Arab Parties Could Hold the Key as Netanyahu and Eisenkot Both Fall Short of a Majority

Israel’s election has produced no clear winner, and Arab parties may end up deciding who forms the next government.

Netanyahu’s camp has moved in the opposite direction. Critics say his allies have begun a campaign to delegitimize the Arab parties and portray Arab citizens as a threat from within, a narrative that has gained traction amid growing mistrust since the Hamas-led attacks of October 7, 2023.

Netanyahu’s Likud is the largest single party, a better showing than most exit polls had suggested on Tuesday night. His bloc began the count well above 60 seats and fell as more ballots were added. Analysts had warned of that. The first boxes to be counted came largely from areas that vote for the right.

The count isn’t over. Soldiers, evacuees and others who voted away from their home polling stations cast double-envelope ballots, and those are counted last. Election officials expect the work to run into Thursday. Final results go to President Isaac Herzog next week.

Turnout reached 77.7 percent, the highest since 1999, and Arab citizens of Israel appear to have voted in record numbers. They make up about a fifth of the population and often describe themselves as Palestinian citizens of Israel. As the count has progressed, the combined total for the Arab parties has climbed from 15 to 18 seats, matching or beating their previous best result.

That leaves Eisenkot, a former army chief who leads the Yashar party, in a tight spot. Without Arab-led parties, he can’t reach a majority. During the campaign, though, most Jewish opposition parties said they wouldn’t work with Arab lists, pointing to a lack of shared values. Eisenkot has all but ruled it out himself. Avigdor Lieberman, a right-wing member of his bloc, said he wouldn’t sit in a minority government that depended on their support.

Not everyone in the bloc agrees. Yair Golan, who leads the Democrats, said on Wednesday that the opposition should unite with the Arab parties. “We have a majority of 65 seats,” he said. “We must stop being afraid.”

Mansour Abbas, head of Ra’am, the smaller of the two Arab lists, has said he wants to join the next government. His party sat in the broad coalition that removed Netanyahu from office for a time between 2021 and 2022. Abbas said Israeli politicians tend to say one thing before an election and another after it, and that he isn’t troubled by what was said during the campaign.

Netanyahu’s camp has moved in the opposite direction. Critics say his allies have begun a campaign to delegitimize the Arab parties and portray Arab citizens as a threat from within, a narrative that has gained traction amid growing mistrust since the Hamas-led attacks of October 7, 2023.

Both leaders addressed supporters overnight, and both said they would form the government. Neither claimed victory outright. Netanyahu said the right-wing bloc had a decisive majority among Jewish Israelis and called for a strong national government of the right. Eisenkot told his party that the public had chosen change and that the coalition of failure had lost the people’s trust. He said he would work with partners on a stable government.

The result looks a lot like the last several. Israel held five elections between 2019 and 2022, and each was largely a vote on Netanyahu, who is on trial for corruption on charges he denies. This one comes after four years of a coalition that pushed the country in a religious and nationalist direction, a plan to overhaul the courts that drew mass protests, and the October 7 attacks that led to wars in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran.

Tamar Hermann, a pollster at the Israeli Democracy Institute, said before the vote that the weight of the pro- and anti-Netanyahu camps was about the same as ever. After October 7, she said, many people expected him to fall, and he didn’t.

Negotiations have probably begun already. Yaakov Katz, an Israeli journalist and author, said each side will try to win over defectors or assemble a minority government. He said it might not work and could take weeks or months. Larger parties usually court smaller ones with cabinet posts, budgets or policy promises.

The formal steps are fixed. Herzog, whose role is mostly ceremonial, will consult the leaders of every party that won seats. He’ll then ask the one most likely to build a coalition to try. That person has up to six weeks. If they fail, another can have a turn. If nobody manages it, Israel goes to a new election within months.