In 2015, on the afternoon of Election Day, Benjamin Netanyahu warned on Facebook that Arab voters were “streaming in great numbers to the polls, bused in by left-wing NGOs.” No evidence was ever produced showing that any Arabs relied on Jewish left-wingers to transport them to their polling places, but the prime minister’s cry of “gevalt” did rouse previously apathetic right-wing Jewish voters from their easy chairs.

Could Israel’s Arabs gain some kind of payback and be the kingmakers of the 2019 election? (MK Ayman Odeh promised to do as much last December when the snap election was called and he declared that “Yes, Netanyahu, we the Arab citizens will flock to the polls in droves”). This is a question much debated in recent weeks, as the lead in the polls swings back and forth between Netanyahu’s Likud and Benny Gantz’s Kahol Lavan — and, more importantly, between the two electoral blocs on the right and center-left.

Read More at Haaretz.