Palestinian vote seen as crucial in shaping outcome as Israel's fifth election begins

On Tuesday, polling stations opened for 6.78 million Israelis to choose a new government. It is the fifth election in just under four years.

Nearly 16% or 1.76 million Israelis have already voted by 10 am local time, the highest percentage since 1981, according to the Central Elections Committee.

Almost 1.1 million Palestinian citizens of Israel are eligible to cast their vote. However, they are the group with the largest turnout variation, making them an important factor in deciding the general outcome of the elections.

According to analysts, if slightly more than 53 per cent of eligible 'Arab voters' cast their votes, all three Arab parties would make it to the Knesset. If such a scenario unfolds, it would likely deprive Netanyahu of the 61 Knesset seats needed to form a right-wing religious government.

On the other hand, if the turnout is low, none of the Arab parties will pass the electoral threshold. And that would benefit the right-wing and religious parties.

"The main concern now is that people get to the polls," Aida-Touma Suleiman told The New Arab.

"It is evident that the Israeli right is trying to provoke Arab voters by sending their observers to the Arab towns," she added.

Aida-Touma Sulieman is an MK from the Al-Jabha or the Democratic Front for Peace and Equality and is the number three candidate on the joint ticket of Al-Jabha and the Arab Movement for Renewal party.

Speaking from the coastal City of Akka, the 57-year-old said that people are coming to cast their votes but not in great numbers.

Traditionally Arab voters go to the polls in the afternoon and evening hours.

"But it's important to say that people have started to realise that Arab representation [in the Knesset] is in danger," Aida-Touma Suleiman told TNA.

On his part, Walid al-Hawashla, the number three candidate from the United Arab List, said to TNA that voter turnout is low in the Naqab (Negev).

"It's hovering around 10 per cent. Our basic mission is to raise the number of voters."

Matanes Shehade, the number two candidate on Al-Tajamo or The National Democratic Assembly list, spoke to TNA from near Nazareth.

"People are coming to vote; there is a good show up," the Nazareth-born Arab politician said.

Shehade sounded optimistic about his party's passing the electoral threshold.

"We're going to influence the political scene," he added. Recent polls showed Al-Tajamo several thousand votes away from passing the electoral threshold.

Yousuf Abo Ghosh, another member of Al-Tajamo, also sounded optimistic when asked about the voter turnout.

"We see good turnout; we're seeing people who usually abstain coming out to vote," he said to TNA.

The 34-year-old resident of the small town of Abu Ghosh near Jerusalem credited the surge in turnout to Al-Tajamo's campaigning and the rising popularity of the Israeli right-wing parties, including MK Itamar Ben Gvir's Jewish Power party.

Ben Gvir lives in the Jewish settlement of Kiryat Arba near the City of Al-Khalil (Hebron) in the occupied West Bank.

Opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu shifted positions recently on the possibility of Ben Gvir becoming a cabinet minister.

He "certainly can be" a member of the Israeli cabinet, Netanyahu recently said to the Israeli media. However, in the run-up to the 2021 elections, Netanyahu discounted Ben Gvir being a member of his cabinet.

Ben Gvir covets the Ministry of Public Security. He conditioned joining Netanyahu's ruling coalition on being appointed minister of Public Security.

The sixth round of elections could only be a few months away if neither bloc can form a ruling coalition.