Israel, Palestine & the Levant rolling events: Oct 23 on

xp I know people are all about bearing witness but I find this stuff incredibly upsetting.

I don’t think it was mentioned but Humza Yousuf who is Scotland’s first minister has family trapped in Gaza. I am linking this video as I find this content extremely upsetting.

Bernard's mother and family went out of their way to tell me that they would be praying for my family in Gaza. We hugged, we cried, and we promised to re-dedicate ourselves to peace and to be unequivocal; no innocent man, woman, or child should pay the price of another's actions. https://t.co/Vv1fz9gXqJ

— Humza Yousaf (@HumzaYousaf) October 13, 2023

Also, for context on the Kibbutz Be'eri post and those less familiar with the situation of the past 15-20 years (and again disclaimer I am hardly an expert myself): from Ariel Sharon onward, Israeli policy has been increasingly tilted toward a phony sort of "disengagement." In my mind, it traces back to the building of the West Bank wall although that could be simplistic take. But Netanyahu has turbo-charged this idea, basically that Israel could just kind of ignore the territories (at least other than soldiers stationed in the West Bank) rather than engage in any more ongoing negotiations, that the West Bank could continue to develop economically even without full agency or freedom, and that Gaza would be the kind of counterexample (i.e. life would be worse than in the West Bank) as long as Hamas was there. That terrorism could simply be prevented or minimized through "security," the settlements in the West Bank could continue quietly, and most Israelis would just live their lives and not worry.

Netanyahu is also notoriously corrupt and venal, and he has maintained power through a coalition with right-wing settler and religious parties, giving both more power (which also angers the more secular wings of Israeli politics as Israel gradually takes on additional trappings of theocracy, though it is hardly a full theocracy).

Netanyahu also favors his voters. The kibbutzes near Gaza tend actually to be center-liberal to left. They are not Netanyahu voters. There is a strong sense that Netanyahu "neglected" these areas as the girl expressed in her video, and that is also reflected in the sense that he neglected security near the Gaza border. I genuinely do not know whether Netanyahu "allowed" the attack but I seriously doubt it for reasons I stated in the prior thread. I think this was more hubris and stupidity and myopia.

"I don’t think it was mentioned but Humza Yousuf who is Scotland’s first minister has family trapped in Gaza. I am linking this video as I find this content extremely upsetting."

Mentioned this in the last Israel thread.

You can count on one hand the number of European leaders who have talked about Palestinians as human beings

And they’re all backpedaling now given protests and public pushback.

The President of the University of Pennsylvania has released her 3rd or 4th public statement apologizing for letting a Palestinian writers conference take place last month

The President of the University of Pennsylvania has released her 3rd or 4th public statement apologizing for letting a Palestinian writers conference take place last month

people are so fucking gross

Public statements issued by university presidents are generally tailored to a narrow and specific segment of the public, mainly anyone with influence over university revenues or endowments. They are paid to know how to read that room.

Aimless, we know. No offense.

Well, yeah. When you've got Dick Wolf threatening your donations because you let Palestinians into a building named after him...

a name like Dick Wolf must never be besmirched

Always guarantee the BBC will always be fucked.

The BBC admits that it misled the public about pro-Palestinian demonstrations in the UK. pic.twitter.com/oi4nVf5DN7

— Lowkey (@Lowkey0nline) October 16, 2023

i think about this poem by Palestinian poet Najwan Darwish all the time pic.twitter.com/jv5WOOjobb

— هستی hasti (@youarehasti) October 16, 2023

xp - That retraction was also poorly phrased and could be misleading.

This is @GhassanAbuSitt1, a surgeon who is currently saving the lives of Palestinians in a hospital in Gaza. He's just reported that counter terrorism police have showed up at his house in the UK and harrased his family.pic.twitter.com/GOvl5aQLHG https://t.co/bugmmZPAMM

— Saul Staniforth (@SaulStaniforth) October 16, 2023

That retraction was also poorly phrased and could be misleading.

glad i'm not the only one who thought this

OTM

I know this is old news, but it still blows my mind that the range of Acceptable Opinions on Israel is narrower in the West than it is in Israel.

That Darwish poem is great. Notable that Armenians were just cleansed from Artsakh by Azerbaijan and absolutely no-one in the west cared.

Yup. Armenia could be invaded in the next few weeks btw.

xxp two words: Social Media.

