Yousef Jabareen: ‘If [Gadi] Eisenkot speaks of change, I believe that the change should come also for our community. We need to be treated equally.’

Israel has ‘historic’ opportunity to change direction, says leader of Arab coalition Yousef Jabareen says he is ready to join forces with opposition bloc to oust Benjamin Netanyahu after winning record number of seats in Knesset The leader of Israel’s main Palestinian coalition, which holds the balance of power after Tuesday’s elections, has said the country is facing a historic opportunity to change direction.

Yousef Jabareen, the head of the Joint List, said he was ready to join forces with the “Change” bloc to oust Benjamin Netanyahu and his far-right coalition, and to wrest control of the Knesset.

Turnout among Arab Israelis (Palestinians with Israeli citizenship, 20% of the population) more than doubled to about 80% transforming the political landscape. Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza had no vote.

Jabareen said the first demand of the roughly 840,000 Palestinian Israeli voters was to get rid of the Netanyahu government, and in particular its most extreme members Itamar Ben-Gvir, the national security minister, and Bezalel Smotrich, the finance minister.

“This has been an awful four years … in all areas of life: in terms of house demolition, criminal gangs within the Arab community without any [intervention] from the police; not allocating the needed resources for our municipalities, for our education, for our youth in general; racism in all areas of life – physical attacks against Arabs, the brutality of the police,” Jabareen told the Guardian in one of his first interviews since the election. “So this has been really a very dangerous period.”

He said the next few days would be critical.

Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, is due to summon political leaders as early as Wednesday to canvass their recommendations on who should be given the first chance to form the next government, with no single grouping commanding a clear claim on power. Chart showing projected seats in the Knesset Netanyahu’s coalition lost its majority, dropping from 68 to 53 seats in the 120-seat Knesset. The Change bloc of Zionist parties led by the retired general Gadi Eisenkot has 48 seats, leaving the Arab-Israeli parties as potential kingmakers with a record 19 seats.

The Joint List has 11, while the more conservative, Islamist Ra’am has eight.

Eisenkot and his partners have pledged not to form a unity government with Netanyahu, but Eisenkot has also put conditions on any potential coalition with Arab parties: they have to recognise that Israel is a Jewish state, accept conscription, and denounce Hamas as a terrorist organisation. Ra’am and its leader, Mansour Abbas, have signalled it is ready to join an Eisenkot coalition.

The Joint List has no intention of joining such a government, but Jabareen said the coalition was ready to keep it afloat from the outside with tactical voting in the Knesset. “The conditions that [Eisenkot] speaks of are more relevant for parties who would be in the coalition. We are not planning to be in the coalition … for very clear reasons,” Jabareen said at his family home in the northern city of Umm al-Fahm.

“As long as the occupation of our people in the West Bank continues, we cannot be part of a government.

“However, in order to use our political power to get rid of the extreme Netanyahu government, we said that we will consider the possibility of supporting from outside. This is an opportunity to change policies, to change attitudes, including towards the Arab community and towards the Palestinian people.

“This is really a historic moment and I hope that there will be partners within the opposition to go ahead with that. We are thinking that this could be the start of a change.”Yousef Jabareen: ‘I hope we can find partners to make to make this change real’ Jabareen, 54, a former law professor and the leader of the socialist Hadash party, has yet to talk to Eisenkot since Tuesday’s elections, but he confirmed that informal discussions among opposition parties were under way.

Forming a new government was unlikely to be straightforward. The party leaders in the Change bloc have to agree on a candidate for prime minister. They would also have to accept partnership with Arab parties, either in coalition or from outside. The rightwing opposition leader, Avigdor Lieberman, is said to be the most resistant. Joint List officials said it was unclear whether partnership with Palestinians really crossed Lieberman’s red lines, or whether he was just holding out for a top cabinet position.

Even before a new government could be formed, Jabareen argued, the 67 opponents of Netanyahu in the new Knesset could use their clear majority to wrest control of legislative power. “That would start by changing the speaker of the Knesset,” he said, adding that the opposition could also take control of the committee that oversees the legislative agenda.

“That could be very crucially important … even before we reach conclusions on the issue of a coalition and a new government,” he said, adding that one of the priorities of the new Knesset should be to repeal laws passed by the outgoing majority that infringed the independence of Israel’s judiciary.

To allow an opposition coalition to oust Netanyahu and function as a minority government, Jabareen made clear it would also have to address deep-seated inequality in Israeli society.

“We have suffered from systemic discrimination for years, so if Eisenkot speaks of change, I believe that the change should come also for our community. We need to be treated equally,” he said. “We also ask for a political horizon. We would like to see the war stopped and the resumption of negotiation with the Palestinian leadership. We would like to see a start of a change.”The Joint List leader said he was concerned over what Netanyahu might do to keep his grip on power. The prime minister has already made allegations without evidence, that the Arab parties had used Qatari funds illegally in the election campaign, which Jabareen dismissed as a bid to “delegitimise the political power of the Arab community” and “a dangerous incitement”.

One of Jabareen’s concerns was that the Israeli leader would join Donald Trump in the resumption of war on Iran as a pretext for putting off political transition.

“This is really a critical period,” he said. “There should be a clear voice from the opposition to go against any attempt by him to initiate war … or dictate a new military agenda in Israel.”