The Parties/Electoral Lists & Notable Candidates

The following provides a brief description of the major parties, their policies towards the Palestinians, and notable candidates.
Broadly speaking, the parties and electoral lists can be divided into two categories: Zionist, which supports Israel’s system of Jewish privilege, and non-Zionist, which supports full equality for all citizens. The latter are comprised mainly of Palestinian citizens of Israel, about 1.9 million people, who make up about 21% of Israel’s population.

The number (1) to the left of the candidate names denotes their place on their party’s electoral list.

Likud
Party leader: Benjamin Netanyahu
Number of Knesset seats won in 2020: 36

Likud has been the most powerful right-wing party in Israel since it was formed in the early 1970s and has governed continuously under Netanyahu since 2009.

Likud opposes the two-state solution and Palestinian statehood or self-determination in any part of Palestine/Israel. It strongly supports the construction of illegal Jewish settlements on occupied Palestinian land and formal annexation of the occupied Palestinian West Bank. During the 2019 and 2020 election campaigns, Netanyahu repeatedly threatened to annex large parts of the West Bank. Netanyahu declared he would temporarily “suspend” official annexation after Trump brokered a deal normalizing relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates in August 2020 and in the face of massive international opposition.

Notable Candidates

(1) Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister (see here for more on Netanyahu)

• Netanyahu is Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, in office continuously since 2009, plus a first term from 1996 to 1999. He is currently (Feb 2021) on trial on three charges of corruption that could send him to prison if he isn’t reelected and able to pass legislation granting himself immunity from prosecution.
• Netanyahu has spent much of his political career working to destroy the possibility of a Palestinian state being created in the occupied territories as part of the two-state solution advocated by the US and international community. During the 2019 and 2020 election campaigns he repeatedly promised to annex a large part of the occupied Palestinian West Bank in violation of international law.
• He clashed with Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama over the expansion of illegal Jewish settlements on occupied Palestinian land supposed to comprise a Palestinian state, all but openly campaigning for the latter’s Republican opponent in 2012, but was close allies with Donald Trump, whose son-in-law and senior advisor Jared Kushner is a longtime close family friend. Former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson wrote that in May 2017 Netanyahu showed Trump a fake video of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas that had been doctored to make it sound like he was calling for the killing of Israeli children. 
• In 2001, following his first term in office, Netanyahu was caught on video boasting to settlers that he had sabotaged the US-sponsored Oslo negotiations process during the 1990s, stating: "I de facto put an end to the Oslo Accords.” He also claimed that he knew how to manipulate Americans and deal with pressure to stop settlement construction, stating: "I know what America is… America is a thing you can move very easily, move it in the right direction. They won't get in [the] way.”
• Over the past few years, Trump showered Netanyahu with gifts intended to help both men win reelection, including recognizing Israel’s illegal annexation of occupied Palestinian East Jerusalem and the occupied Syrian Golan Heights, and declaring that Israeli settlements built in flagrant violation of international law are not in fact illegal. Trump’s efforts failed to push himself over the top in 2020 but helped Netanyahu squeak out two close victories in 2019 and again in 2020.

(2) Yuli Edelstein, Minister of Health, Speaker of the Knesset 

• Edelstein was born in the Ukraine, then part of the Soviet Union, immigrating to Israel in the late 1980s and moving to an illegal West Bank settlement on occupied Palestinian land outside of Jerusalem.
• He supports formal annexation of large parts of the occupied Palestinian West Bank. Following Trump’s recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the Syrian Golan Heights in March 2019, he welcomed the move as a good first step towards annexation of the West Bank.
• In October 2019, Edelstein slammed Democratic Senator Bernie Sanders for saying if elected president he would leverage the massive amount of US taxpayer dollars going to fund the Israeli military to pressure Israel into ending its nearly 15-year-old illegal siege on Palestinians in Gaza, declaring Sanders should “stop talking nonsense.” 

(4) Miri Regev, Minister of Transportation and Road Safety, former Minister of Culture and Sport (2015-2020)

• A former military censor and hardline right-wing ideologue who as Minister of Culture and Sport attempted to defund and censor artists whose politics she disliked, Regev once told a TV interviewer “I am happy to be a fascist!”
• Although she was born to immigrant parents (her father was Moroccan and her mother Spanish), Regev is notorious for inciting xenophobia and violence against refugees and asylum seekers, most notably helping to provoke a wave of anti-African attacks in 2012, including assaults and arsons, targeting people from Sudan and Eritrea, telling an angry mob that asylum seekers “are a cancer in our body.”
• Regev is also known for provoking tensions around the venerated Noble Sanctuary mosque complex (known as the Temple Mount to Jews) in occupied East Jerusalem, where messianic Jewish extremists want to build a Jewish temple, threatening to spark a major religious conflagration.

