JERUSALEM – Israelis watched anxiously Wednesday as election results pointed to a sharp rebuke of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right government. Turnout reached its highest level in more than 25 years, but exit polls showed no clear victor, raising the prospect of weeks of coalition negotiations.
Arab-led parties appeared to have delivered a historic performance. Still, it remained uncertain whether Netanyahu’s opponents — who exit polls indicated could hold a majority in the next parliament — would be willing to form a coalition with them. Questions involving Palestinians and their descendants remain deeply sensitive in Israel.
Netanyahu struck a defiant tone early Wednesday as he fought to become Israel’s longest-serving prime minister. He rejected the possibility of cooperation with Arab parties, whose constituents represent about 20% of the country’s population, calling such an arrangement treasonous.
“We must establish a strong, right-wing, nationalist government,” Netanyahu said. “We must not endanger Israel and establish a government that relies on anti-Zionist Arab parties.”
His leading challenger, centrist former military chief Gadi Eisenkot, has indicated that he could consider working with Arab parties if they recognize Israel as a Jewish state and Hamas as an extremist organization. Some potential coalition partners have already rejected that possibility. Whether they will reconsider in an effort to remove Netanyahu from office remains unclear.
With 60% of the vote counted, Netanyahu’s Likud party held 21.4%, while Eisenkot’s Yashar party had 16.2%. Neither party was expected to govern alone and would need to assemble a coalition. The figures released by Israel’s Central Elections Committee did not yet show how many seats each party would win in the 120-member Knesset.
Likud’s preliminary share was below its result in the 2022 election, when the party won 23.4% of the vote.
The outcome suggested that Netanyahu’s rivals had failed to turn the anger and grief following the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, attack and three years of war into a decisive effort to force him from power.
Far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir was among the election’s apparent losers. For many Israelis, he embodied the government’s most extreme positions, including openly taunting Palestinian detainees and saying that many people in Gaza are “not even people.”
Turnout reached 77.7% of eligible voters, the highest rate since 1999. Final results were expected in the following days, after officials counted hundreds of thousands of absentee ballots cast by military personnel, diplomats and others.
Netanyahu faces a setback but not outright defeat
The vote reflected widespread unease over Netanyahu’s partnership with far-right parties, as well as frustration over military draft exemptions granted to Israel’s large ultra-Orthodox Jewish community.
Exit polls from major Israeli television stations indicated that Netanyahu’s governing bloc had lost ground, although Likud was still projected to remain the largest party and the leading candidate to receive a mandate from President Isaac Herzog. The president, however, is not required to ask the party with the most seats to form the next government.
The exit polls gave Netanyahu’s bloc and Eisenkot’s alliance roughly 51 seats each, while Arab parties were projected to win about 18. The closely divided result set the stage for weeks of coalition talks before a prime minister could be confirmed — or another election called.
The most direct route to a parliamentary majority for Eisenkot would require cooperation with Arab-led parties, a politically difficult prospect. In an early Wednesday speech centered on national unity, Eisenkot pledged to build a government and promised “a new era — an era of hope.”
Arab-led parties could hold the key
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With Arab-led parties making significant gains, Israel faced a debate over whether they should play a role in the next government — a discussion as intense as the country’s coffee.
“We have no future here if we do not stop being afraid. And if we do not stop the racism. We must no longer accept Netanyahu’s racist division between Jewish votes and Arab votes,” Yair Golan, leader of the Democrats party, wrote on X. His party supports including Israel’s Arab-led parties in a governing coalition.
Arab citizens of Israel are descendants of Palestinians who remained in the country after its establishment in 1948. They have often faced discrimination and suspicion because of their support for the Palestinian cause. Those concerns intensified after Oct. 7, even though Palestinian citizens were among those killed and abducted in the attack.
Netanyahu had warned that Arab parties could determine the election, saying they were turning out to vote in “unprecedented numbers.” He has ruled out working with them, while the Arab-led parties have likewise rejected cooperation with him.
The mood was joyful at the headquarters of the United Arab List, the lone Arab party to ever join a governing coalition, briefly, in 2021.
“We are here, we are not on the sidelines,” party leader Mansour Abbas declared.
If no one can put together a majority coalition, new elections could be held early next year. Israel held five elections between April 2019 and November 2022 because of a similar stalemate. Whether thousands of Israelis living abroad would again fly back home to vote, and whether Arab voters would again surge to the polls, is unclear.
Minority governments are possible, but they must rely on cooperation from parties outside the government to pass legislation.
Attitudes over a polarizing Netanyahu will shape days ahead
The race was widely seen as a referendum on Netanyahu’s nearly unbroken 17-year rule. Israelis were divided even before the deadliest attack in the country’s history. The resulting wars, along with settler violence in the occupied West Bank, have stoked worldwide outrage, straining ties with Israel’s closest allies and fueling a rise in antisemitism.
Netanyahu’s supporters think he is protecting Israel’s security and Jewish identity in the face of international pressure and liberal elites at home.
His detractors say Netanyahu, beset by an ongoing corruption trial, dragged out the war in Gaza and its hostage crisis for political reasons. They say he is undermining Israel’s independent judiciary. And they accuse his government of allowing ultra-Orthodox religious Jews to avoid military conscription.
Eisenkot is viewed by supporters as a capable leader with sterling security credentials. His son and two nephews were killed in Gaza, and his backers believe that he feels deeply the pain that still courses through Israel. Parties that likely would support him have vowed to improve Israel’s international standing and work to conscript ultra-Orthodox men while bolstering the independence of the judiciary.
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Lidman reported from Tel Aviv, Israel. Associated Press writers across Israel contributed to this report.
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