{"id":40291,"date":"2019-07-29T14:22:32","date_gmt":"2019-07-29T14:22:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=40291"},"modified":"2019-07-29T14:22:32","modified_gmt":"2019-07-29T14:22:32","slug":"israels-arab-parties-join-forces-to-make-gains-in-upcoming-polls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=40291","title":{"rendered":"Israel’s Arab parties join forces to make gains in upcoming polls"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Israel’s four Arab political parties have formally announced a decision to join forces in September’s election, in a move aimed at boosting turnout among the minority that comprises a fifth of the country’s population.<\/p>\n

The four parties are the Democratic Front for Peace and Equality (known as Hadash-Ta’al), Arab Movement for Renewal, United Arab List and the Palestinian nationalist Balad.<\/p>\n

Balad was the last party to announce late on Sunday night that it would join the reunited Joint List of Arab parties, months after infighting fragmented the political alliance.<\/p>\n

Ayman Odeh<\/a>, head of the Hadash-Ta’al party, said on Monday that the reunited parties could now address the “great challenge” facing the country’s Palestinian Arab minority.<\/p>\n

Israeli electoral polls published last week projected that the Joint List could become the third-largest party in the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, after the September 17 polls.<\/p>\n

The four factions first united in 2015, earning 13 seats<\/a> in the 120-seat Knesset. But infighting later split the Joint List into two parties, which only won a combined 10 seats amid low Arab turnout in April’s election. Around 49 percent of Palestinian citizens of Israel<\/a> cast ballots, down from 64 percent in the 2015 election.<\/p>\n

In earlier comments made at a press conference on Saturday, Odeh said that only if they teamed up the four Arab parties would have a chance to “overthrow the right-wing government”.<\/p>\n

“Only if we are united can we prevent racism, annexation and the destruction of democracy,” he said.<\/p>\n

Palestinian citizens of Israel make up 20 percent of the Israeli population, and have long complained of being the victims of state racism<\/a>. According to Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel,\u00a0the government has at least 60 laws\u00a0that discriminate<\/a> against Palestinian citizens of Israel in various sectors\u00a0ranging from education to housing and property ownership.<\/span><\/p>\n

September vote<\/h2>\n

Israel faces an unprecedented repeat election in September after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu failed to form<\/a> a majority coalition government. Instead, his ruling Likud party advanced a bill to dissolve parliament and cause an election for the second time in 2019.<\/p>\n

The Joint List merger came days before this week’s deadline for political parties to finalise their line-ups before the vote.<\/p>\n

Last week, former Prime Minister Ehud Barak and the left-wing Meretz party announced the formation of the Democratic Union coalition with the goal of beating Netanyahu, who became Israel’s longest-serving prime minister earlier this month.<\/p>\n

Former Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked, who assumed the leadership of her New Right party last week, is negotiating a union with a constellation of religious nationalist parties headed by Education Minister Rafi Peretz.<\/p>\n

The New Right party failed to win enough votes in April’s election to enter the Knesset.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

\n SOURCE:
\n Al Jazeera and news agencies<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Israel’s four Arab political parties have formally announced a decision to join forces in September’s election, in a move aimed at boosting turnout among the minority that comprises a fifth of the country’s population. The four parties are the Democratic Front for Peace and Equality (known as Hadash-Ta’al), Arab Movement for Renewal, United Arab List…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":40292,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40291","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40291","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=40291"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40291\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/40292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=40291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=40291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=40291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}