Israel Elections

Neither Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu nor his main challenger, Gadi Eisenkot, were projected to gain a parliamentary majority, setting the stage for negotiations to form the next government.

Israel’s political leaders were bracing for weeks of negotiations over a new government, as initial results on Wednesday showed no clear winner in a tightly fought election that many have described as a make-or-break moment for the country.

By Wednesday evening in Israel, election officials had counted about 90 percent of the ballots. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s hard-line bloc of parties held a modest lead in seats over the opposition bloc led by Gadi Eisenkot, but it appears that neither coalition will win the 61 seats needed to secure a straightforward majority in the Knesset, Israel’s Parliament.

That means both leaders would need to find support from outside their coalitions to form a government. Two Arab parties were on track to win as many as 19 seats, a strong showing that potentially gives them an important role in the negotiations, even though most Jewish parties were not eager to enter an alliance with them.

Some of Mr. Netanyahu’s allies have floated the idea that he could join Mr. Eisenkot and other centrists to form a broad unity government to stay in power. For Mr. Netanyahu, who will remain a caretaker prime minister until a government is formed, that would be a comfortable scenario.

Mr. Eisenkot faces a dilemma. He has denounced Mr. Netanyahu as unfit to lead Israel, but he has also objected to partnering with Arab parties in a potential coalition. On Wednesday, Mr. Eisenkot did not explicitly mention the Arab parties but said he was focused on forming a government that was both Zionist and committed to universal military conscription, a message that rules out alliances with both Arab and ultra-Orthodox Jewish parties.

The Joint List, an alliance of Arab parties that has emerged as a potential kingmaker according to preliminary results, said it would “do everything in its power” to remove Mr. Netanyahu from office. That could signal a willingness to back Mr. Eisenkot’s bid to form an anti-Netanyahu coalition, even if its lawmakers have not been invited to join it.

The final tally of votes is not expected to be finished before Thursday evening. Lengthy negotiations are likely to follow as political parties try to assemble a governing majority. If those talks fail, the country could head to a second round of elections — a scenario that has played out before.

Here’s what else we are covering:

Vote count: The nearly 90 percent of votes counted indicate that Mr. Netanyahu’s coalition will receive about 54 seats, Mr. Eisenkot’s bloc will get roughly 49, and the Arab parties could reach as many as 19. But the numbers could still shift.
Parliamentary control: Even if no government is formed, the Israeli Parliament will open on Nov. 10, and Mr. Netanyahu’s opponents could be well-placed to take control of the legislative process.
Herzog’s role: President Isaac Herzog of Israel holds a largely ceremonial position, except after national elections, when it falls to him to select who gets the first crack at forming a new government.
What Israelis think: The day after Israel’s election, almost everyone in the country was asking the same question: What now? The Times spoke to people from across the political spectrum to get a sense of their hopes and fears.

For decades, Israel’s Arab parties have been relegated to the margins of Israeli political life, often sitting on the sidelines while Jewish parties assembled a governing coalition in Parliament and picked a prime minister.

Heading into Israel’s pivotal election on Tuesday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned his supporters that the Arabs were “trying to steal the election,” though electoral officials said there were no reports of widespread irregularities. He repeatedly invoked the specter of Arab voters to galvanize his right-wing base, vowing to keep them out of power.

Mr. Netanyahu’s leading rival, Gadi Eisenkot, largely declined to answer whether he would partner with Arab parties if necessary to topple the Netanyahu government, though he said none met his conditions as potential allies.

But record turnout on Tuesday by supporters of the Arab parties looks to deliver them their largest vote totals in generations, possibly since Israel’s establishment 78 years ago.

Now, the Arab minority represents a political reality that cannot be ignored.

Turnout in the Arab community, which represents about 20 percent of Israeli citizens, appears to have translated into a stunning windfall of parliamentary seats — potentially as many as 19 combined between the two leading parties, Raam and the Joint List alliance. The Arab parties have 10 seats in the outgoing Parliament.

Israel’s future could turn in part on whether Mr. Eisenkot decides to take the political risks of partnering with them. Without their support, Mr. Eisenkot and his alliance will almost certainly fall short of the 61-seat majority required in the 120-seat Parliament to form a new government and end Mr. Netanyahu’s hold on power. Mr. Netanyahu’s alliance also looks to fall short of 61 seats.

Many Israeli Jews have long objected to building a governing coalition that relies on Arab party backing for a majority. Some say a Jewish state should be ruled exclusively by Jews. Some cite national security reasons, questioning whether Arab leaders who see themselves as part of the wider Palestinian people can be entrusted with crucial matters of state.

