For the majority of Israelis, the general election on October 27 is a choice between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the forces that oppose him, led by former general Gadi Eisenkot. But for the Palestinian citizens of Israel, who make up 20 percent of the population, the upcoming polls present a different dilemma. As the political mainstream in Israel continues to shift to the far right, Palestinian citizens face growing threats to their political and collective rights.
Palestinian communities in Israel experience increased violence, while settlers are encroaching on their boundaries. The recent push to expand policing and militarisation of civilian life is another source of growing anxiety within the Palestinian population. In this context, the anti-Netanyahu bloc does not seem to offer the prospect of policy reversal or change.
Therefore, the question on many Palestinian minds is whether voting in the Israeli elections can make any difference at all. Since the Nakba of 1948, the Palestinians who managed to remain in their homes in what was declared as territory of the new State of Israel have had a different fate than the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. In 1952, they were granted Israeli citizenship, and in 1966, the martial law under which they were forced to live was lifted.
Although Palestinian citizens of Israel have the right to vote and participate in politics, citizenship has not shielded them from the broader system of dispossession and attempts to reshape their Palestinian identity and national belonging. Through land confiscation and the regulation of education and culture, the Israeli state has sought to detach Palestinians from their historical roots and collective past, promoting instead a model of the “Arab Israeli” as a citizen whose identity is separate from its Palestinian and Arab national context. Formal citizenship has not secured substantive equality for Palestinians as they face discriminatory laws, systemic underfunding of basic services, and political and socioeconomic marginalisation.
Instead of engaging in direct violence towards Palestinian citizens – as it has done in the West Bank and Gaza – the Israeli state has instead “outsourced” brutality to criminal networks. As a result, Palestinian communities have faced killings, shootings, bombings and arson while Israeli law enforcement has largely ignored the problem. More recently, this problem has escalated, as organised crime groups obtained advanced weapons reportedly stolen from Israeli army stockpiles or smuggled across borders.
This growing militarisation of organised crime has claimed hundreds of lives. In parallel, Israeli settlements next to Palestinian communities have expanded, accompanied by accelerated seizure of land. This process of “recolonisation” began in mixed cities, such as Jaffa and Lydd, where religious-nationalist settler groups started establishing themselves in Palestinian neighbourhoods in 2021.
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