No clear winner has emerged from Israel’s election, with nearly 90 percent of ballots counted and both major political blocs falling short of the 61 seats required to form a government.
The Israeli Central Elections Committee said on Wednesday that it had counted more than five million votes by 9 p.m. local time (19:00 GMT). Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s bloc was projected to win 53 seats in the 120-member Knesset, while the opposition alliance led by Gadi Eisenkot was expected to secure 48 seats.
Projections from Tuesday’s vote also indicated that Arab parties, the Joint List and Ra’am, could win a combined 19 seats, potentially a record.
Final results could be announced as early as Thursday evening, although the outcome is unlikely to produce an immediate resolution. More than 500,000 special double-envelope ballots remain to be counted, including votes cast by soldiers, diplomats and people voting away from their registered polling stations. These ballots could alter the distribution of seats.
The election, the first since the October 7, 2023, attacks and the subsequent war in Gaza, was widely viewed as a referendum on Netanyahu’s premiership. The 77-year-old prime minister remains in contention despite his bloc falling short of a parliamentary majority.
Netanyahu will continue as caretaker prime minister until a new government is formed. President Isaac Herzog is expected to begin consultations with party leaders next week, after the official results are announced, to determine who can assemble a governing coalition.
Herzog has urged political parties to avoid another election that could further delay the formation of a government. Coalition negotiations are a regular feature of Israeli politics, as no party has ever secured an outright parliamentary majority.
Ahead of the vote, Eisenkot ruled out forming a minority government with Arab-led parties. Netanyahu also rejected such an arrangement.
With Netanyahu’s bloc projected to emerge as the largest, some analysts have suggested that a unity government involving Eisenkot could be an option, although the outcome remains uncertain.
Eisenkot said in a post on X on Wednesday that his opposition alliance was focused on the “heavy task entrusted to us – bringing change to Israel and establishing a Zionist mobilisation government”.
He described the result as a rejection of Netanyahu’s government, accusing it of failing to take responsibility for the October 7 attacks and criticizing what he called a “bloc of shirkers”.
Meanwhile, Netanyahu’s Likud party accused Arab parties of electoral wrongdoing amid record turnout among Arab voters.
“The elections in the State of Israel were stolen by Arab parties that support terrorism and the elimination of the Jewish state through serious criminal offences of bribery, threats, violence, forgeries, and the use of prohibited software to mobilise voters,” Likud said in a statement.
The party said it was submitting hundreds of testimonies and pieces of evidence to the police, the Shin Bet and the Central Elections Committee concerning alleged irregularities at Arab polling stations. The allegations were made by Likud and were not established as fact in the preliminary results.
The predominantly Arab Joint List alliance said preliminary figures suggested that Arab voter turnout had played a decisive role in preventing Netanyahu and his coalition from securing a parliamentary majority. It cautioned, however, that the final results had yet to be announced.
In a statement published late on Wednesday by the Turkish news agency Anadolu, the alliance said voters had responded to incitement and intimidation at the ballot box, rejecting what it called a “government of butchers” and its policies of home demolitions, racism and war crimes.
The Joint List said its support reflected demands for political unity and a political force capable of defending the rights of Arab citizens without concessions.
It pledged to work towards removing Netanyahu’s government and preventing its return, saying it was prepared to cooperate in efforts to establish an alternative administration.
Joint List leader Yousef Jabareen said the alliance could support an anti-Netanyahu government from outside parliament’s governing coalition, but would not join it.
