the other half celebrating a defensive stop, everyone is claiming victory in this week’s Israeli election. There was a strong showing against the incumbent government, but not the decisive victory the opposition had hoped for. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu points to the fact that his Likud party remains Israel’s largest. His opponents point to the fact that his governing bloc has lost its parliamentary majority, dropping from sixty-four seats in the 2022 election to just fifty-three today. Did Netanyahu win? Did Netanyahu lose? As with a goal-line pileup, everyone is convinced the call should go their way. Meanwhile, those of us watching from the stands are all waiting for the referee’s signal, unsure of what exactly is going on in the field.
For those not conversant in the intricacies of Israeli parliamentary politics, a brief primer is in order. First and foremost, we should note that unlike her middle eastern neighbors, where democratic freedoms are constrained if present at all, Israel actually held an election – a fact the world would do well to remember. That said, unlike the United States, where we vote directly for individual members of Congress, Israelis vote for political parties. Those parties receive seats in the Knesset, Israel's 120-member parliament, in proportion to their share of the vote. To govern, a prime minister must assemble a coalition of parties commanding the support of a majority of the Knesset – sixty-one seats. As the votes from this week’s election have been counted, Netanyahu and his coalition allies stand at fifty-three. The Jewish-led opposition parties, led by Gadi Eisenkot, stand at forty-eight. Israel's Arab parties – the topic to which we will return and the biggest story of this election – have won nineteen seats, a remarkable showing, nearly doubling their previous representation. Math has never been my strong suit, but this much even I understand: There is no clear winner. Neither side has sixty-one. Neither side can presently form a government on its own. The election may be over, but the overtime game of coalition politicking has just begun.
In order to avoid another election, another round of recriminations, and another season of political paralysis that would only deepen the fractures within Israeli society, there are several possible coalition paths forward. Netanyahu and his opponents could find a way to form a national unity government, setting aside their differences in the interest of the country. Alternatively, either Netanyahu or the opposition could find a way to enter into agreement with Israel’s Arab parties, bringing their nineteen seats into the governing coalition. The difficulty of the former option is that the opposition parties have ruled out serving in a government led by Netanyahu, a man whom they hold with visceral antipathy and distrust. By the same token, the difficulty of the latter option is that with the exception of Yair Golan and his Democrats, the major Jewish-led opposition parties have rejected the possibility of being in coalition with Arab parties. It is one of the prickliest paradoxes of Israeli democracy: Israel’s Arab citizens have voted in extraordinary numbers, sending nineteen representatives to the Knesset, yet the very parties whose votes could break the political deadlock are the parties that much of Israel’s political establishment refuses to consider as governing partners.
How did we get here?
The exclusion of Arab parties from Israeli governing coalitions has a long history. During Israel’s early decades, Arab political lists affiliated with the ruling party participated in governing coalitions but enjoyed little autonomy. In the 1990s, Yitzhak Rabin broke with prevailing practice, relying on Arab parties to sustain his government, albeit from outside the coalition. In 2021, Mansour Abbas and his Islamist Ra’am party became the first independent Arab party to formally join the Bennett–Lapid government. The irony worth remembering here is that it was Netanyahu himself who, earlier that same year, first explored cooperation with Abbas in an effort to preserve his own governing majority. But whatever flexibility existed in the past, the political boundaries have hardened, especially since October 7th. The massacres, the hostages, the war, the continuing grief and fear – trust has been shattered. For many Israeli Jews, including some who once supported Jewish-Arab political cooperation, the very prospect of such a partnership raises profound anxiety. How can an Israeli government possibly include non-Zionist parties? Agree or disagree, and uncomfortable as it may be to talk about, any discussion of the political realities of Israel today must acknowledge the raw nerves, exposed wounds, and deeply rooted fears of the Israeli psyche. October 7th is not merely an event in Israel’s recent history, but a trauma through which Israeli society sees its present and future.
