This newfound sense of power, however, may not last long. It derives from Netanyahu having bitterly divided the Jewish electorate. Without him, a Zionist consensus one that treats Palestinians as mere pawns to be moved at will on a Jewish chessboard is likely to re-establish itself quickly.
Peace camp's demiseThe other likely explanation for the surge and a hopeful one is that record numbers of Israeli Jews appear to have backed the Joint List.
The List comprises four political parties, only one of which the socialist Hadash claims to be a joint Arab-Jewish party. Its traditional, single slot for a Jewish legislator in a realistic position on its slate reflected the fact that very few Israeli Jews support the party.
Decline in Jewish support was only exacerbated when Hadash was forced by a new threshold law to enter the Joint List pact in time for the 2015 election. It had to rub shoulders with an Islamist party and a liberal party that explicitly rejects Israel as a Jewish state.
So why the apparent change in this election?
Jews who identify as belonging to the peace camp have found their traditional "Zionist left" parties Labor and Meretz deserting them. As the Israeli Jewish public lurches ever further rightwards, the two "peace" parties have chased after them. Neither now talks about Palestinian statehood or ending the occupation.
The nail in the coffin came in this election when to save itself from electoral oblivion Meretz, the most left-wing of the Zionist parties, entered into a formal coalition not only with the centrist Labor party, but with Gesher, whose leader Levy-Abekasis was a refugee from Lieberman's far-right Yisrael Beiteinu party.
Labor, Israel's founding party, and Meretz hoped the move would bolster their strength. Instead, it has marked another major stepping stone to their demise. Together, they are predicted to win seven seats, just one more than Labor won by itself last April its worst performance ever until that point.
'A true left'The Israeli centre is being squeezed: Labor's more hawkish supporters have shifted to Blue and White, while the peaceniks in Meretz appear to be flirting with the Joint List.
It may only be small numbers, but it is an encouraging near-revolutionary development. It suggests that for the first time in Israel's history, there is a genuine peace camp emerging among the Jewish population. Not one chasing an illusory two-state solution, based on Jewish privilege, but one prepared to sit alongside and support Palestinian parties in Israel, even as a junior partner.
The Joint List's leader, Ayman Odeh, celebrated this change on Tuesday, stating: "This is the beginning of the rise of a true left."
It may prove to be the only silver lining in a far darker picture from this election. Much of the Israeli Jewish public have made clear not only that, yet again, they do not care about the abuse of Palestinians, under occupation or as citizens, but that they have now grown inured to authoritarianism and abuses at home of what is left of their democratic institutions.
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