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 14% of the total electorate) yet to be fully counted.
With the remaining 86% of the votes tallied, both Jewish blocs looked certain to fall short of the 61 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 16-19 seats, or hand Netanyahu a political lifeline in the form of new elections or a unity government. 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. 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).
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. 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”. 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.
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