Palestinian citizens of Israel can vote, but cannot expect change

What the report says

Al Jazeera’s Mohamad Kadan argues that Israel’s October 27 election offers Palestinian citizens of Israel limited hope for meaningful change, even though they can vote and hold citizenship. He says these communities, about 20 percent of Israel’s population, face mounting pressure from the country’s rightward political shift, including violence, land pressure, expanded policing and what he describes as an accelerating effort to reshape Palestinian areas and identity inside Israel.

The opinion piece says the situation is especially acute in mixed and Palestinian-majority towns and villages, where settler activity, land seizure and armed crime have deepened insecurity. Kadan also points to policies associated with National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, including wider gun licensing, strengthened security squads and plans to expand Jewish settlements and housing in the Naqab and northern Israel. These claims are presented by the author as part of a broader pattern of “recolonisation” rather than as isolated incidents.

Kadan writes that parties such as Ra’am, led by Mansour Abbas, have argued for participation in coalition politics to curb the far right, but says the 2021-2022 governing experience did not produce substantive gains for Palestinian citizens. In his view, voting may help slow deterioration, but it cannot by itself reverse structural discrimination or dispossession.

He concludes that Palestinians in Israel need electoral participation alongside broader grassroots organising and institutional reform. More generally, the essay frames their political future as tied to the wider struggle over rights and power across historic Palestine.