Israel Election Leaves No Clear Winner as Arab Parties Hold the Balance

Israel's parliamentary election on Tuesday produced no decisive result. With nearly 90 percent of ballots counted, neither major bloc has reached the 61 seats needed for a majority in the 120-member Knesset. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's bloc is projected to win 53 seats, while the opposition bloc led by Gadi Eisenkot is expected to take 48.

Arab-majority parties won a historic 19 seats, helped by turnout of about 80 percent among Palestinian citizens of Israel. That places them at the center of coalition arithmetic, even though several party leaders have ruled out governing with them.

Netanyahu's Likud is on course to be the largest party with 26 seats and 20.65 percent of the vote, but his bloc is eight seats short. Before the vote he told The Jerusalem Post he expected to win "five more terms". Ahead of election day, Haaretz cited a Channel 14 broadcast in which he warned that an opposition victory would mean citizenship for hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, which he said would signal the end of the Jewish state. On Tuesday he called a government relying on Arab parties "a shame and a disgrace". After the vote, a Likud statement shared by Netanyahu claimed the election was "stolen by Arab parties". According to The Times of Israel, police and the Central Elections Committee have already dismissed those claims.

Eisenkot's Yashar Party is projected to win 21 seats with 16.16 percent. His bloc is 13 seats short and cannot reach 61 without the Arab-led parties. In a September interview he said he saw no Arab party that accepted his principles. On election day he called the race perhaps the most critical since the founding of the state, and on Wednesday he said the public had "voted against" Netanyahu and promised to turn that into a Zionist government.

Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid, who co-lead the Together party, are on course for 12 seats and 9.07 percent. Bennett told supporters in Tel Aviv that the government of October 7 was going home, while Lapid said the Netanyahu bloc had suffered a crushing defeat. Lapid had earlier accused Netanyahu of fear-mongering after ignoring warnings before October 7.

On the far right, Itamar Ben-Gvir's Otzma Yehudit is projected to win seven seats with 5.58 percent, less than half of the 15 he sought. In August he said some Palestinians in Gaza "shouldn't live" and called for Israel to kill 30 to 40 people there every night. Bezalel Smotrich's Religious Zionism is on course for six seats with 4.78 percent. He warned of high turnout in Palestinian communities in Israel and told supporters that Jewish settlements will be established in Gaza.

Among the Arab-majority parties, the Joint List led by Yousef Jabareen is projected to win 12 seats with 9.14 percent, making it the third-largest party by vote share. Jabareen said change would come through a true and equal Jewish-Arab partnership. Mansour Abbas's Ra'am is on course for eight seats with 6.09 percent, beating its target of seven. Abbas accused Netanyahu of using a scare tactic to mobilize right-wing voters.

Avigdor Lieberman's Yisrael Beiteinu is projected to win seven seats with 5.93 percent. On October 15 he had predicted that the change bloc would reach 61 seats or more. He has since urged patience, saying a much better and more optimistic picture could emerge as counting continues.