When the Palestinian parties responded by forming the Joint List, Netanyahu used scaremongering on polling day to rally his supporters. He warned Jewish voters that the Palestinian minority was "coming out to vote in droves".
Aida Touma-Suleiman, a legislator for the Hadash party, said those who preferred the Joint List to splinter were "gambling" that they would manage to pass the threshold. "That's a very dangerous position to adopt," she told MEE.
Need for common platformGhanem criticised the Joint List for failing to make an impact on the most pressing socio-economic issues faced by the Palestinian minority. Half of Palestinian families in Israel live under the poverty line, nearly four times the rate among Israeli Jews.
He also accused the List of failing to effectively counter recent legislative moves by the Netanyahu government that have targeted the rights of Israel's Palestinian minority.
In 2016, the government passed an Expulsion Law empowering a three-quarters majority of the parliament to ban a legislator for holding unpopular political views. It was widely seen as a measure to silence Palestinian Knesset members.
And last summer, Israel voted through the Nation-State Basic Law, which explicitly gives the Jewish people alone a right to self-determination in Israel.
Ghanem said the Joint List's failure to offer a clear position on the last law, or mobilise Palestinian opinion against it, was especially glaring.
"The problem is that the List has failed to develop a common political programme. It is not enough to have a Joint List, it must have a joint voice too."
Touma-Suleiman, however, called much of the criticism of the Joint List unfair.
"The Nation State Law showed exactly what the Netanyahu government thinks of our rights. Anything we achieve is like pulling teeth from the lion's mouth," she said. "We are operating in a very hostile political environment."
Crisis of legitimacyJafar Farah, the director of Mossawa, an advocacy group for Israel's Palestinian citizens and rumoured to be a future candidate for the Hadash party, agreed with Tibi that the Joint List was suffering from a crisis of legitimacy.
"Who speaks for our community when we address the Israeli public or speak to the Palestinian Authority or attend discussions in Europe?" he told MEE. "That person needs to be able to say credibly that they represent the community."
Farah, however, noted that the reality of Palestinians in Israel was "more complicated" than that for most other national minorities. Israeli officials have strenuously objected to any efforts by the Palestinian minority to create its own internal parliament or seek self-determination.
Nonetheless, he said, the Palestinian parties were making themselves irrelevant by focusing on a two-state solution in an era when Netanyahu and the right had imposed on the region their agenda of permanent occupation in the context of a single state.
"We can't just accept the rules of a political game in which we operate in the margins of a Jewish democracy. It is not enough just to have a leader, we need to offer a new political vision. We have to be creative and bring a new agenda.
"The Jewish majority won't come to our aid. We have to lead the struggle and be ready to pay the price."
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