Hadash-Ta’al, led by Ayman Odeh and Ahmed Tibi, said this week that they did not sign an agreement with Abbas because, according to them, if they do sign with him, there is no telling which government these votes will go to and with whom he will form a partnership. The center-left bloc harshly criticized the Arab parties and claimed that they behaved irresponsibly and lead to a waste of mandates, something that would benefit Netanyahu’s bloc.
An official at Hadash-Ta’al said: “We offered a surplus agreement to Balad out of political responsibility, but unfortunately they didn’t even bother to answer. Balad has proven once again that narrow interests are more important to them than working together against the occupation for full equality for Palestinian citizens of Israel. In these critical elections, our public does not have the privilege of voting for an irresponsible party like Balad that will not pass the threshold.”
Balad, who in the previous elections ran as part of the joint list with Hadash-Ta’al, said on the other hand that “the ongoing methods since the night of submitting the lists and the attempt to sabotage Balad’s first press conference by Hadash’s campaign manager and the attempt to tarnish his image of Sami Abu Shahada, in addition to the propaganda of burning the votes of the Arab voters, do not correspond to the demand for the signing of a surplus agreement with Hadash-Ta’al. We at Balad want it to be a moral and civilized competition free of fraudulent methods and attempts to interfere in the public’s decisions by inventing lies and rumors.”
Lieberman tried to explain in a tweet why his party was left without an agreement: “Why didn’t we sign a surplus agreement with any party? Because Israel Beitenu is the only one that does not blink or blink and commits to forming a coalition without Bibi, Shas and Torah Judaism, and to promote a free economy and a free state. We will continue to work to prevent a coalition with the ultra-orthodox party businessmen that will not succeed in promoting any liberal value and equality in the burden.”
Surplus agreements are usually signed with parties that share the same worldview and try to promote a similar agenda in the Knesset elections. After all the kosher votes are counted, they are divided by 120 and thus determine how many votes are equal to a mandate, i.e. a seat in the Knesset.
But each party always has a few more votes that are not enough to bring it a full mandate. In this case, the surplus agreements come into effect. These make sure that the remaining votes are transferred from one party to the other party so that they gather another mandate and are not lost.
According to the agreements, the party that has the higher number of surplus votes wins the surplus votes of the other party and the possibility to complete another mandate. Usually the larger party is the one that actually wins the mandate. The surplus agreement can only be realized on the condition that both parties passed the percentage of blocking and on the condition that the agreement was submitted to the Central Election Commission at least ten days before the elections, and approved by it.