Nuanced discussions are often lacking in the echo chambers of social media and the 24 hour news cycle. The only place where I've seen nuanced discussions about the topic are on platforms that favor more nuanced discussion, such as ILX and (yes, believe it or not) Reddit.

I do wonder if the "outrage economy" of clickbait extremism online and the 24 hours news cycle will finally hit a limit of societal acceptability in western democracies, but I'm not holding my breath, they still make $$$

"We called a pro-palestinian march pro-Hamas. We accept that this was a thing that we said". WTF.

Now here's the weather.

True, I understand in theory how misinformation supposedly works. But I'm finding it extremely challenging to trust some of the news sources being cited and finding myself turning to reddit, and other news sources that I don't normally consult trying to see what areas of dispute exist over even just the factual reporting.

xp

Interestingly enough, a private forum I participate in is completely avoiding talking about this, and honestly it might be for the best.

The ukpolitics sub is overall fanatically pro-occupation and pro-genocide, and they are gradually losing their shit as they observe the public becoming turned off by this stance. Also they are usually witheringly critical of the Tories but have suddenly become staunchly supportive of Sunak and Braverman.

Are you taking about Reddit or something

I have met exactly zero people in between.

To the extent I've talked to people about this, almost everybody I know IRL is "in between" the two positions you describe.

Reddit is a paragon of “nuanced discussion” now. We are truly fucked.

Actually was just thinking about this specific issue in non-Reddit terms which still definitely apply to Reddit. How this conflict is a godsend for the extreme right (and whatever apologists they may have claiming to be “leftist”). Because it so thoroughly divides actual leftists from liberals steeped in realpolitik or whatever they’re on.

a name like Dick Wolf must never be besmirched

There's nothing decent to besmirch. The Law & Order "franchise" is a formulaic, sensationalist pile of shit. All 1,316 episodes of it.

Also pretty depressing how my social media feed was blissfully Ben Shapiro-free until various people decided his thick-headed, one-dimensional take on the Middle East was the voice of reason this past week.

xxp two words: Social Media.

Nuanced discussions are often lacking in the echo chambers of social media and the 24 hour news cycle. The only place where I've seen nuanced discussions about the topic are on platforms that favor more nuanced discussion, such as 4chan and (yes, believe it or not) Stormfront.

We get it. You don't like Reddit.

I don’t like social media illiterates upholding a literal right wing extremist-captured disinformation service as their go-to for balanced discussion.

lol what

Lol hey i wasnt even posting here viborg

Yes, the famously extremist platform, reddit

Extremely milquetoast maybe

i know this is dumb and unhelpful, but to illustrate the kinds of things i’m seeing regular jewish folks share these days: https://www.instagram.com/p/CyZO9L8sM01/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

That’s depressing

As noted, I know numerous IRL people with Israeli flag avatars saying that they stand with Israel no matter what.

Plus I know IlXorz and others who almost uniformly condemn Israel as a brutal apartheid state that continues to use "but the Holocaust" as a laminated carte blanche for every atrocity the IDF wishes to commit. (There is a bit of a strawman in there but that's another topic for another time.)

I have met exactly zero people in between. I know it is not about me and/or my feelz. And I don't love "both sides"ing US politics either. The discourse is polarized and will remain so.

I have also been finding the discourse polarized online - less so in person - but I think the first position you gave is actually an in-between position. I think the two poles of the discourse are actually "I stand with Israel no matter what", versus "Israel should not exist, and any conversation about Israel needs to go back to the fundamental problem of it existing in the first place."

My position is that Israel is not, at this point, fundamentally different from the US or Canada or Australia or any other country that was created by settling already occupied land. It should not have been created, but now that it exists, we aren't going to wind time backwards and expel the Jews from Israel any more than we're going to expel white people from the US. I do agree that it's a brutal apartheid state that uses the Holocaust as an excuse to commit atrocities. But I would like to be able to have conversations on the left about what to do about this that don't start from the implicit premise that Jews should just clear out, as if Jewish settlement is somehow different and more reversible than the Christian settlement our entire country is built on.

