Israeli Press

Israel's Saturday papers put seat arithmetic ahead of the West Bank

Times of Palestine3h ago

Published Saturday, August 29, 2026 · 14:30 Jerusalem time

Graphic: Times of Palestine

Original Reporting

By the Times of Palestine Newsdesk · 2 min read

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Two months before the Knesset election, the Israeli weekend press is largely a counting exercise. Two papers spent Saturday on seats. One spent it in Palestinian villages.

Maariv gave its politics desk over almost entirely to the arithmetic of the right. Anna Barsky reported the technical bloc taking shape between Bezalel Smotrich and Moshe Feiglin after Itamar Ben Gvir refused to merge, and the paper's political desk published the internal poll that explains his refusal: four seats fewer running jointly.

Silvan Shalom warned in its pages that votes lost under the threshold could reproduce 1992 "in a copy-and-paste". Its own poll put Eisenkot's list at 25 seats and the Bennett–Lapid ticket at 15, and its analyst wrote that a strengthening Joint List is lifting turnout in Arab society.

Ynet led its weekend commentary on the same election but from the other side of the line. Tova Zimuky reported the expected campaign to disqualify Arab lists at the Central Elections Committee, and a separate column argued that Mansour Abbas is offering Jewish Israeli parties a partnership they should not reject in advance.

The site also carried the killing of Ahmad Abd Shaqra, 29, run over and then shot at close range — his father telling the paper that killings "have become a disease that spreads and worsens by the day".

Haaretz was the paper that went to the villages. Matan Golan filed twice from the occupied West Bank on Saturday: masked settlers pepper-spraying Palestinian workers at Qusra, and Israeli troops entering al-Mughayyir alongside armed settlers, with three residents wounded and rescue crews held back. Liza Rozovsky reported that thirty Democratic senators had called on Israel to rescind tenders for 1,234 housing units in E1.

Walla carried the Israeli army's own framing of the Qusra day. Its news desk quoted the military spokesman saying soldiers and Border Police were scrambled to the village after a report that Israeli rioters had arrived — the word is the spokesman's. The site also reported the US federal ruling that struck down visa revocations aimed at pro-Palestinian students.