How many Arab members are currently in the Knesset and which parties do they represent?

1. The headline number: ten Arab MKs, and why that matters

Official and contemporaneous summaries of the 25th Knesset describe the number of Arab MKs from Arab parties as ten, the fewest from Arab parties in about two decades, a figure highlighted in both summary entries and reporting on the Knesset sworn in after the 2022 election ^{[1] [2]}. Analysts flagged this contraction in Arab-party representation as significant because it reflected both the breakup of wider Arab alliances that previously won larger blocs and the distribution of Arab votes across lists—trends tracked by election observers and policy institutes ^{[4] [5]}.

2. Which parties those Arab MKs represent: the party cleavages

Contemporary sources show the ten Arab seats in the 25th Knesset allocated among Arab-party lists that contested the election: Hadash–Ta’al on one side and United Arab List and Balad on another configuration, with one widely cited breakdown giving six seats to Hadash–Ta’al and four seats to the United Arab List–Balad grouping ^{[3] [1]}. Reporting and encyclopedic summaries consistently describe the Arab representation in this parliament as concentrated within those Arab-majority lists rather than being scattered across the mainstream Zionist or Jewish religious parties ^[2].

3. What the labels mean and the limits of the reporting

Terminology matters: sources refer to “Arab MKs” as members of Arab or Arab-majority parties, but some subsets of the population (notably Druze communities) contest blanket ethnic labels—an important caveat in datasets and lists of Arab MKs ^[6]. The available reporting focuses on party lists and seat counts for the 25th Knesset; it does not provide a minute-by-minute account of subsequent resignations, factional switches, suspensions, or disciplinary measures that could change an exact tally after the fact ^{[1] [7]}. Therefore the firm, source-backed statement is: at the time of the 25th Knesset’s composition as reported, there were ten Arab MKs sitting under the Arab-party banners cited above ^{[1] [2]}.

4. Political context: fragmentation, thresholds and the Joint List legacy

The reduction to ten Arab-party MKs is framed in many sources as a product of the fragmentation of the broader Joint List model that in earlier cycles delivered higher Arab representation—13 seats in 2015 and more in subsequent permutations—when Hadash, Balad, Ta’al and the United Arab List ran together ^{[4] [5]}. Election-threshold rules, strategic alliances, and domestic debates within Arab politics about cooperation or independence of lists have repeatedly reshaped how Arab votes translate into Knesset seats—a structural dynamic reflected in the comparison between prior Joint List tallies and the ten-seat result cited for the current Knesset ^{[4] [5]}.

5. Alternative perspectives and what remains ambiguous

Some poll snapshots and contemporary pieces model hypothetical results under different coalitions—for example, polling that projects equal seat splits for certain parties under hypothetical elections—but those are not substitutes for the official seating records ^[8]. Additionally, while sources clearly state that the ten Arab MKs sat for Arab parties in the 25th Knesset, publicly available summaries in the reporting corpus do not provide a line-by-line current roster beyond the party-level breakdown cited; therefore any assertion about individual MK names, intra-Knesset faction shifts, or post-swearing-in disciplinary actions would require further sourcing beyond the material reviewed here ^{[1] [7]}.