While I'm at it, I would absolutely love to be able to jump into discussions about Israel and Palestine that are not filled with coded and not-so-coded antisemitism from people I fundamentally agree with. I would like it if people didn't have to dismiss the Israeli victims in order to show sympathy for the Palestinian victims, or the other way around. It would also be very nice if the New York Times didn't publish bullshit articles about how Jews in New York have put aside their political differences to come together in their shared grief for Israel, as if to confirm every anti-Semite's conviction that when the chips are down all Jews are Zionists at heart. I would like to stop reading about the Hamas attacks as "pogroms" and "the biggest attacks on Jews since the Holocaust," like, no, dude, Israel is a country, you can't frame attacks on your country as an attack on The Jews. It's a horrific mass murder but it's not a pogrom.

Maybe none of this makes any sense. I don't really feel I know enough about any of this, and maybe I've gotten it all wrong. But it's been a hard week. I don't mean to ask for special sympathy for myself as a Jew, because many people are suffering more here, but do please consider that your Jewish posters are under a lot of stress. Some of us (not me, but people I know) have friends and family in Israel, so we may be dealing with worry for them, or with having family members whose political opinions we find abhorrent, or both. We're having to navigate liberal spaces where the justified anti-Israel sentiment gets mixed in with a lot of stray antisemitism. I know I feel a lot more visible as a minority right now than I'm used to being in the US. And for people like me, who are descended from Holocaust survivors, there's also a particularly helpless horror and grief at seeing Israel do things to the Palestinians that were done to us in the Holocaust. I've never felt any sense of identification with Israel, I don't rationally think that being Jewish connects me to the Israelis, and yet the idea of Jews being the ones to create the ghettos and the death marches is viscerally appalling to me and I can't help feeling an irrational sense of guilt and responsibility. But at the same time I don't want the Holocaust and its after-effects minimized. I think there's a willingness to forget that Israel was founded by people who were terrified and traumatized to an extraordinary level, and much as I oppose Israel and its actions, that's something I can't mentally take out of the empathy equation because it's a trauma that's also embedded in my family.

Sorry about the long post, which kind of went all over the place. I just wanted to convey that I feel like I'm being pulled in a million emotional directions at once even if my politics are pretty aligned with ilx, and that this is likely the case for a lot of Jewish people you know. So just keep this in mind, folks, if you find yourself putting pressure on Jews you know to say the right thing in the right way.

<3

<3

appreciate the post, lily

Yeah great post Lily.

But I would like to be able to have conversations on the left about what to do about this that don't start from the implicit premise that Jews should just clear out, as if Jewish settlement is somehow different and more reversible than the Christian settlement our entire country is built on.

the serious position i encounter most commonly on the left (and support myself) is for a one-state solution - a single, secular democratic state, with civil rights for all, right of return for palestinian refugees and some form of reparations. a two-state solution may be nice in theory but most on the left would tend to agree it's a dead prospect these days - israel has done everything it can with the settlements to make it logistically impossible, and the prospect of a lasting peace from it seems like it would be even less likely. "jews should just clear out" is just more ethnic cleansing, it is not a serious or just position.

That’s an amazing post Lily, thank you for posting.

xxp two words: Social Media.

Nuanced discussions are often lacking in the echo chambers of social media and the 24 hour news cycle. The only place where I've seen nuanced discussions about the topic are on platforms that favor more nuanced discussion, such as 4chan and (yes, believe it or not) Stormfront.

i think viborg was just calling reddit a nazi site in a particularly oblique way there but i wouldn't blame anyone for taking it at face value

Oh wait, it was a parody. Ignore that. Sorry viborg.

Lily Dale, I understand your point of view and you don’t have to apologise for it, or for having complicated feelings, or anything. I don’t think anyone should be asking anything of their Jewish friends about Israel anyway, like you have to prove your views are the right ones. I would very much like to hope that this is widely understood but I know that it isn’t.

In any case, the situation you describe where people may have family over there is complicated and people are being really short sighted and tbh dismissive when saying it’s happening “over there”. The relationship with the diaspora is pretty unique in many ways, which you’ve mentioned. I don’t have to think that anything Bibi’s government does or did is justified or right to feel sorrow for the hostages or the victims of the massacres, some of whom were literal Holocaust survivors.

Now the results are worse:

With 84.5% of the results in, Israel’s Central Elections Committee on Wednesday said Benjamin Netanyahu’s bloc will get 54 seats, while Gadi Eisenkot’s coalition will get 49, according to The Times of Israel.

The committee also slightly reduced the number of seats for the two Palestinian-led parties, from 19 to 17.

huh funny how that happens

Does the 54 seats count the Ben Givir's party?