​5) Yariv Levin, Former Minister of Internal Security (2015) and Minister of Tourism (2015-2020)

• Another hardline ideologue, a supporter of Israel’s illegal settlement enterprise, and opponent of Palestinian rights and self-determination, Levin helped lead the effort to pass the “Jewish nation-state” law in 2018, which formally enshrines in Israel’s quasi-constitutional laws the superior rights and privileges Jewish Israelis enjoy over indigenous Palestinian citizens of Israel, who comprise about 21% of the population.
• ​In February 2014, during a meeting between the US ambassador to Israel and a group of right-wing members of Israel’s government intended to improve relations with the Obama administration, Levin demanded the US support Israel without question, stating: "We see our alliance with you as unconditional. When there is a true alliance, it is proved by you standing behind us, even when you think we're wrong.
• Levin has also attacked liberal Jews in the US, including criticizing the marriage of Chelsea Clinton, declaring in 2016: 

“Reform Jews in the United States are a dying world. Assimilation is taking place on a vast scale. They are not even tracking this properly in their communities. It is evidenced by the fact that a man who calls himself a Reform rabbi stands there with a priest and officiates at the wedding of the daughter of Hillary Clinton and no one condemns it, thereby legitimizing it.”

• In January 2013, Levin told a conference addressing possible annexation of the Palestinian West Bank that Israel is already cementing control even without official annexation and will leave only “marginal appendages” of Palestinian land remaining:

“In this way, we will try, slowly but surely, to expand the circle of settlements, and to afterwards extend the roads that lead to them, and so forth. At the end of this process, the facts on the ground will be that whatever remains [of occupied Palestinian land] will be merely marginal appendages… We fully agree and are completely united behind the prime minister’s position, which is to strengthen our foothold in the Land of Israel, to build in [occupied East] Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria [the West Bank].”

• ​​In February 2014, Israel’s parliament passed a law sponsored by Levin legally distinguishing between Christian and Muslim Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel, declaring that Christian Palestinians in Israel are not in fact Arab, part of an effort to divide Israel’s minority Palestinian population. According to Levin, Christians are “our natural allies, a counterbalance against the Muslims who want to destroy the state from within.” A few weeks prior to the passage of the law, he declared: “This is a historic and important move that could help balance the State of Israel, and connect us and the Christians, and I’m being careful about not calling them Arabs because they aren’t Arabs.” In fact, almost all Christian Palestinians are Arabs, and consider themselves to be such, and have long formed an integral part of Palestinian society.

(7) Nir Barkat, Former Mayor of Jerusalem (2008-2018)

• Barkat opposes Palestinian statehood or equal rights in a single state, and supports Israeli settlements and annexation of large parts of the occupied West Bank, including all settlements and the Jordan Valley.
• While the mayor of Jerusalem (2008-2018), Barkat instituted and oversaw discriminatory policies against indigenous Palestinian residents. These included adopting a “master plan” in 2009 intended "to guide and outline the city's development in the next decades," that called for “maintain[ing] a ratio of 70% Jews and 30% Arabs” residents. In condemning the plan, Human Rights Watch declared: “Israeli plans aim to alter the demographic balance in Jerusalem as a whole by lowering the number of the city’s Palestinian residents (including Christians as well as Muslims).” In 2010, Barkat said Palestinian population growth in Jerusalem was a “strategic threat”
• As part of the effort to reduce the number of Palestinian residents, while Barkat was mayor of Jerusalem the municipality destroyed more than 575 Palestinian homes in the occupied eastern part of the city for being built without official permission (which is virtually impossible for them to obtain), making more than 2,220 Palestinians homeless, including 1,168 children.
• At the same time, Barkat supported the expansion of illegal Jewish settlements on occupied Palestinian land in East Jerusalem, at one point even resisting a court order to remove settlers who had constructed a building that violated city building codes in a Palestinian neighborhood of East Jerusalem.
• As mayor, Barkat also supported controversial projects in occupied Palestinian East Jerusalem like the building of a settler archeological theme park and tourism center in the neighborhood of Silwan, requiring the destruction of dozens of Palestinian homes, and a planned cable car that Barkat said is partly intended to make people “understand who really owns this city.”
• Mayor Barkat also implemented repressive measures against Palestinians in occupied East Jerusalem in response to protests, which human rights groups condemned as collective punishment. These included erecting concrete barriers around Palestinian neighborhoods, instituting curfews and closures on Palestinian residents, and targeting small businesspeople and others for unpaid bills and not having the proper licenses, closing shops and seizing property.
• While mayor, Barkat also fueled tensions around the venerated Noble Sanctuary mosque complex in occupied East Jerusalem, known as the Temple Mount to Jews. Messianic Jewish extremists, including senior government officials, want to build a Jewish temple in the Noble Sanctuary, one of the most sensitive holy sites in the world, which would likely spark a major religious conflagration in the region and beyond. As mayor, Barkat made provocative visits to the Noble Sanctuary and in June 2015 he spoke at an event organized by the extremist Temple Institute aimed at kindergarten-aged children.

(9) Avi Dichter, Former Deputy Minister of Defense (2019-2020) and Minister of Public Security (2006-2009)

A former head of Israel’s internal secret police, the Shin Bet, Dichter introduced the original version of the “Jewish nation-state law” that was passed by Israel’s parliament in July 2018, formalizing in Israeli law the superior rights and privileges that Jewish Israelis enjoy over indigenous Palestinian and other non-Jewish Israeli citizens.