The upshot of it all is stark. Israel faces what some Israeli journalists have called a “dilemma from hell.” Either its leaders find a way to cross the red lines they have drawn, or the country returns to the polls yet again, an outcome nobody wants and that all agree threatens to further fracture Israeli society. At the heart of this political dilemma lies a question as old as the Jewish people itself: Can the Jewish family find room in its household for those who do not share its Jewish identity? Can we secure our own destiny while acknowledging the presence of another? Can we remain faithful to who we are without casting out those who are also part of our family?
As this week’s Torah reading opens, our parashah tells of the birth of Isaac, the long-awaited son of Abraham and Sarah. After years of infertility, the child of their dreams finally arrives. Isaac, we know, is not Abraham’s first son. Years earlier, Sarah, unable to conceive, had given her Egyptian maidservant Hagar to Abraham, and Hagar had borne him a son, Ishmael. When Isaac is born, the Torah tells us that Sarah sees Ishmael as a threat to her newborn son. Rabbinic commentators imagine all manner of Ishmael’s behavior giving rise to Sarah’s concern: idolatry, immorality, even violence. Some commentators understood the emerging conflict between Isaac and Ishmael as a dispute over their father’s inheritance, with Ishmael threatening Isaac’s position as heir to Abraham. One need not be a rabbi or have an advanced degree in family systems to appreciate the complicated dynamics at play or to understand why Sarah might have perceived Hagar and Ishmael as a threat to her own son’s future.
Whatever Sarah saw, whatever she feared, the conclusion she reached was unequivocal. “Garesh ha-amah ha-zot v'et b'nah. Cast out this woman and her son.” The language is telling. No matter that the boy is of Abraham’s stock, he is linguistically transformed into an outsider. Troubled as Abraham may have been, he heeds Sarah’s voice, and Hagar and Ishmael are sent off into the wilderness. As mother and child wander, God hears their cry. They are saved, but the household has been broken. The first Jewish family unable to find a way to live together under one tent.
It is one of the great counterfactuals of Jewish history: What if that first family had found a way? What if they had created a household in which Isaac’s covenantal destiny did not require Ishmael’s expulsion? What if they had found a way to protect Isaac without casting Ishmael into the wilderness? The implications extend far beyond that first family. After all, Jewish, Christian, and Islamic traditions have long associated Ishmael with the ancestry of the Arab peoples. What if the traditions inherited by generations of Jews and Arabs had begun not with expulsion, but with coexistence? What might have happened if the patriarch of the Jewish nation had not listened to Sarah? What if Abraham’s tent had been large enough for Isaac to remain Isaac, for Ishmael to remain Ishmael, and for both to know that they belonged? What a different history we all might have inherited!
When speaking of the Israeli-Arab conflict, Jews love to invoke Abba Eban’s famous quip that the Arabs never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. The rejection of the 1947 UN partition plan, the failed negotiations at Camp David in 2000, the missed possibilities of numerous peace initiatives – all were moments when, from the Jewish perspective, our counterparts lacked the political will, vision, or courage to take a step toward coexistence. Looking at the crossroads at which Israel finds itself today and the paths its political leaders are reluctant to take, I cannot help but wonder whether future generations may turn Eban’s observation back on us. Will history judge the present moment as one when an extraordinary opportunity presented itself, and we were the ones lacking the imagination or courage to seize it? For a variety of reasons, and I will list but three of many, this could be an opportune time for a coalition to include Arab voices.
First, consider what such a coalition could mean for Israel’s internal political health. Israel’s social fabric, no different from our own, is strained by division and polarization. For all the faults of Israel’s political system, and notwithstanding the arguments against such a partnership, imagine the message that an unlikely coalition might send to the Israeli public. Israeli coalition politics have always involved compromises among parties with dramatically different priorities. Religious parties negotiate exemptions from military service and funding for yeshivot. Parties enter governments without agreeing on every question of national policy. Why should negotiations with an Arab party be categorically different? Not all Arab parties are the same, and the differences are consequential. Mansour Abbas has condemned the atrocities of October 7th and acknowledged Israel’s Jewish character. Surely a country as creative as our “Start-Up Nation” could devise an agreement that safeguards Israel’s security and its Jewish national character while giving Arab representatives substantive influence over the issues most directly affecting their communities.
