Yossi Schwartz ISL (RCIT section in Israel/Occupied Palestine) 10.09.2026
In less than two months, elections for the Israeli government will be held if Netanyahu does not start a war on any front and declares a state of emergency that demands delay of the elections.
Preliminary polls published Wednesday evening on the three main television channels after the parties’ lists were closed predict that the bloc led by Yashar Chairman Gadi Eisenkot will not be able to win a majority in the Knesset if he boycotts the Arab parties. On Channel 11 and 13, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s bloc and the Eisenkot bloc are tied, while in Poll 12, the Eisenkot bloc leads by five seats. The Likud weakens by two seats, according to Poll 13, and according to Kan 11, it weakens by one seat. Yashar leads in all three polls.
The Democrats win 9 seats, the Joint List wins 7 seats, and Ra’am wins 5 seats… In the past, when all the Arab parties ran together, they won 15 seats.
If a bloc headed by Eisenkot does win 57 seats, they will turn to Ra’am for lack of votes. Ra’am, which sits well in the camp of the Zionists, does not deserve any support. Because of its willingness to join a government that oppresses the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza and discriminates against the Palestinian citizens of the State of Israel. Eisenkot, the former chief of staff of the Zionist monster, opposes even a mini-Palestinian state in the West Bank. There is also no place to vote for the Democrats whose position is a demilitarized Palestinian state, i.e., Bantustan in the West Bank. According to this view the Palestinians will work as cheap labor for Israeli employers and will sleep in the Bantustan like it was in South Africa.
It does not appear that there is a chance that Eisenkot will invite the Joint List to join his government, and experience shows that Hadash supported a Zionist government headed by Yair Lapid but did not support a government headed by the more right-wing Bennett.
Therefore, it is reasonable to think that it will not support Eisenkot’s government from the outside. To date, however, the Joint List has not clarified whether it is willing to support the Eizenkot government from the outside.
Only if it declares that it will not support the Eizenkot government in any form will the Internationalist Socialist League call for critical support for the Joint List.