All polling station votes counted as 92% of ballots tallied
The electoral committee’s count site has just refreshed its numbers and the Netanyahu bloc has dropped to 53 seats, the Jewish opposition Change bloc now has 48 seats and the Israeli Palestinian opposition parties have 19 seats.

A further update

Man, I've tried figuring out how Israel elections work and I gave up.

iirc there are 120 seats in the Knesset and you'd need to form a coalition of at least 61 seats to take power. So that Arab bloc is seemingly necessary for cobbling together a majority.

I suppose it depends on whether it would hurt the Change bloc more to join a coalition with the Arab bloc or form a unity government with Netanyahu's bloc.

i think we all know the answer to that question

iirc 82% of the pop. are perfectly chill with what’s going on now or would like an even more aggressive approach

yeah honestly anyone posing any results as good is delusional, almost the entirety of Israeli society consists of genocide-cheering maniacs

the headline here is a state that is too racist to form a functioning government

Balad faction chief Sami Abou Shahadeh says the only reason yesterday’s election isn’t seen as a loss for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is that Israeli society is too racist to view Arab-led parties as part of the opposition.

The bloc of Netanyahu’s supporters is projected to have won 53 seats in the Knesset, while his opponents are projected to have won 67. But that opposition number is split between Jewish-led parties, which won 48 seats, and Arab-led parties that won a historic high of 19 seats, up from 10 in the outgoing Knesset. Most of the Jewish-led parties have ruled out a coalition with the Arab parties, presaging political deadlock.

“If we lived in a normal, democratic, non-racist country, Netanyahu would have lost the election,” Abou Shahadeh says in an interview with the Qatari channel Al-Araby Al-Jadeed.

Abou Shahadeh’s Balad faction is part of the Joint List, which is projected to have won around 12 seats, in addition to seven seats going to the Arab-led Ra’am party. Abou Shahadeh himself left the Joint List slate after the High Court was poised to disqualify him over an article he wrote indicating support for the Hamas-led October 7 attack. He later walked the article back.

“In reality, Netanyahu’s camp did lose the election — dropping from 68 seats to 54 — and the contest should have ended there,” Abou Shahadeh tells Al-Araby, using an earlier projected tally.

“But because of the racism within Israeli society, we are still debating whether or not this was a decisive outcome,” he continues. “The fundamental issue in Israeli society has always been, and remains, its racism directed against anything Arab or Palestinian.”

Abou Shahadeh specifically criticized the leading opposition candidate, Gadi Eisenkot, who has said that neither of the Arab-led parties meets the conditions he has set for joining a coalition.

“Eisenkot has a majority to form a government, yet what prevents him from doing so is his own racism,” Abou Shahadeh charges. Referencing Eisenkot’s background, he adds, “Eisenkot, a leader of Arab — specifically Moroccan — descent, says he refuses to sit with Arabs. This is a racist society.”

Two of Eisenkot’s other coalition partners — B’Yachad chief Naftali Bennett and Yisrael Beytenu chief Avigdor Liberman — have more explicitly ruled out partnership with Arab-led parties, claiming that such a move would be illegitimate after Hamas’s October 7 attack, in which Arab Israelis were killed and taken captive along with Jewish Israelis.

Yair Golan, chair of the left-wing Democrats, is the lone opposition party chief calling for political partnership with the two Arab-majority parties.

otm and extremely dismal

Netanyahu's party is now trying to claim that the Israeli election, after a record high showing from Arab parties and no clear path to a coalition without them, was in fact stolen and rigged by Arabs. pic.twitter.com/QduPmcJpS0

— Séamus Malekafzali (@Seamus_Malek) October 28, 2026

question i may have asked before, but is all Israeli media essentially on some Fox News shit re Bibi, or are there any alternative voices?

I'll admit I haven't read it frequently enough to say this with confidence but I would assume Hareetz is anti-Bibi?

(Immediate disclaimer that this doesn't mean they are Good)

there's at least one tv channel that treats Bibi's word as gospel, and I believe some Hebrew newspapers are firmly on his side as well. there was a good article about the Israeli equivalent of Tucker Carlson:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/01/20/netanyahus-media-poison-machine

My sense of other mainstream Israeli media is that it is skeptical of Netanyahu/Likud and even-handed among Israeli political parties, but it does not center Arab voices or the suffering that the occupation brings to Gaza and the West Bank. It's like CNN, which may not cheerlead Republicans but is pretty into whatever war is going on at the moment.

