Israel’s ruling Likud party has accused Arab-led parties of “stealing” the 27 October election through an alleged bribery scheme, a claim that Qatar, the police and election officials have rejected for lack of evidence. According to the Times of Israel, the vote left Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s bloc with 53 of the 120 Knesset seats and the opposition bloc led by Gadi Eisenkot with 48, while Arab-led parties won a record 19, 7 for Ra’am and 12 for the Joint List. Neither side has a majority. Turnout was 77.9%, with 5,716,665 votes cast. Likud called the matter “Ra’amgate” and said, “They stole the election in Israel!”
The case for a thorough investigation is that a senior official has asked for one. Noam Sohlberg, the Supreme Court justice who chairs the Central Elections Committee, wrote to the head of the Shin Bet security service to ask for a probe into suspected foreign influence. He wrote that he “cannot attest to the substance of these suspicions” but that there was an obligation to investigate them thoroughly. Ra’am said seven of its operatives were arrested over an alleged bribery scheme, three on election day and four on Thursday, though the party denies any involvement. Hebrew media reported that the probe was opened before election day, and Likud has pointed to the arrests in the south. Herzog said the allegations must be investigated thoroughly. Ra’am leader Mansour Abbas denied any link to foreign interference and pledged full cooperation with law enforcement. If the claims are true, supporters argue, the integrity of the vote is at stake and the public deserves answers before a government is formed.
The case against rests on the absence of proof. The police said there was no investigative or intelligence-based evidence supporting the claims, and the director general of the Central Elections Committee, Dean Livne, said there was no basis for the election-theft claims and described the Likud material as a list of claims, not evidence. Qatar called the accusations “ridiculous and dangerous”. Eisenkot called the campaign “illegitimate” and “fictitious”, and the Joint List called it racist and a series of “filthy lies”. Herzog also warned against “tarnishing an entire community”. The Times of Israel adds that officials said the matter was much smaller than reported, and that the Shin Bet stressed the suspicions remain unproven. Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir called for Arab party leaders to be interrogated or arrested.
The dispute matters because it comes as Israel tries to form a government after an election that produced no clear winner. Avigdor Liberman called Sohlberg’s letter “dramatic and unprecedented” and said he would not sit in a government with Netanyahu, the Joint List or the Haredi parties. The allegations also test relations between Jewish and Arab citizens, since the claims target the Arab-led parties that made record gains. Balad’s Sami Abou Shehadeh told the Netanyahu camp, in effect, that it had lost and should accept the result.
The investigation will decide whether the claims have any basis. Until it reports, Israel faces a coalition fight made harder by an argument over the legitimacy of the result itself.
