The leader of one of Israel’s main Arab parties accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of “incitement” against Arab voters, whom civil rights groups warn are facing deliberate obstruction and intimidation at the polls on Tuesday.
“Benjamin Netanyahu is lying and inciting against Ra’am, using it as a scare tactic to mobilize right-wing voters and drive them to the polls,” the party’s leader, Mansour Abbas, said in a video message Tuesday.
Abbas was responding to a video posted by Netanyahu warning supporters of his Likud party that Arab voters in the south were “racing to the ballots.” He also accused Ra’am of “trying to steal the election from us,” citing the arrest the previous night of three people on suspicion of attempting to bribe voters to cast ballots for the party. Though Netanyahu has claimed that the three were “senior Ra’am” figures, he has not provided evidence of this.
Gadi Eisenkot, the leader of the Jewish-led Change coalition seeking to oust Netanyahu, has sworn off an alliance with Arab parties. However, Ra’am is hoping for an opposition victory narrow enough that the inclusion of Arab parties will be essential to form a governing coalition in the Knesset.
Tuesday’s election is the first since Netanyahu launched Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza and comes amid unprecedented state-backed terrorism by Israeli settlers against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank. Accusing the other side of being too soft on Palestinians has been a central campaign tactic for both Netanyahu and his opponents.
Reuters reported on Tuesday that cars flying Likud banners were seen driving through Jerusalem playing the Islamic call to prayer and warning that “Arabs are voting” and that the prime minister had shared videos of long lines at Arab polling places to frighten his supporters.
“If you want this country to be Jewish and Zionist, you must go out and vote,” National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, the leader of the far-right Jewish Power party, told voters for the Likud coalition. "Don’t let them win.”
The Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) warned Tuesday of potential deliberate efforts by Israeli authorities to slow down Arab voters. In a letter demanding urgent action from the chairman of the Central Elections Committee, Judge Noam Sohlberg, the group said that in Arab communities, “the voting process is proceeding slowly, without explanation, and voters are being forced to wait for extended periods.”
ACRI reported that police and National Guard troops kept about 200 voters waiting outside a high school in the Bedouin town of Segev Shalom in southern Israel, citing overcrowding, even though relatively few voters were actually inside. Voters there had waited up to five hours before casting ballots.
The group said it received reports of long queues in other Arab communities, including Rahat, Tel Sheva, Laqiya, Umm Batin, Tira, and Tamra.
“There are numerous reports of severe slowdowns at many polling stations,” Yeela Raanan, a member of a team monitoring election integrity in Bedouin communities, told Haaretz.
In many Bedouin communities, Raanan said, “people report waiting for hours, and polling station staff are taking a very long time to verify each voter’s identity.”
Police have been dispatched to many Arab polling places, where they’ve reportedly been checking voters’ identification, a duty that, under the law, belongs to election officials, Haaretz reported.
Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, said that at some locations, Palestinian voters were slowed down by election officials who asked them irrelevant questions, blocked doors, and suspended voting.
The group reported that at one polling station in Kafr Qara in central Israel, only one person had voted during the first three hours after polls opened.
At several other polling places in ethnically diverse and Arab cities—including in Haifa, Nazareth, I’billin, Eilabun, Shefa-Amr, and Nof HaGalil—Arab voters arrived to find that ballots printed in Arabic were not available. Adalah sent a letter to the head of Israel’s Central Elections Committee demanding that these polling centers immediately be supplied with Arabic-language ballots.
There are also reports of direct intimidation. Likud and its coalition partner, the far-right Religious Zionism party, led by Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, announced plans to send about 2,000 activists to what they called “Arab population centers” to observe elections, claiming without evidence that Arabs were committing fraud on a massive scale.
Israel’s Supreme Court on Sunday night rejected a petition to ban firearms at polling places on Election Day. Adalah warned that the decision “allows those taking part in Netanyahu and Smotrich’s provocation to show up at polling stations in Arab communities like armed militias.”
The Mossawa Center, which advocates for Arab citizens’ rights in Israel, urged election officials to intervene Tuesday, saying Israeli settlers had arrived at polling stations to obstruct voting and that it had documented confrontations in Tayibe, Majd al-Krum, Shefa-Amr, Haifa, and I’billin, according to The New Arab.
The outlet separately reported that residents in Majd al-Krum stopped a right-wing activist from forcing his way into a polling station after provoking voters.
“Settlers at polling stations in Arab communities are deliberately obstructing and slowing down the voting process,” said Ahmad Tibi, a Palestinian member of the Knesset. “A sick woman fainted while waiting. I’ll put it this way: It won’t help you. People will stay there until they cast their votes.”
Haaretz reported Tuesday that Likud also paid unofficial teams “millions of shekels” to record Arab voters to help push the conspiracy theory that the election was rigged if Netanyahu’s coalition falls short.
Despite the obstacles, Arab turnout is reportedly significantly higher than during Israel’s last elections in 2022, according to estimates by the coalition of Arab parties, known as the Joint List.
Joint List Chairman Yousef Jabareen predicted ahead of Tuesday’s vote that intimidation would be widespread. He said it would be answered with turnout from voters eager to oust Netanyahu.
“They will get our answer at the ballot box,” he said, "when we, with our own hands, send them home.”
From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.