Some Israeli publications like Ha'Aretz and 972 do present alternative viewpoints, but I don't think they have a large audience among Jewish Israelis. The Israeli government's used some vile rhetoric against these publications over the last decade, as you might imagine.

I haven't been to Israel in 7 years and my contact with people there is limited, but my sense is that Haaretz is still a meaningful and influential publication even if its stature is reduced from its heights--it's kind of a well-known and longstanding institution. According to stats I could gather it only has about 1/5 to 1/4 of the readership of the main daily newspapers within Israel, but it has actually gained a bit in the last few years. It's also significant enough that Israeli government officials will target it, whereas I don't think stuff like 972 gets on their radar. And of course it's popular among non-right-wing diaspora Jews who follow Israeli issues. And yes, it's been pretty consistently anti-Bibi.

FWIW, with respect to coalition with Arab Israeli parties, it's slightly more complicated than just "Eisenkot refuses to sit with Arabs because he hates Arabs" even though racism contributes to that decision. Eisenkot has demands that he requires be met to form a coalition, and they seem unlikely to be met, although they could always be compromised on.

For example, Eisenkot demands "Recognition of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state, aligned with the Declaration of Independence." The Declaration of Independence states "THE STATE OF ISRAEL will be open for Jewish immigration and for the Ingathering of the Exiles; it will foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants; it will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture; it will safeguard the Holy Places of all religions; and it will be faithful to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations." So there's kind of a tension even in what he is demanding but it does at least theoretically recognize equal rights for Arabs. However the Arab parties are not going to agree to recognize Israel as a "Jewish and democratic state" (although one of them, the more conservative Ra'am, sort of does for pragmatic reasons). But there's a tension between the two that is pretty much the fundamental problem of anyone who wants to be liberal and also have a Jewish state.

There's also a fight over conscription and/or national service. Eisenkot demands that the Arab parties agree to universal conscription (which can be satisfied by alternative national service rather than military service), but the Arab parties mostly either reject this or want a different framework for it. Eisenkot also demands condemnation of Hamas.

Eisenkot does not believe the Arab Parties will satisfy these conditions. Golan says he should compromise. I would say it's an outside chance but not impossible that a compromise will happen, although there is also a risk that the right most end of Eisenkot's coalition will defect if he does (I don't know how the numbers break down on that).

Thank you for that man alive

a risk that the right most end of Eisenkot's coalition will defect

I saw something earlier about Liberman possibly cutting ties with the opposition, though I think they've only got 7 seats to offer Bibi

Why would Arabs in Israel -- a marginalised majority that were driven to the polls by terror -- recognise Israel as a Jewish and Democratic state. How does equality and freedom pan out for them?

Greens ofc have their own internal battles too.

His biggest problem is Iran US war restart. But that's every sitting government in the world's problem.

Burnham's operation seems fairly tight btw. Not a ton of leaks and shithousery from the right of the party, looks like he has kept them at arm's length.

Wrong thread lol

hard to take an Israeli Declaration of Independence seriously, since the last six premises of it have been broken continuously and flagrantly since 1948. who gives a fuck if Eisenkot or anyone else pledges to it— it is a document that serves mostly to cover up ethnic cleansing, apartheid, and genocide.

Why would Arabs in Israel -- a marginalised majority that were driven to the polls by terror -- recognise Israel as a Jewish and Democratic state. How does equality and freedom pan out for them?

― xyzzzz__, Wednesday, October 28, 2026 2:30 PM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

They probably wouldn't, and understandably, but I happen to think that a coalition with Arab parties is the only hope of things getting any better in the near term so I hope that whatever compromise everyone needs to reach to get there, they get there.

For similar reasons, I think it does actually matter if Eisenkot pledges to uphold the principles of the declaration, not because it will lead to an ultimate just resolution, but because it suggests an improvement on the status quo. Having Ben Gvir no longer in charge of the police alone would actually be a massive improvement for Israel's Arab/Palestinian citizens - one of their biggest political issues right now is police neglect of crime in their neighborhoods. And that's not to speak of the difference it would make to people in the West Bank to not have people like Ben Gvir and Smotrich in govt. In the real world, on the ground lives of people, these things do make a difference even if they don't address underlying fundamental issues.

Relatedly:
https://jewishcurrents.org/a-jewish-currents-guide-to-the-israeli-elections

Does this election even matter? The Netanyahu bloc and the opposition all agree on the most important issues: They won’t stop the occupation, and they won’t stop the genocide. So who cares who wins?

