Israelis voted on October 27 in an election that has left neither side with a clear path to government. With about 90% of ballots counted, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud was the largest party with 26 seats, followed by Gadi Eisenkot’s new Yashar party with 21. Netanyahu’s bloc held 53 seats, eight short of the 61 needed for a majority in the 120-seat Knesset, while Eisenkot’s bloc held 48. Arab parties won a combined 19 seats, an all-time high. Official results are expected on November 4, and the outcome could still shift as the remaining votes are counted. Eleven parties cleared the 3.25% threshold to enter parliament, so any coalition will be a negotiation among many partners.
The case that voters have delivered a rebuke to the governing camp is strong. Netanyahu’s bloc held 68 seats in the outgoing Knesset, so a fall to 53 would be a loss of 15 seats, according to the Times of Israel. Likud’s own total of 26 is 10 seats below its previous result in preliminary figures. Turnout was about 77.7%, up more than seven percentage points from the previous election, which suggests that voters were motivated to deliver a verdict. Arab parties nearly doubled their representation from 10 seats to 19, and Eisenkot’s party won 21 seats in its first election, signaling a real appetite for an alternative to the government that has led the country through years of conflict.
The counterargument is that a rebuke is not the same as a mandate for change. The Eisenkot bloc’s 48 seats are 13 short of a majority, and the only way to reach 61 is to bring in the Arab parties’ 19 seats, which would give the opposition about 67 in total. That depends on parties with very different priorities agreeing to sit together, and nothing in the early results shows that they will. The count is also incomplete. Between 430,000 and 480,000 so-called double-envelope ballots, cast by soldiers, prisoners and diplomats abroad, remain to be counted, and with each seat worth roughly 40,000 votes, they could move individual seats, though analysts quoted by the Times of Israel say they are unlikely to change the balance of power between the blocs.
The stakes extend well beyond Israel’s own politics. The next government will shape the country’s posture in a region unsettled by the Iran war that began in late February and has disrupted energy markets as far away as Europe, where gas prices crossed 100 this week. A drawn-out coalition fight could leave major decisions to a caretaker government, while a stable majority of either kind would set the direction of Israeli policy for years. Washington, the Gulf states and Israel’s neighbors will all be watching to see who emerges as prime minister and what that person promises to do.
Israel’s voters have weakened Netanyahu’s bloc without crowning a replacement. The weeks of coalition bargaining that follow the final count on November 4 will determine whether the country gets a government or another prolonged deadlock. The new Knesset is due to be sworn in on November 10.