Second, consider what such a coalition could mean for Israel’s external political standing. Israel, if you haven’t noticed, is increasingly isolated on the world stage, facing profound international criticism, including accusations of apartheid and systematic discrimination. A coalition that includes Arab political representatives would not, by itself, settle the Palestinian question, erase inequality, or address every accusation laid at Israel’s feet. Those determined to hate Israel will continue to find reasons to do so. But imagine what it would mean for the Jewish state’s democratic promise to be reflected not only in the right of Arab citizens to vote, or in the oft-cited number of Arab pharmacists in Israeli society, but in Arab representatives sitting at the very table of government. Israel must make its decisions according to its own best interests. But what happens in Israel does not stay in Israel. And for those of us who spend so much of our lives defending Israel in the public square, it is a delicious thought to imagine the dividends such a coalition might have – the message it would send, the assumptions it would challenge, and the possibilities it might open for how Israel is seen by the world.
Third, finally, and perhaps most importantly, consider what such a coalition could mean for Israel’s Arab citizens themselves. Israel’s Arab community faces serious challenges: violent crime, inadequate policing, gaps in infrastructure, educational disparities, housing shortages, and obstacles to economic development. Arab citizens deserve effective representative government no less than anyone else. People invest in what they believe belongs to them. People take responsibility for institutions in which they are stakeholders. As the old saying goes, nobody in the history of the world has ever taken a rental car to the car wash. If we want all Israeli citizens to see the state as their shared home, what better way to cultivate that sense of ownership than by giving their elected representatives a role in governing – not as members of the opposition, but as coalition partners? For too long, the exclusion of Arab parties from governing coalitions has been treated as an immutable fact of Israeli political life. Perhaps this week’s election has presented an opportunity to question what has long been taken for granted and to imagine a different future.
Of all the articles I have read and the conversations I have had about the election this week, the most clarifying comment came from an Israeli friend when I asked him what he made of it all. His answer was striking in its simplicity. “If everybody keeps the promises they made before the election,” he told me, in reference to the vows not to enter coalition with Arab partners, “then we’re going to have another election.” His observation brought to mind a storied institution in Jewish law: hatarat nedarim, the annulment of vows. For all the seriousness with which Judaism regards vows, oaths, and promises, Jewish law also recognizes, as reflected in the spirit of Yom Kippur’s Kol Nidrei, that human beings sometimes make commitments without fully appreciating what the future will bring. Through a carefully prescribed process, in service to a greater good, certain vows may be released upon the discovery of circumstances not adequately considered when they were made. And what good is greater than the future welfare of the Jewish state? They say you have to break a few eggs to make an omelet. Perhaps, in Israel's present circumstances, a few political promises will have to be broken to make a promising future.
It is not my place to advocate for any particular coalition arrangement. I do not live in Israel, serve in its military, pay its taxes, or vote in its elections. It could be the opposition entering into a coalition with Arab parties. It could be Netanyahu doing so. It could be a national unity government. Different as each scenario may be, each would require political leaders to reconsider commitments made before the election. Each would involve difficult compromises, but each also holds the possibility of breaking the deadlock and opening new horizons for Israel’s future. A crossing of red lines, a challenging of long-held assumptions, a reconsideration of what is politically possible. What some have called a dilemma from hell might instead be, as Dr. Tehilla Schwartz Altshuler of the Israel Democracy Institute has suggested, a dilemma from heaven: a political crisis that becomes an invitation to break entrenched patterns of exclusion and division, a moment calling for political imagination across the spectrum.
It is the great “what if” of our people, from the first Jewish family to the present day. What if Abraham had found a way to keep Hagar and Ishmael in the fold? Tragic as it is to contemplate what might have been, the Torah invites us to imagine what might yet be. We cannot change Abraham’s decision, but we can decide what kind of tents we build today. May Israel’s leaders have the wisdom to recognize the possibilities before them, may its citizenry have the grace to give their leaders room to act, and may all have the courage to build a Jewish and democratic state capacious enough for all its citizens. And may we all be blessed with besorot tovot, good tidings, from Israel and from all those who seek a place in the tent of Abraham.