Rachel Fink<\/a><\/p>\n June 16, 2026<\/p>\n
A newly established Jewish-Arab political party debuted Tuesday and is joining the crowded field vying to take down Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu\u2019s ruling coalition in Israel\u2019s next election, slated for October.<\/p>\n
Makom Lekulanu, which translates to A Place for Us All, ( is led by Rula Daood and Alon-Lee Green, co-founders of the Israeli-Palestinian coexistence organizing group. Other Standing Together leaders will also join the party, including Haifa City Council member Sally Abed; Ghadir Hani, a Palestinian peace and women\u2019s rights activist; Itamar Avneri, a Tel Aviv-Jaffa city council member; and Yonatan Zeigen, whose mother, well-known peace activist Vivian Silver, was killed by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023, in her home at Kibbutz Be\u2019eri.<\/p>\n
According to Daood and others who spoke at a press conference in Nazareth publicly launching the new party, Makom Lekulanu\u2019s platform will focus on many of the same issues that Standing Together has organized around for years: peace, social justice, soaring violence and crime in Arab communities, the cost of living and climate justice.<\/p>\n
Party leaders say they are running not only to oppose Netanyahu and his coalition, which currently includes far-right extremists National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, but to offer a fundamentally different vision.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are doing this because this is the last moment to save our society,\u201d Daood told the modest crowd, many of whom were clad in the telltale purple that has become synonymous with Standing Together. \u201cWe are being abandoned, murdered; our future is going up in flames. And I know that in order to repair things, it is not enough to say only what we oppose. We also have to say what we support.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSo today I am saying: no to Netanyahu, to Ben-Gvir, to Smotrich,\u201d she continued, to enthusiastic applause. \u201cBut I am also saying yes. Yes to Israeli-Palestinian peace, yes to national and civil equality, yes to social justice.\u201dThe press conference took place at the scenic Rose Cafe in Nazareth, a choice that underscored the message its founders are trying to send. This is not, they insisted, a Jewish party with token Palestinian representation or an Arab party with a couple of Jewish allies, but what Daood called \u201ca truly shared party, one of genuine partnership between Jews and Arabs.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to Abed, this means tearing down the arbitrary dividers that have been built around Jewish and Arab leadership.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have always been told, \u2018You will be responsible for Arab society, and we will be responsible for Jewish society,\u2019\u201d she said. \u201cBut I want to lead and take responsibility for all of society, together with my Jewish partners.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s what A Place for Us All will be: taking responsibility for all of society, together, on the path to ending the occupation, to peace and to real equality.\u201d<\/p>\n
A decade organizing<\/p>\n
The party grew directly out of Standing Together, the Jewish-Arab grassroots movement founded in 2015. Since the Oct. 7 attack, and the ensuing wars in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran, Standing Together has become one of Israel\u2019s most visible anti-war and anti-occupation organizations, growing its membership more than tenfold and emerging as a prominent voice on the international stage as well.<\/p>\n
Inside Israel, the movement has organized ceasefire protests and rallies calling for a hostage deal, protected aid convoys headed for Gaza from right-wing attacks, raised funds for bomb shelters in Bedouin communities and provided protective presence for Palestinians facing settler violence in the West Bank.<\/p>\n
For Zeigen, the decision to join the slate is rooted in personal loss as well as political conviction.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor years, I worked with people battling poverty, marginalization and trauma \u2014 the overwhelming majority of them as a result of institutional abandonment,\u201d he said at the press conference. \u201cOn Oct. 7, I experienced that abandonment firsthand. My mother, Vivian Silver, did not survive the massacre at her kibbutz.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOut of the devastation of losing her, I made a decision,\u201d he continued. \u201cI left my job as a social worker, and since then I have dedicated my life to one thing: Israeli-Palestinian peace.\u201d<\/p>\n
Zeigen described his grief now intermingling with another emotion: fear for the future his children will inherit.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat is why I insist on turning despair into action,\u201d he said. \u201cBecause I refuse to accept bereavement as fate \u2014 not for Jews and not for Arabs, not for Israelis and not for Palestinians.\u201d<\/p>\n
The new party\u2019s leaders have been careful to stress that Standing Together is a separate entity from A Place for Us All. In a joint statement issued ahead of the launch, Daood and Green said the movement would remain active and independent, with a \u201cfull and substantive separation \u2014 organizational, legal, financial and political\u201d between Standing Together and A Place for Us All. Both Daood and Green said they will take unpaid leave from their leadership roles in the movement in order to run.<\/p>\n
Daood said the move into electoral politics is a natural progression of what she and Green have helped create over the last decade.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor 10 years now, we have been effecting change right where it was needed most. We know how to build this kind of power on the ground,\u201d Daood told the Forward. \u201cNow we want to take that power and translate it into votes so that we can effect change from within the Knesset.\u201d<\/p>\n
While rumors of a political run have swirled around Standing Together for months, Green said he and Daood felt they had finally reached a now-or-never moment.<\/p>\n
\u201cI truly believe we are at a critical juncture,\u201d Green explained. \u201cThis is the point where the Israeli people either keep going down this path of ethnic cleansing and endless war and occupation and terrible quality of life, for both Palestinians and Jews living here \u2014 or we can turn around, right now, and go in the other direction, in the direction of life and peace and security for all.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe right wing in Israel very much understands we are at this juncture,\u201d he added. \u201cAnd they have been very clear about what they are offering. I could not live with myself if I didn\u2019t offer an alternative to Israeli voters.\u201d<\/p>\n
Seeking an edge<\/p>\n
A Place for Us All will face an uphill battle from the start.<\/p>\n
Any party led by Standing Together\u2019s founders is likely to intensify the criticism the movement already faces from right-wing Israelis who have branded them as traitors for speaking out against the occupation and the suffering in Gaza. Posters featuring images of Gazan children have been torn down, and activists, Green included, have been harassed by right-wing agitators, in some cases outside their own homes.<\/p>\n
A Place for Us All is also already drawing criticism from within the Israeli left, where some fear that the addition of a new party could split an already fragile anti-Netanyahu camp. In Israel\u2019s electoral system, any party that fails to cross the electoral threshold \u2014 currently set at just over 3% of the vote \u2014 receives no seats, meaning it cannot take part in the post-election negotiations that determine who will build the 61-seat coalition needed to form the next government.<\/p>\n
Green strongly rejects this concern.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery poll makes clear that winning without Jewish-Arab partnership is impossible,\u201d he argued. \u201cThe only path to replacing Netanyahu is to maximize turnout among Jewish and Palestinian citizens and ensure that they vote for the same political bloc.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to Green, only one in four Palestinian citizens between the ages of 18 and 24 is currently planning to vote. \u201cBut with our party running, that statistic jumps up to two out of four,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
If the scene outside the cafe was any indication, the party\u2019s message may already be resonating with at least some of the young people it hopes to bring into politics. As the press conference unfolded, groups of teenagers passing by stopped to cheer on the speakers.<\/p>\n
Inside, excitement was also running high. At one point, activist Galit Mass-Ader openly wept as she embraced Ghadir Hani who is joining the party\u2019s list.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor me, this is a decision that has been years in the making. I\u2019ve been working for peace and coexistence nearly my whole life,\u201d Hani told the Forward. \u201cBut since October 7, there have been so many difficult moments of pain and despair.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis party is the exact opposite of that,\u201d she said. \u201cIt is the embodiment of hope \u2014 hope that belongs to both Jews and Palestinians, and to all those who are ready to reject the old, stale politics in favor of a new, shared political system.\u201d<\/p>\n
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