Voter apathy expected to linger among Israeli Arabs
It's unlikely that the upcoming early elections will encourage disappointed Israeli Arabs to show en mass at the ballot boxes, though they are a political force to reckon with.
Just moments after the exit polls were released for the elections to the 19th Knesset in January 2013, disappointed Knesset member Ahmad Tibi (Ra’am-Ta’al-Mada joint list) declared that if the Arab citizens of Israel had used their voting rights, they could have generated a political turnabout and replaced Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The voting rate among Israeli Arabs has declined gradually over the years, from 90% participation in 1955 to 75% in 1999. Later it reached a low of just 18% in the 2001 elections (for the prime minister's seat) following the events of October 2000, in which 13 Arabs were killed by police. This boycott reflected Israeli Arabs' disappointment with the overall political system, which they believed was responsible for the discrimination they faced. In the more recent elections, the Arab voting rate reached only 53-56%.
Based on figures provided by the Central Bureau of Statistics on the eve of the January 2013 election, some 15% of Israel’s 5.1 million eligible voters were Arabs (including Muslim and Christian Arabs and Druze). Only half of them went to vote, and the number of Muslim voters was even lower, because the voting rate among the Druze is considered high. If not for the boycott, Arab lists could have probably won more than the 11 seats they ultimately received, tipping the scales when it came to forming the new Israeli government.
Now Israel is preparing for yet another election, slated for March 17. This will undoubtedly be a tense, tough contest highlighting the rifts within Israeli society and expanding the chasm between right and left. The tension will be exacerbated further by the question of Israeli Arabs’ status in the country, with Netanyahu’s efforts to advance the nationality bill looming in the background.
