With Israel now entering election season, many are asking what the country’s first elections since October 7, 2023, will reveal about the direction of the Jewish state.
While it is too early to predict the outcome, recent polls suggest several plausible scenarios: political stalemate, a narrow opposition victory, or an opposition path to power that depends on support from an Arab party.
That possibility has made Mansour Abbas’s Ra’am party central to Israel’s political conversation. Recent polls often place the Zionist opposition near, but not always above, the 61-seat threshold needed to form a government. In that context, Ra’am’s projected seats could become decisive.
Yet as of this writing, Yair Golan is the only leader of a Zionist party to have explicitly endorsed including Ra’am in a future coalition. Other leading opposition figures have publicly ruled out partnering with an Arab party after October 7.
That hesitation is understandable. Hamas’s attack, which killed approximately 1,200 people, deeply traumatized Israeli society and strained trust between Jewish and Arab citizens, even though Israel’s Arab citizens were not responsible for the massacre and many were themselves victims of Hamas’s violence.
In the aftermath, many Israeli Jews are wary of any political partnership that could be perceived as minimizing the threats Israel faces.
But that is precisely why the question matters. Including an Arab party in the first government formed after October 7 would not simply be a matter of coalition arithmetic; it would also be a powerful statement about what kind of society Israel wants to become after one of its darkest chapters.
Social psychologists have long argued that intergroup relations can improve through meaningful contact, especially when that contact is supported by political, social, and institutional authorities. Gordon Allport’s Contact Hypothesis identified support from authorities as one of the key conditions under which contact between groups can reduce prejudice.
Later scholars, including Thomas Pettigrew, expanded on this insight by emphasizing that authority support helps establish new social norms. When leaders endorse cooperation, they signal that partnership with members of another community is legitimate, acceptable, and even desirable.
This insight has profound implications for Israel after October 7. If Israeli Jewish leaders continue to exclude Arab parties from governing coalitions, they may reinforce the perception among many Israeli Jews that Arab parties – and by extension Arab citizens – are not legitimate partners in the country’s political future.
Conversely, if Israeli Jewish leaders choose to include an Arab party in the governing coalition, they would send a different message: that there are Arab political leaders and Arab citizens with whom Israeli Jews can work, govern, and build a shared future.
Such a decision would not eliminate distrust overnight. But it could help begin rebuilding trust and normalizing Jewish-Arab cooperation in a post-October 7 Israel.
Model of partnership
Of course, not just any Arab party can or should be included in government simply for symbolism. Few Israelis would expect a government formed after October 7 to partner with a party such as Balad, whose history of controversial statements and positions has placed it outside the Israeli political mainstream.
If the goal is to foster genuine trust and cooperation between Jews and Arabs in Israel, any Arab partner in government must work constructively with Jewish political leaders rather than treat cooperation as betrayal. Such a partner must also condemn violence and inflammatory rhetoric while encouraging coexistence and civic partnership.
After all, if political leaders help shape the social norms of their communities, Arab political leaders also play a role in shaping whether Arab citizens view cooperation with Israeli Jews as legitimate and desirable. Among Israel’s current Arab political leaders, Mansour Abbas has done more than anyone else to meet that standard.
Abbas put many of these ideas into practice during the Bennett-Lapid government from 2021 to 2022. As Yisrael Klitsner, who served as a policy adviser during that government, has observed, Abbas distinguished himself by focusing on practical problem-solving and delivering results for his constituents rather than pursuing ideological purity.
This pragmatic approach not only made him a reliable partner in the unity government, but also helped produce concrete gains for Israel’s Arab community, including critical funding and municipal reforms.
His actions before and after October 7 have reinforced this image. In December 2021, Abbas acknowledged that Israel was born and will remain a Jewish state, a statement Israeli Jews had long hoped to hear from Arab leaders.
Earlier this year, he also encouraged voluntary community service among Arab citizens, while clarifying that he meant social and communal initiatives rather than compulsory state service.
Abbas has also shown a willingness to condemn violence and stand in solidarity with Israeli Jews during moments of crisis. During the intercommunal violence that accompanied the May 2021 Gaza war, he visited a synagogue in Lod that had been burned by Arab rioters and condemned the attack.
Likewise, just one month after October 7, Abbas demanded the resignation of Ra’am MK Iman Khatib-Yasin after she publicly cast doubt on atrocities committed by Hamas during its attack on Israel.
None of this means Abbas is free of controversy, nor does it erase the deep disagreements many Israeli Jews have with Ra’am’s worldview. But it does suggest that Abbas represents a model of partnership between Jews and Arabs in Israel.
The next Israeli election will not only determine who governs the country, but it will also help shape the relationship between Jewish and Arab citizens in the years ahead. Trust between the two communities has been badly damaged by the trauma and bloodshed of recent years, but that is precisely where responsible leadership matters most.
Israeli Jewish and Arab leaders must be brave enough to choose partnership over exclusion before fear and distrust lead their communities even further astray.
The writer is a Boston-based writer and former chair of Israel Policy Forum’s IPF Atid Steering Committee in the city of Boston. All the views expressed are his own.