Israeli Press
Maariv poll gives a joint Arab list eight seats, Balad alone none
Graphic: Times of Palestine
Original Reporting
A seat poll the Israeli daily Maariv published on Sunday evening puts a united Hadash-Taal and Balad list at eight Knesset seats and Ra'am at six, while Balad running on its own falls below the electoral threshold and wins nothing. Maariv's mandate polls are conducted by Dr Menachem Lazar's Lazar Research with Panel4All.
That is the arithmetic Palestinian citizens of Israel have faced at every election since the threshold rose to 3.25 percent: fourteen seats together, or a wasted ballot box apart.
The same poll gives Yisrael Beiteinu ten seats and the Democrats, led by Yair Golan, ten. Otzma Yehudit takes eight, Shas eight, United Torah Judaism eight and Religious Zionism five.
Two new parties miss the threshold entirely — the list of Hili Tropper and Yoaz Hendel, and the one Gilad Erdan and Yuli Edelstein are assembling out of former Likud figures. Benny Gantz's Blue and White misses it too.
On the premiership question Maariv found 41 percent preferring Benjamin Netanyahu against 34 percent for Gadi Eisenkot, a reversal of the summer's trend, and reported his bloc strengthening.
Neither bloc reaches 61 seats in the poll, which is why the Arab lists' numbers matter beyond their own voters. A Knesset in which no Zionist coalition can be assembled without them, and in which none will name them, is the paradox the 27 October election is heading towards.
The Likud holds its primaries next week, and the party's Knesset speaker, Amir Ohana, conceded to Maariv on Monday that "if the election were today, the situation is difficult."
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