From where we sit here in the US, it looks a bit like there’s nothing at stake next week. The Zionist right and the Zionist center are aligned in their opposition to Palestinian liberation, and the Zionist center left often seems willing to go along with them. So what would change if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu loses? My initial thought, in fact, was to headline this article something like, “The Israeli Elections Don’t Matter,” and to be very cynical and flip about the whole thing. But then I talked to some people.

“Palestinians on the ground desperately need oxygen,” Amjad Iraqi, senior Israel/Palestine analyst at the International Crisis Group, told me. The end of Netanyahu’s 17 years of nearly-uninterrupted domination of Israeli politics wouldn’t end the occupation. But it would almost certainly unseat Itamar Ben-Gvir, the Kahanist who as national security minister wields control over Israel’s prisons and police, and Bezalel Smotrich, the fascist minister of finance, who also has enormous influence over the West Bank. “What I’m being told from the political prisoners’ view is you need to change Ben-Gvir,” Abed Abu Shehadeh, a political activist and community organizer in Jaffa, told me last week. And for Palestinians in the West Bank, he said, “it matters if Smotrich is involved.”

There’s no likely outcome of this election that’s going to feel good. But things can always get worse. “I listen very carefully to my Palestinian friends,” said Orly Noy, an editor at the Israeli news outlet Local Call, a member of the board of the human rights group B’Tselem, and a parliamentary candidate with the Joint List, a coalition of Palestinian parties. “Palestinian citizens inside Israel say, ‘We are next in line, and they will deport us forcefully.’”

The elections matter, then, if only to ease the extraordinarily dire situation into which the current government has pressed Palestinians. “Nobody’s talking about change,” Abu Shehadeh said. “Everybody’s talking about, how do we minimize damage, and how do we just survive this point in history?”

So what would minimize the damage?

A government that excludes Netanyahu and the Kahanists, and comes to some sort of an agreement with the Palestinian parties, might ease the situation. But it’s not a likely outcome. The Zionist opposition is fractious; what’s more, their anti-Arab racism, and the anti-Arab racism of their voters, makes an alliance with the Palestinian parties to keep Netanyahu out of power far from a sure thing.

I thought it was the Arab parties that were being asked to adhere to the declaration of independence?

I thought it was the Arab parties that were being asked to adhere to the declaration of independence?

― Professor Woods and His Blues-singing Dummy (Boring, Maryland), Wednesday, October 28, 2026 6:03 PM (thirty-four seconds ago) bookmarkflaglink

He's asking them to adhere to it but the principles are also part of his party platform. I'm not saying that means they'll be fully upheld, but a politician who even pays them lip service is still an improvement.

They probably wouldn't, and understandably, but I happen to think that a coalition with Arab parties is the only hope of things getting any better in the near term so I hope that whatever compromise everyone needs to reach to get there, they get there.

Yes, what will be the compromise that can be reached by both sides here? It isn't just for Arab parties to acquiesce to demands.

Given the length of negotiations common to government by coalition it's more likely Netanyahu survives. Iran to retaliate against Israeli attacks and an emergency declared...is an outcome I can see happening.

Yes, Netanyahu is still going to be Prime Minister and is going to provoke some "national crisis" to make that absolutely certain.

There have been reports across all media that the US will attack Iran post Nov 3rd. Israel are surely set to join and you don't change governments if the state is under attack.

Yes, what will be the compromise that can be reached by both sides here? It isn't just for Arab parties to acquiesce to demands.

IDK, but things can be negotiated. Ra'am (the more conservative Arab party) was in the governing coalition in 2021-2022 and got concessions in exchange for joining.

But yeah extremely worried about Bibi doing whatever he can to stay in power.

Nissim
@nissimss.bsky.social
· 3h
Gadi Eisenkot reverses course and says he will break the election deadlock imposed by Jewish Israeli parties’ boycott of Israeli Arab parties.
He will form government with the backing of the Arab Joint List. This would mark the end of Netanyahu as PM.

could it be?

https://static-cdn.toi-media.com/www/uploads/2026/10/F261031AVS008-640x400.jpg

trying to imagine what kind of person would go to a protest with this sign

an ai bot

Very good and clear take.

https://www.newarab.com/opinion/israel-elections-more-arab-votes-same-zionist-consensus