• During his time as head of the Shin Bet (2000-2005), Dichter played a central role in developing and accelerating Israel’s program of assassinating Palestinian leaders during the Second Intifada (uprising) against Israel’s occupation. According to B’Tselem: The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, 129 Palestinian civilians were killed by Israeli forces during assassination attempts between 2000 and 2006.
• In one of the worst examples, on July 22, 2002, in an attack planned and directed by Dichter, an Israeli warplane dropped a one-ton bomb on a residential apartment building in the middle of the night in al-Daraj, Gaza, a densely populated urban area, killing a Hamas leader and fourteen other people, including eight children. More than 150 others were injured. Even then-President George W. Bush, a strong supporter of Israel, was reported “visibly angry” by the bombing, which was conducted using American-made F-16 fighter planes, issuing a statement condemning it as “heavy-handed.”
• In 2005, the Center for Constitutional Rights filed a class-action lawsuit in the US against Dichter for his role in the bombing of al-Daraj, accusing him of “war crimes, extra-judicial killing and other gross human rights violations.” In 2009, a court dismissed the case stating Dichter had immunity under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA). In 2007, Dichter was forced to cancel a trip to the UK out of fear he might be arrested and charged with war crimes for the al-Daraj bombing. 

(43) Yehuda Glick

• Glick was born in the US, immigrated to Israel in 1974, and now lives illegally on occupied Palestinian land in the West Bank settlement of Otniel. He is a messianic Jewish extremist and high-profile leader of the Temple Mount movement, which advocates the building of a Jewish temple in the venerated Noble Sanctuary Mosque complex in the Old City of occupied East Jerusalem. (See here and here for more on Glick and the Temple Mount

Religious Zionism (Jewish Power, National Union & Noam parties) 
Party leader: Bezalel Smotrich
Number of Knesset seats won in 2020: 2 (National Union)

A new alliance of three extreme right parties (Jewish Power, National Union and Noam) that was brokered by Netanyahu who hopes that running together they will get enough votes to qualify for seats in the next Knesset and support him for prime minister.

Jewish Power (“Otzma Yehudit” in Hebrew) is an overtly racist, fascist party made up of followers of the late Meir Kahane, whose Kach party was banned from Israeli politics in 1988 due to its virulent racism and is considered a terrorist organization by the US. The party and its candidates advocate the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Israel and the occupied territories. Its platform (Hebrew) calls for establishing “a national authority for encouraging emigration” of Palestinians. During the 2019 and 2020 election campaigns, Jewish Power leaders Michael Ben-Ari (a former Knesset member for National Union), Baruch Marzel, and Bentzi Gopstein were banned by the Supreme Court from running because of their long history of extreme racism and inciting hatred and violence against Palestinians and left-wing Israelis. When Netanyahu made an electoral deal with Jewish Power during the 2019 election, it sparked outrage, even among many staunch supporters of Israel.

National Union also advocates the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. In 2017, the party released a plan calling for official Israeli annexation of the Palestinian West Bank and stipulates any Palestinians living there must accept permanent subjugation, voluntarily leave, or be forced to leave or be killed by the Israeli military.

Formed in 2019, Noam is a small party composed of ultra-Orthodox Jews best known for being virulently homophobic. In 2019, it sparked controversy with a campaign ad comparing followers of Reform Judaism, left-wingers, and LGBTQ people to Nazis.

Notable Candidates

(1) Bezalel Smotrich, Leader of the National Union party, Former Minister of Transportation and Road Safety (2019-2020) 

• A notorious racist and “proud homophobe,” Smotrich wants to turn Israel into a Jewish theocracy. He once declared “Arabs are my enemies, and that’s why I don’t enjoy being next to them” when explaining why his wife refused to share a hospital room with a Palestinian Arab mother after giving birth.
• Smotrich lives in a settlement on occupied Palestinian land in the West Bank that not only violates international law but Israeli law as well. He wants to annex the occupied Palestinian territories and ethnically cleanse Palestinians who don’t accept permanent subjugation under discriminatory Israeli military rule. He once declared “The Palestinian people never existed and a Palestinian state will never be established.”
• Smotrich also supports a shoot to kill policy for Palestinians, including children, who throw stones at their Israeli occupiers. In 2018, he was temporarily banned from Twitter after writing that 16-year-old Palestinian activist Ahed Tamimi “should have gotten a bullet, at least in the knee,” for slapping a soldier who invaded her family’s property shortly after her 15-year-old cousin was shot in the face. In 2015, he argued that an arson attack by Jewish extremists that killed three members of the Dawabsha family, including an 18-month-old baby, was not an act of terrorism.
• In 2015, during a parliamentary committee meeting, he urged Jews not to mix with Arabs and claimed God ordered Jews not to sell homes to Arabs, declaring “anyone who wants to protect the Jewish People and opposes mixed marriages is not a racist… I believe in God’s words… I prefer that Jews make a living and wouldn’t sell a house to Arabs.”