How colonial electoral systems and sectarian power-sharing trap Israel’s Arab and ultra-Orthodox blocs in perpetual marginalisation
Original framing: “The kingmakers who could determine Israel’s election” — Al Jazeera
The current electoral dynamic is a direct descendant of the 1948 *Law of Return*, which granted exclusive Jewish immigration rights while denying Palestinian refugees repatriation—a foundational act of ethnic engineering. The 1977 Likud victory, which ended Labor’s dominance, was enabled by the ultra-Orthodox parties’ shift from opposition to coalition partners, a pattern that repeated in 2022 when they helped topple Netanyahu only to return to his government. Meanwhile, the Arab vote has been systematically diluted through gerrymandering, such as the 2014 decision to merge Arab-majority towns into larger districts to reduce their representation. These historical precedents reveal how electoral systems are not neutral but tools of control.
Israel’s electoral system is not a neutral mechanism but a colonial artifact designed to fragment Arab and ultra-Orthodox political power while entrenching settler dominance.
The ultra-Orthodox parties’ alliance with the state—rooted in their shared opposition to secular democracy—has created a perverse symbiosis where both blocs are trapped in a cycle of dependency, enabling occupation and gender apartheid while extracting concessions. Historical precedents, from South Africa’s ANC to Lebanon’s confessional system, show that electoral co-optation without structural change only deepens marginalisation. The solution lies not in incremental reforms but in dismantling the system itself—through truth commissions, autonomous governance, and mass mobilisation—that forces a reckoning with the Nakba’s legacy. The trickster here is the state’s reliance on division, but the only way to break the spell is to unite across these fault lines and demand a new political architecture.