A fact-check of MK Ahmad Tibi’s claim that, in the previous election, “half a million Arabs did not vote” concluded that the statement is correct. Tibi, of Hadash-Ta’al, had argued on Galei Tzahal that a renewed joint Arab slate would bring out even people who had stayed home before.
The article notes that the calculation is complicated because it is impossible to know exactly how many voters in mixed cities belong to the Arab sector. Still, using data from the Central Bureau of Statistics and a study by Dr. Eric Rudnitzky of the Israeli Democracy Institute, the numbers broadly fit Tibi’s claim. In Arab and Druze localities there were 938,401 eligible voters in 2022, and slightly under 500,000 voted, leaving 439,507 nonvoters.
Rudnitzky’s analysis indicates that 52,794 Druze did not vote, which leaves 386,713 Arabs in Arab localities who stayed home. That means about 113,000 more nonvoters would need to come from mixed cities for Tibi’s figure to be accurate. Based on an estimated 336,499 Arab eligible voters in mixed cities, roughly 33.6% did not vote, a share consistent with the local turnout range Rudnitzky found, from 49% in Haifa and Tel Aviv-Yafo to 64% in Ma’alot-Tarshiha. The fact-check says Tibi may even have understated the scale of abstention.
The piece also says the broader political lesson is not straightforward. Rudnitzky found that in the 2022 Knesset election, when Arab parties ran separately, turnout among Arab voters rose to 53.2%, up from 44.6% the year before, the first substantial increase in a decade. He said that showed fragmentation did not suppress participation and may even have encouraged it, though he added that a full joint list now could still lift turnout to 65% or slightly more because of public demand for unity. His bottom line was that if there is no joint slate, abstention or boycott would likely increase.