Those objections became even more acute after the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on Israel and the subsequent rightward shift in Israeli politics. Both Raam and some members of the Joint List condemned the assault, although they have also been highly critical of how Israel has conducted its war against Hamas in Gaza.

The Arab parties for many years were themselves reluctant to join governments that oversaw the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. And turnout among Arab Israelis has traditionally been lower than Jewish turnout, reflecting doubts about their ability to influence national decision-making.

Raam, a socially conservative party with roots in Islamist politics, has achieved some acceptance in Israel’s mainstream by putting less emphasis on the cause of Palestinian statehood. But the Joint List, an alliance of three smaller parties that includes a joint Jewish-Arab leftist faction and a Palestinian nationalist faction, is seen as more antagonistic toward Zionism.

Initial election results show that the Joint List will be the significantly larger of the two in Parliament.

“Netanyahu knows that without the Arab parties, there’s no majority to unseat him. That’s why he incites against us,” said Yousef Jabareen, the leader of the Joint List alliance in an interview. “The opposition should reject that incitement.”

He added: “The ball is now in Eisenkot’s court. Whoever wants to remove Netanyahu and change his policies — we are ready to cooperate to topple his government.”

Political analysts say the Joint List would be more likely to support Eisenkot from outside the governing coalition, for instance by agreeing to block any no-confidence votes. There is some precedent for this: In the 1990s, then Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin relied on Arab lawmakers to prevent the collapse of his own minority government.

Arab citizens, some of whom view themselves as both Israeli and Palestinian, experience a tension that can cut to the heart of daily life. Unlike Palestinians in the West Bank — who live under Israeli military rule — Arab Israelis can vote, and some have held high office, including on the country’s Supreme Court.

But they largely live in separate cities and towns from Jewish Israelis and retain tight familial and historical bonds with Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. Many view themselves as second-class citizens in the Jewish state, saying they face discrimination in housing as well as neglect in receiving public services.

Before this year, the largest electoral success recorded by Arab parties was in 2020, when they secured 15 seats. And the first — and so far, only — time an independent Arab party joined the Israeli governing coalition was in 2021, when Mansour Abbas, the leader of Raam, joined Mr. Netanyahu’s rivals to unseat him in favor of a short-lived government.

Mr. Abbas has since worked to make his party more acceptable to Israeli Jews. He has recognized Israel’s Jewish character as a fact of life and publicly considered integrating Arabs into the country’s mandatory national service, in particular community service.

In a bold move during the election campaign, he named Jewish lawmaker Yoav Segalovitz — a former senior police officer and centrist Zionist — as the number two on the Raam candidate list.

But if exit polls and initial results are correct, Raam’s support would not be enough to give Mr. Eisenkot’s bloc a parliamentary majority. He would also have to rely on the Joint List to topple Mr. Netanyahu. While political analysts say that Mr. Eisenkot might be willing to bring Raam onboard, he would struggle to keep his bloc with him if he made common cause with the Joint List, even if he wanted to, because this could provoke too much political blowback from many Jewish voters.

“There’s a shift in Arab politics, an attempt to get closer to the Jewish Zionist mainstream. It’s just that the other side is not willing to do so,” said Thair Abu Rass, an expert on Israel’s Arab politics. “There’s no partner on the Jewish side to create an alternative reality.”

Even before the official results were all in, party leaders were preparing to negotiate potential alliances, and some were signaling their intentions.

Gadi Eisenkot, the main challenger to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said on Wednesday that he was focused on forming a government that would be both Zionist and committed to universal military conscription, a message that rules out alliances with Arab and ultra-Orthodox Jewish parties.

The Joint List, an alliance of Arab parties that has emerged as a potential kingmaker according to preliminary results, said it would “do everything in its power” to remove Netanyahu from office. That could signal a willingness to back Eisenkot’s bid to form an anti-Netanyahu coalition, even though it remained unclear if the Joint List lawmakers would be invited in.

The vote count has progressed, but is not expected to conclude before Thursday evening in Israel. The counting process has two tiers: Election authorities have counted more than 88 percent of ballots cast at polling stations across Israel. That count is expected to be completed in the coming hours, possibly before Thursday morning in Israel, according to a representative of the Central Election Committee.

But a separate set of ballots — those cast at special voting sites, including military bases, prisons, and hospitals — has yet to be counted. Authorities estimate that these number over 400,000, or roughly 7 percent of all ballots cast. Their counting is not expected to be completed before Thursday evening, when the final official results may be released.

Posted on 2026/10/29 08:49 AM