OCCUPIED AL-QUDS (Dispatches) -- Israel’s political crisis deepened on Tuesday as opposition leaders met in Herzliya to coordinate a path to power, while prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, facing corruption charges and the prospect of prison, refused to yield, calling instead for a “broad” regime that excludes the Arab parties.
The numbers expose a system in paralysis. Netanyahu’s right-wing bloc holds 53 seats; the opposition bloc led by former military chief Gadi Eisenkot holds 48; the Arab-led Ra’am and Joint List together hold 19 — a record showing that has made them kingmakers in the 120-seat Knesset. Neither Jewish bloc can reach the 61-seat threshold without them. Neither will say yes.
Netanyahu, posting on X, claimed a “clear majority of the Jewish public” had chosen him and insisted he would not lead a cabinet “dependent on Ra’am and the Joint List,” accusing the Arab parties of supporting terrorism. 
His desperation is transparent: he is on trial for fraud, breach of trust, and bribery, and his legal peril has only intensified, with judges this week limiting the prosecution’s ability to cross-examine a key witness in a ruling that nonetheless keeps the trial grinding forward. Power is his shield. Without it, the courtroom awaits.
The opposition’s response has been scarcely more inspiring. Eisenkot has set conditions for Arab support — recognizing Israel as a Jewish entity, accepting compulsory draft, branding Hamas a terrorist organization — terms Arab leaders have already rejected. 
Avigdor Lieberman, whose terrorist Yisrael Beytenu is part of the anti-Netanyahu bloc, has flatly refused to sit in any cabinet that includes Arab parties or relies on their support from outside. The message from both sides is unmistakable: Arab votes count at the ballot box and nowhere else.
Yousef Jabareen, head of the Joint List, pleaded with the opposition to “deal with the political reality and the numbers,” warning that Netanyahu cannot be replaced without Arab coordination. 
His appeal has fallen on ears deafened by decades of exclusion. The Arab parties are expected to recommend Eisenkot to president Isaac Herzog, whose consultations begin Wednesday, potentially giving him 67 endorsements. But recommendations are not coalition agreements, and Lieberman’s veto renders the arithmetic meaningless.
This is not a malfunction of Israeli apartheid. It is its operating logic. Palestinian citizens can vote in record numbers — and they did, driven by fury at years of neglect and violence — only to be told by both camps that their representatives are unfit to govern. 
Netanyahu exploits the racism to cling to office; the opposition tolerates it to avoid the political cost of confronting it. The illegal Zionist entity remains hostage to a man who will burn every norm to stay out of a cell, and to a political class that would rather preserve the exclusion than end the nightmare.