Israel’s future hung in the balance on Wednesday as it became clear that Benjamin Netanyahu had lost his governing majority, and his political fate now depends on whether opposition Jewish parties are prepared to forge a common front with Palestinian parties, whose support surged in Tuesday’s elections.
The leader of the Jewish opposition bloc, the retired general Gadi Eisenkot, appeared to rule out such a broad coalition in a premature declaration of victory overnight for what he called a “Zionist majority”.
As the vote count proceeded on Wednesday, initial exit poll projections that Eisenkot’s bloc would have a narrow lead over Netanyahu’s coalition looked increasingly in doubt as the prime minister’s bloc edged ahead, with the votes of deployed soldiers and other absentee ballots – about ۱۴% of the total electorate – yet to be fully counted.
With the remaining ۸۶% of the votes tallied, both Jewish blocs looked certain to fall short of the ۶۱ Knesset seats needed for a majority government, leaving Eisenkot and his allies facing a clear choice: either make a pact with Arab Israeli parties heading for a record result of ۱۶-۱۹ seats, or hand Netanyahu a political lifeline in the form of new elections or a unity government.
On Wednesday night, Netanyahu reacted to the high Palestinian turnout and the success of Arab Israeli parties by claiming they had “stolen the election”. He did not offer evidence, but said on X that his Likud party had sent “hundreds of testimonies and pieces of evidence” to the central elections committee and the Shin Bet internal security agency.
Both those agencies have been politicised under Netanyahu’s government. The elections committee had sought to ban Arab Israeli parties before the poll, but the attempt to exclude them was overturned by the country’s supreme court.
Donald Trump took credit for Netanyahu’s better than expected performance so far, claiming his overt backing in the run-up to the vote had made the difference. “When the endorsement went out, it helped him a lot,” Trump said, adding that the result appeared to be heading for a stalemate or a Netanyahu win.
Yair Golan, the leader of the centre-left Democrats, a junior partner in Eisenkot’s Change bloc, urged Eisenkot to negotiate with the two Palestinian parties, the Joint List and Ra’am (the United Arab List).
“We have no future here if we don’t stop being afraid. And if we don’t put an end to racism. We can no longer accept Netanyahu’s racist distinction between Jewish and Arab votes,” Golan said in a post on X.
“Anyone who tries to erase the votes of Arab citizens is surrendering to Netanyahu and giving up on Israel,” he added, pointing out that Netanyahu relied on ultra-Orthodox Jewish parties that were non-Zionist and opposed conscription for their constituents.
Noa Landau, a commenter writing in Haaretz, argued that by making Zionism the test for forming a coalition, excluding potential partners, while the prime minister had not, Eisenkot had fallen “into the trap Netanyahu laid for him over the course of the election campaign”.
The Joint List leader, Yousef Jabareen, said its strong performance meant it “can’t be ignored under any political scenario”. He said Netanyahu’s government, especially its extremist national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, “has made life bitter for every Arab citizen”.
“We will be ready to pave the way to oust the government of Netanyahu, Ben-Gvir and Smotrich – and send them home,” Jabareen said. Another Joint List official described the choice facing the Jewish opposition as “supremacy or building democracy”.
Counting all the votes could take another few days, with absentee ballots the last to be tallied. Most of those are from deployed soldiers. The army vote usually swings right, but that broad picture may be complicated by the fact that a lot of older, more moderate reservists are now on active duty.
Once all the votes are accounted for, it will be up to Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, to give one of the party leaders six weeks to form a government. If the first choice fails, the opportunity passes to his rival. In the weeks of political wrangling likely to ensue, both Netanyahu and Eisenkot are expected to lure defectors from each other’s camps.
Netanyahu would remain in office in a caretaker capacity until a new majority is formed. He might expect to benefit if the deadlock leads to another round of elections. Tens of thousands of diaspora Israelis who returned to vote on Tuesday, and were mostly opposed to the governing coalition, might not return for another vote, for example.
The Palestinian parties and Jewish centre-left have been urging the opposition to focus on finding common cause in the Knesset, replacing the speaker and pursuing legislation that the factions can agree on, such as ordering an independent review into the security failures that led to the ۷ October attack by Hamas in ۲۰۲۳.
On Wednesday, Herzog urged all parties to keep an “open mind” in trying to build a new government coalition.
“We must do everything we can, certainly after yesterday, to avoid another round of elections,” he said.
The election happened in the midst of Israel’s war in Gaza – barely mentioned in the course of the campaign, despite the fact that Israel has been accused of committing genocide in Gaza and ethnic cleansing in the West Bank, and Netanyahu is wanted by the international criminal court for alleged war crimes.
A UN commission of human rights experts reported on Monday that Israel had continued to commit genocidal acts against Palestinian civilians in Gaza after a ceasefire was declared in October ۲۰۲۵. Since then ۱,۴۳۱ Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli military, including ۳۰۰ children.
The report, by the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, said: “Israeli authorities and forces continue to commit genocidal acts with the genocidal intent to destroy, in whole or in part, the Palestinians in Gaza.”
Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Daniel Meron, rejected the report as an “attempt to destroy the Jewish state” and “to undermine Israel’s legitimacy and deny its fundamental right to exist and defend itself”.
Eisenkot and much of his bloc support the war in Gaza, and sought to make the election a referendum on Netanyahu. The turnout was nearly ۷۸%, the highest since ۱۹۹۹, with marked increases in the number of serving military members voting.
Political deadlock has led to repeated votes in the past. Between ۲۰۱۹ and ۲۰۲۲, Israel held five elections.
Netanyahu is Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, governing for ۱۹ of the past ۳۰ years, and its most tenacious political survivor. Entangled in a long-running corruption trial, he and his far-right coalition had stoked xenophobic fears and suggested Israel would be vulnerable to a nuclear attack without him.
The campaign, febrile even by Israeli standards, included Netanyahu posting a picture of a nuclear explosion devastating Tel Aviv on the eve of the polls opening.
Since the deadly attack launched by Hamas on Israel’s southern communities on ۷ October ۲۰۲۳, Israel has devastated Gaza and killed more than ۷۴,۰۰۰ Palestinians, fought Hezbollah in Lebanon, occupied new territory in Syria and launched a war with the US against Iran.
