How will the Joint List fare in Israel’s snap election?
Less than six months since Israelis went to the polls, September 17 will see a fresh national election after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu failed to secure a governing coalition last time around.
For Israel's myriad political parties, the unusual rerun represents an opportunity to correct strategic errors made during the April vote.
Those hoping to benefit include parliamentarians representing Israel's Palestinian citizens. Before April's vote, an electoral alliance of four smaller Palestinian parties had split into two competing pair-ups, leading to a weaker-than-expected showing in the polls as the Hadash-Taal alliance picked up six seats, while the United Arab List-Balad bloc won four.
But legislators from all four parties have reformed the Joint List alliance ahead of next month's polls in a bid to boost voter turnout in the Palestinian community and secure more seats in the Knesset.
When the same parties combined on a single slate for the 2015 election, the alliance secured 13 seats, making it the third biggest bloc in the Knesset at the time.
Disjointed list
The disintegration of the Joint List began in February when Taal's Ahmad Tibi announced his party would run independently. Soon afterwards, the rest of the list fragmented.
As well as ideological differences, much of the infighting within the Joint List had centred around the allocation of Knesset seats to the constituent parties. The dismal showing in April, however, convinced the four parties of the need to reunite, which they eventually did.
"It was clear that our people punished us for splitting apart," Haneen Zoabi, stepped away from national politics this year after a decade in the Knesset with the Balad party, told Al Jazeera.
Amjad Iraqi, a policy analyst at Al-Shabaka think-tank, told Al Jazeera "the parties realised early on that they had made a grave mistake by breaking up the List."
In the days preceding the April vote, "party members were in panic trying to get Palestinian citizens out to vote", he said. "Though the two slates managed to scrape past the threshold, the damage was evident," he added.
But analysts and voters are sceptical as to whether the newly-reconstituted Joint List will repeat the success of 2015.
Ibrahim, from Nazareth, voted for Hadash-Taal in April and says he will vote for the Joint List this time, despite frustrations with recent events.
"I think everyone is disappointed with what happened," the 33-year-old told Al Jazeera. "They should concentrate on actually representing us, instead of focusing on getting more seats for each party."
"This is the last chance I will give them," he said, adding that he did not expect them to get as many votes as in 2015.
