Israel woke up Wednesday without a clear election winner. More than 15 hours after polls closed, partial official results showed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's governing bloc and the opposition grouping led by former military chief Gadi Eisenkot locked in a near-even race, with neither side close to the 61 seats needed for a majority in the 120-member Knesset.
With roughly two-thirds of ballots counted by Wednesday morning, Israel's Central Elections Committee put Netanyahu's bloc at 55 to 56 seats and Eisenkot's bloc at 48 to 49, according to tallies published by the Jerusalem Post. Palestinian-led parties — the Joint List and Ra'am — were on track for a combined 16 to 19 seats, roughly double their current representation, after turnout among Palestinian citizens of Israel surged alongside a national turnout of more than 77%, the highest in at least two decades.
A night of shifting numbers
Exit polls released as voting ended Tuesday night had shown Eisenkot's bloc slightly ahead, prompting the opposition leader to tell cheering supporters in Tel Aviv that "the Israeli public has voted against Netanyahu's service as Israel's prime minister," and that "a worthy leader would have accepted the people's non-confidence and announced today his retirement from politics." Netanyahu, taking the stage at a Jerusalem rally shortly after 3am, insisted official results would show Likud as the largest single party and called for Israel to "establish a strong, right-wing national government," explicitly ruling out any coalition that relies on Palestinian parties.
As counting continued through the morning, the numbers moved in Netanyahu's direction, a swing Israeli pollsters attributed to late-counted ballots from religious and rural areas that traditionally favor the right. Analyst Nadav Eyal said the shift did not necessarily contradict the exit polls, noting that samples have historically underestimated Likud's strength even when correctly forecasting bloc sizes.
Palestinian parties hold the balance
Whichever bloc tries to govern will likely need the Joint List or Ra'am, or both, to reach 61 seats — a dynamic many figures in Eisenkot's own camp have moved to rule out. Yair Golan, leader of the Democrats party within the opposition bloc, broke with that position Wednesday, arguing that excluding Palestinian lawmakers from a governing majority amounts to treating their votes as worth less than others'. "The vote of an Israeli citizen casting a ballot in Tira is worth exactly the same as the vote of an Israeli citizen casting a ballot in Givat Shmuel," Golan said in a statement. "Anyone who tries to erase the votes of Arab citizens is surrendering to Netanyahu and giving up on Israel."
Should Eisenkot ultimately fall short of a majority without Palestinian-party support, analysts say he would face a choice between opening coalition talks with the Joint List and Ra'am — a step several of his own allies have already rejected — or ceding the first attempt at forming a government to Netanyahu, who has his own path blocked without the ultra-Orthodox Shas and United Torah Judaism parties, currently tracking at a combined 14 seats inside his bloc.
President Isaac Herzog is expected to receive final results within days and then formally task either Netanyahu or Eisenkot with trying to build a coalition, a process that officials and analysts said could stretch for weeks given how narrowly split the Knesset appears. The outcome will also shape the next phase of Israel's eight-month war footing with Iran: Eisenkot warned Netanyahu against using "Israel's security" for political ends during the uncertainty, an apparent reference to fears the prime minister could order new strikes to shore up his position.
The Central Elections Committee rejected a last-minute bid by Netanyahu and allied parties to keep polling stations open past the 10pm deadline, after Netanyahu suggested without evidence that the "left and Arabs" were trying to "steal" the election. The committee said it had found no evidence of tampering. A fuller count, including final absentee ballots from soldiers and diplomats, is expected by Thursday.
