Standing Together leaders launch new Arab-Jewish party: ‘A Place for Us All’

Leaders of the Arab-Jewish left-wing movement Standing Together, Rula Daood and Alon-Lee Green, launched a new Arab-Jewish political party, Makom Lekulanu (“A Place for Us All”), on Tuesday ahead of the upcoming national election, calling it “a new political home for Jews and Arabs who work toward peace, equality, social justice, and the fight against violence and crime.”

The new party will be led by the Standing Together national co-directors, who are taking a leave of absence from the movement to focus on the party. Makom Lekulanu calls Daood the first Palestinian woman to lead a national party in Israel.

Speaking at the party’s launch in Nazareth, she called this “the last moment to save our society.”

“We are being abandoned, murdered, our future is being burned,” Daood said, delivering her remarks in a mix of Arabic and Hebrew, arguing that efforts to replace the government must be accompanied by a positive vision.

Referring to the prime, national security and finance ministers, she added, “Not only will we be part of the struggle to replace Netanyahu, Ben Gvir and Smotrich, but we will also lead the struggle for Israeli-Palestinian peace, national and civil equality, and social justice.”

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Green told The Times of Israel that the party aims to offer a model of Jewish-Arab partnership largely absent from Israeli politics.

“It’s time to have a truly equal Jewish-Arab partnership,” he said. “I don’t think this means an Arab representative in a Jewish party or a Jewish representative in an Arab party. Jewish-Arab partnership can start in the same political party.”

גאה במנהיגים שלי שהחליטו להקים מפלגה משותפת ולרוץ לכנסת מתוך רצון להשפיע מבפנים, בראשות רולא דאוד ואלון לי גרין.

'لكلّنا مكان מקום לכולנו' באה להציע לא עוד מאותו דבר. ובאמת שלא זוכר מתי בפעם האחרונה קראתי אג'נדה כזאת. זה העתיד שמגיע לכולנו. שופו:https://t.co/JAek16Kz9W pic.twitter.com/er12ML45Qk

— Amin Amara أمين أماره (@Amin921125) June 16, 2026

The largely Arab party Hadash, which is running jointly with other Arab parties Ta’al and Balad, holds a designated seat on its list for Jewish candidates, and many Jewish-majority parties, including the left-wing Democrats, reserve a slot for an Arab candidate. The ruling Likud party has a reserved spot that is generally held by a Druze lawmaker.

The new party says that it will be focused on a range of issues including combating violence and crime — a top concern among the Arab community, which has been engulfed in a major crime epidemic — the cost of living and housing crisis, as well as advancing an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement.

It remains unclear whether the party will hold internal primaries or how its Knesset slate will be selected. Green told The Times of Israel only that decisions would be made “democratically.” A spokesperson later said the list would be chosen by an elected council and that Daood and Green would occupy the top two spots, though their order has not yet been determined.

Other candidates on the new party’s slate include Haifa City Council member Sally Abed; activist Itamar Avneri; Yonatan Zeigen, the son of Vivian Silver, a peace activist killed in the Hamas-led October 7, 2023, attack; and activist Ghadir Hani.

A spokesperson stressed that the party is entirely independent, including legally and financially, from Standing Together.

In a statement, the movement said it “welcomed” members of the organization who run for politics, but that it will “remain a nonpartisan grassroots movement working to strengthen Jewish-Arab partnership” and to “fight on the ground for peace, equality, and social and environmental justice.”

Founded in 2015, Standing Together emerged as one of the most prominent shared society and antiwar movements in Israel following October 7, and says it now has more than 7,000 paying members. It has faced criticism from some Jewish Israelis who accuse it of betrayal and some Palestinians who accuse it of normalizing Zionism.

The launch comes as parties opposed to the government search for alliances and other political arrangements to maximize their seats and create a viable substitute after elections, which must be held by October 27.

The emergence of another party on the center-left raises questions about further fragmenting the anti-Netanyahu bloc, particularly if it draws support from voters who might otherwise back the left-wing Democrats or the Arab-Jewish Hadash party.

Parties that fail to clear the 3.25% electoral threshold, the equivalent of four Knesset seats, effectively waste their votes. As a result, smaller parties sometimes run on a joint list to maximize their votes and ensure they enter the Knesset, then split into separate factions after the election.

A party spokesperson told The Times of Israel that internal polling conducted before the launch projected the party winning three Knesset seats — one short of the four needed to enter the Knesset — but said a campaign is expected to expand that support, especially among women and young adults in Arab society in Israel, where the polling showed “particularly high levels of enthusiasm.”

Green argued during the launch that the new party would “strengthen the effort to remove Ben Gvir, Smotrich, and Netanyahu from power,” claiming that it would “bring out young voters who — without a Jewish-Arab party — would not vote.”

He told The Times of Israel that more than 1,000 people had registered with the party in recent weeks and said he expected that number to rise following the launch.

At the same time, the spokesperson said that the party is “open to partnerships and alliances with anyone who shares our values and believes in the principles we stand for.”

The party explicitly seeks to unseat the government and has expressed interest in joining a new governing coalition. A spokesperson confirmed that it would be willing to join a coalition led by either of the frontrunners to replace Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: former prime minister and leader of the joint Together slate Naftali Bennett or Yashar leader Gadi Eisenkot.

At the same time, whether opposition parties would be willing to include Makom Lekulanu in a governing coalition remains unclear as several opposition leaders have either expressed reluctance to or flatly rejected relying on Arab parties to form a government.

Successive polls have shown that the opposition bloc cannot clear the 61-seat majority needed to form a coalition without including at least one of the Arab parties.