The right had assumed that these parties were so hostile to each other that they would never be able to work together. But faced with electoral oblivion, and pressure from Palestinian voters in Israel, the four factions set aside their differences at the last minute to create the Joint List.
It has proved a success with Palestinian voters in Israel, who turned out in such large numbers that the party has become easily the third largest in the parliament - after Netanyahu's Likud and Gantz's Blue and White. But it has been a rocky ride by all other measurements.
The parties have been contemplating ways to break free of the alliance ever since - and now Abbas may believe he has found an answer. It is rumored - not least by Lieberman, who is now a vocal opponent of Netanyahu - that Netanyahu may agree to lower the threshold again.
That would benefit Abbas, freeing him to desert the Joint List and run on his own party's platform. Lieberman has claimed that Netanyahu might offer Abbas a post in a future government, making concessions to its Islamic religious demands much as he already does to Jewish religious parties like Shas.
In return, Netanyahu would smash the Joint List apart, and likely see the turnout among a disillusioned Palestinian public drop precipitously, bolstering his far-right coalition by default.
Looking inwardsWhy Abbas might play along with this plan is revealed by two related developments that have transformed the political scene for Israel's Palestinian parties over the last couple of years.
The first is that there has been an almost complete loss of interest - in the west, among the Arab states and, of course, among Israeli Jews - at the deteriorating plight of Palestinians under occupation.
This has left the Palestinian parties in Israel bereft of their traditional role promoting the Palestinian cause, either rhetorically or substantively. There is simply no audience willing to listen to what they have to say on the matter.
That has required the Palestinian parties to quickly reinvent themselves. And that transformation has been further accelerated by changing attitudes among their own voters.
With demands for Israel to end the occupation increasingly off the table, Palestinians inside Israel have preferred to look inwards, addressing their own situation as second and third-class citizens of a Jewish state. If they can't help their Palestinian kin in the current international climate, many think it would make more sense to pressure Israel to make good on its false claims that they enjoy equal rights with Jewish citizens.
Political influenceThe sense that this is a historic moment for the Palestinian minority to take the initiative has been underscored by the spate of inconclusive elections that have made Netanyahu's grip on power look increasingly shaky. Palestinian citizens have started to wonder whether they can parlay their potential kingmaker status into political influence.
Polls show that Palestinian voters in Israel want their parties to try to elbow their way into mainstream politics any way they can. In one survey last year, 87 percent said they wanted their parties involved in government.
That was one reason why all the Joint List legislators made a historic decision earlier this year, jettisoning their usual indifference to post-election horse-trading by Jewish parties, and backed Gantz as prime minister. He spurned their support and joined Netanyahu's government.
The reality is that no ruling Jewish party is ever going to invite the Joint List into government, and none of the Palestinian parties - apart from possibly Abbas's United Arab List - would ever contemplate joining one.
So Netanyahu has seen a chance both to pry apart the Joint List, making the Palestinian vote in Israel once again marginal to his calculations, and to recruit one of its factions into his orbit where he can offer its tidbits in return for support.
Profound crisisNone of this has gone unnoticed by Abbas's partners. Mtanes Shehadeh, head of Balad, warned that "Netanyahu is trying to disband the Joint List," using familiar "divide and rule" tactics.
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