A decision that could potentially have far-reaching consequences and aid former Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s return to power occurred on Thursday when the Arab Joint List, which is comprised of three parties split up into two factions, Hadash-Ta’al and Balad.

According to the nationalist Balad party, the split occurred due to a dispute over the sixth slot on the combined party’s slate.

Sami Abou Shahadeh, the head of Balad, said it was the other two Arab parties, Hadash and Ta’al, who abandoned him just hours before the deadline late Thursday for submitting electoral lists. He accused them of jettisoning his party in order to ally with a centrist bloc led by caretaker Prime Minister Yair Lapid.

“We saw them announcing the list on television without us,” he said in a Facebook video released Friday. “I think it’s clear it was a political decision.”

Ahmad Tibi, the leader of Ta’al, said they had wanted to run as a Joint List again. “It didn’t work out, and that’s a shame,” he said. “It is a big challenge for all of us, to increase the voter turnout.”

Asked whether the smaller Joint List would support Lapid as prime minister, Tibi said “the issue of recommendations is for later.”

“I’m not even sure we’ll reach that point,” he added.

Arab parties have helped block Netanyahu from returning to power in recent elections, and in 2020 a combined list of four parties had their best showing yet, winning 15 seats in the 120-member Knesset and emerging as the third largest bloc in the assembly.

Last year, the Islamist Ra’am party broke from the Joint List. It only won four seats, but went on to make history by joining the governing coalition, a first for any Arab faction. Without Ra’am, the Joint List won just six seats in last year’s election.

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem & AP)