In the 2015 election it became the third largest party, offering a greater political visibility to the Palestinian minority than ever before. And the List's personable, conciliatory leader, Ayman Odeh, of the socialist Hadash party, was soon being feted abroad.
But the rapid growth of the Joint List - it won a record 15 seats in the 120-seat Knesset in the last election a year ago - was also its undoing.
Netanyahu has spent the last two years desperately trying, and failing, to cobble together a decisive majority government after a series of inconclusive elections. His goal is to pass legislation to block his trial on multiple corruption charges. The Joint List's sizeable bloc in the Knesset is one significant reason for why success has constantly eluded him.
Netanyahu's initial instinct was to follow a well-trodden path: incite against the Palestinian minority and their representatives in the hope of dissuading them from voting. He questioned Palestinian citizens' right to vote, implied that they were stealing the election, and declared that they belonged to a terrorist population. None of it worked.
Instead, Netanyahu inadvertently fired up the Palestinian minority to turn out in ever larger numbers, making it even harder for him to secure a Jewish majority.
Rise in crimeAt the same time, however, Palestinians were not just voting against Netanyahu. As Asad Ghanem, a political scientist at Haifa University, noted to MEE, voters wanted the Joint List to use its increased size to elbow its way into an Israeli political arena that had always ignored the Palestinian parties.
Palestinian voters in Israel have highlighted two key, festering issues they expected action on.
One is the refusal by the Israeli authorities to designate public land to Palestinian communities or issue building permits. Both factors have led to massive overcrowding for Palestinian citizens and a plague of illegal building under threat of demolition.
And the other is a rapid growth in criminal gangs in Israel's Palestinian towns and villages that were sucked into the void left by a mix of negligent and hostile policing. Shootings and murders have rocketed in Palestinian communities, stripping residents of any sense of personal security.
Toxic politicsIt was these pressures from their own voters that encouraged the Joint List to abandon its traditional unwillingness to get involved in the political horse-trading between the Jewish parties that follow each election, as the largest factions try to build a government.
After the election last year, the Joint List parties reluctantly backed Benny Gantz, the former military general who oversaw the destruction of Gaza in the 2014 war, because his Blue and White party was the best hope of ousting Netanyahu.
But Netanyahu had used the campaign to make the Joint List toxic for most Jewish voters. He once again incited against the Palestinian minority, arguing that Gantz would form a government by relying on "supporters of terror", in reference to the List.
The Blue and White leader baulked at the Joint List's support and headed into a coalition with Netanyahu instead.
It is hard to underestimate the damage Gantz's decision did to the List. Last week's breakup is its most poisoned fruit - and Netanayhu's big electoral achievement.
Gantz's rebuff was especially a slap in the face to Odeh, the secular leader of the Joint List who had pushed the hardest for supporting a Blue and White government. His socialist Hadash party has always prized the idea of Arab-Jewish solidarity and cooperation.
Gantz's rejection offered an opening to Netanyahu to change his approach to the List. He would now try to kill it through selective kindness.
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