Israel's Palestinian citizens hold a bloc of votes that could determine whether Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stays in power, and many of them say the country's direction under its current government leaves them with little reason to feel secure. Their ballots are being watched closely by parties on both sides of the political divide as the election approaches.
Voters interviewed for the report described the current administration in blunt terms, with one calling it an extremist government. Many Palestinian citizens of Israel say they feel marginalised in a political system dominated by Jewish parties, and that the war and the wider conflict have deepened the distrust they already felt toward the state. For some, the question at the polls is less about personal prosperity than about whether a change of leadership would reduce pressure on their communities.
The election is also being fought against the backdrop of the war in Gaza, which has left much of the territory in ruins. Palestinians there are following the vote with deep unease. Nearly a million displaced people in Gaza face dire sanitary conditions, water shortages and the constant threat of Israeli strikes, according to reporting on the campaign. Yet the territory has been largely absent from the election debate, even as the country's two leading contenders, Netanyahu and his rival Gadi Eisenkot, both vow to end Hamas rule in Gaza.
That silence has not gone unnoticed. Palestinians in Gaza have said they fear the outcome, knowing that their future rests with a country whose military campaign has killed nearly 75,000 people in the territory. The humanitarian catastrophe there has become, in the view of many observers, a background issue rather than a central concern for Israeli voters, a point that critics say reflects how the conflict is being used in domestic politics.
The Palestinian vote inside Israel therefore carries weight beyond its size. Whether it translates into a decisive shift will depend on turnout and on how the remaining parties position themselves in the final weeks of campaigning. For Palestinian citizens, the election is shaping up as a test of whether the political system offers them a meaningful voice, or whether their ballots will simply be counted in a contest that does little to address the conditions facing their relatives in Gaza and the West Bank.