Israel votes for a deadlock, and Arab parties hold the balance
Neither Benjamin Netanyahu's bloc nor his opponents won a majority. Arab-led parties won a record 19 seats, and Netanyahu's party says the election was stolen. The police say there is no evidence.
Israel's first general election since the Hamas-led attacks of 7th October 2023 ended without a winner. When the Central Elections Committee published its final count early on Friday 30th October, the parties that support Benjamin Netanyahu had 53 of the 120 seats in the Knesset, Israel's parliament, his Jewish-majority opponents had 48, and two Arab-led parties had 19.1 A government needs 61.
Turnout was 77.9%, with 5.7 million votes cast.1 Polling day, Tuesday 27th October, came four days after two Palestinian gunmen killed two Israeli soldiers at a base in Hebron; the army closed the crossings between the occupied West Bank and Israel for the vote.2
Three blocs, no majority
Israel elects the Knesset in a single national vote, with seats shared in proportion to votes among parties that pass 3.25%.1 Politics is counted in blocs.
Netanyahu's Likud remained the largest party, with 27 seats. With its partners, the ultra-Orthodox Shas and United Torah Judaism and the far-right Otzma Yehudit and Religious Zionism, it has 53, eight short of a majority.1
Against him, Yashar, a new party led by the former army chief Gadi Eisenkot, won 21. A joint list led by two former prime ministers, Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid, won 12; Yair Golan's Democrats won 8; and Avigdor Liberman's Yisrael Beytenu won 7. Together they have 48.1
The Joint List won 11 seats and Ra'am 8. Their 19 is the most Arab-led parties have ever won; they had 10 in the outgoing Knesset.3 Arab citizens make up about a fifth of Israel's population.4 Without their parties, neither side can reach 61. With them, the opposition could.
"The public voted for change," Eisenkot told supporters in Tel Aviv on election night. "The coalition of failure has lost the people's trust." Netanyahu, speaking in Jerusalem after 3am, said: "The right-wing bloc has a clear, decisive majority among the Zionist public."5 He means the Jewish parties alone. The phrase is the argument now under way: whether seats won by Arab-led parties count towards a government.
"Stolen"
On Wednesday Netanyahu's Likud party issued a statement: "The elections in Israel were stolen by Arab parties that support terror and the elimination of the Jewish state." It asked the police, the Shin Bet security service and the elections committee to investigate.3 On Thursday Netanyahu shared a party post on X calling it "Ra'amgate": "They stole the election in Israel!"6
The claims have three strands, and they are different things.
The police said election day had seen very few irregular incidents, and that there was "no investigative- or intelligence-based supporting evidence for the claims".7 The committee's acting director general said it had received "a list of claims, not evidence".6
Separately, the committee's chairman, the Supreme Court justice Noam Sohlberg, asked the Shin Bet to look into suspicions of foreign interference. He wrote that he "cannot attest to the substance of these suspicions" but had "an obligation to investigate them thoroughly".6 He wants its findings within about a week.4 Qatar, named by Netanyahu's allies, called the allegations "ridiculous and dangerous".6
And seven Ra'am activists were arrested on suspicion of buying votes on polling day. Ra'am denies it. "There will be nothing, because there is nothing," said its leader, Mansour Abbas.6
Nothing published so far supports the claim that the result was stolen. "They are doing this because they lost," Eisenkot said.4 The Joint List called the accusations racist.6
The question for the opposition
An independent Arab party has joined an Israeli government only once. In June 2021 Ra'am joined the coalition of Bennett and Lapid that ended Netanyahu's 12 years in office; it fell a year later.8 Eisenkot has signalled that he is open, with conditions, to working with Arab-led parties, according to the Associated Press.4 The Joint List's leader, Yousef Jabareen, said that anyone who wanted to offer "a substantive and genuine alternative" to Netanyahu "will have to talk to us".3
The opposition can't govern without the Arab parties, and not all of its own members would govern with them. One way round that is a minority government that Arab members support from outside. Another, according to unconfirmed Hebrew media reports on Saturday, a bill to bring back direct elections for the prime minister, which Israel tried between 1996 and 2001.9 Such a bill would itself need 61 votes.
On Saturday evening thousands rallied in Tel Aviv's Habima Square to urge the opposition to form a Jewish-Arab coalition, while counter-protesters supporting Netanyahu demanded that Israel not have a government with "terrorists".10
What happens next
The results go to President Isaac Herzog on Wednesday 4th November, and the new Knesset is sworn in on Tuesday 10th November.1 Herzog then has a week to ask the member most likely to succeed to form a government. That person gets up to 42 days; a second candidate gets 28; then the Knesset itself gets 21. If all of that fails, Israel holds another election.11 Netanyahu remains prime minister of a caretaker government until then.
Between 2019 and 2022 Israel held five elections in four years, and this was its sixth since 2019. What is unresolved is whether the parties that won the most seats against Netanyahu will accept the votes they need to replace him, or whether Israel is heading for a seventh.