ABSTRACT
On January 23, 2015, the Arab parties,1 Hadash, Balad, Ta’al and Ra’am, declared they would run on a joint ticket in the elections for the twentieth Knesset. Over the years, there had been calls to unite the Arab parties in a single political framework to avoid the division and loss of votes and maximize their impact. Therefore, the formation of the Joint List was seen as a seminal event in Arab politics and created an expectation for change in the political standing of Arab members of Knesset (MKs) and their ability to wield infl uence. This expectation was refl ected in a survey conducted prior to the elections for the twentieth Knesset among the Arab citizenry: 68.3 percent of the respondents believed that the formation of the Joint List would make the Knesset an arena for effective action for the Arab population in Israel (Radai and Rudnitzky 2015, 9-10).
