Israel’s parties gird for wrangling to form a government, with no clear path
By ISABEL KERSHNER, JOHNATAN REISS, AARON BOXERMAN, QASIM NAUMAN and MICHAEL LEVENSON
Israeli political leaders braced on Wednesday for days or weeks of negotiations over the shape of the next government after election results showed no clear winner between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition and a diverse bloc of opposition parties.
About 80% of the votes had been counted as of Wednesday afternoon local time in an election that had the highest voter turnout in Israel since 1999. Those votes, combined with exit polls, indicated that Netanyahu’s alliance will have more seats than the opposition bloc led by Gadi Eisenkot, a former Israeli military chief of staff, but neither will have the 61 seats needed to secure a majority in the Knesset, Israel’s parliament.
That means either side would need to find support from outside its bloc to form a government and select a prime minister. Two Arab parties were projected to win a total of about 18 seats — a remarkable show of strength that could make them Eisenkot’s only path to toppling Netanyahu.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog said he would not begin consulting party leaders about forming a government until next week, when he expects to receive the full, official vote count. As head of state, Herzog will pick whoever he thinks has the best shot at assembling a majority in the Knesset.
The wrangling among parties can be drawn out and bruising. If the first candidate fails to gain support, Herzog can ask up to two others. If they also fail, new elections would be held. “We must do everything we can, certainly after yesterday, to avoid another round of elections,” Herzog said Wednesday.
The election Tuesday was Israel’s first since the Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7, 2023, and was widely seen as a referendum on Netanyahu and the coalition of hard-line nationalists and ultra-Orthodox Jews that he formed in 2022, the most far-right in Israeli history.
The early results, though subject to change, indicated that Netanyahu, a canny survivor over more than three decades in Israeli politics, had emerged with a good chance of clinging to power even though he fell short of an outright victory.
His alliance could drop from 68 seats to roughly 54 and lose its majority in the 120-member Knesset. Eisenkot’s bloc could control about 49 seats.
Analysts said the results could lead to protracted political gridlock — a scenario that suits Netanyahu. He will remain the caretaker prime minister until a new government is formed or new elections are held. And Netanyahu, 77, has a reputation for outmaneuvering almost every rival who has tried to end his rule.
“Netanyahu is still in the driver’s seat,” said Natan Sachs, an expert on Israeli politics at the Middle East Institute, a Washington-based research group. “He’s still in control of most events, and that’s where he likes to be.”
Netanyahu sounded triumphant in a postelection speech Wednesday morning as he noted that his party, Likud, would still be the largest in the Knesset. “We must form a strong right-wing government,” he said.
Some Israeli voters who wanted to oust Netanyahu saw the election as a chance to save the country’s democracy were despondent Wednesday.
In Rehovot, south of Tel Aviv, Shira Barkan, 49, a therapist who wanted to see Netanyahu’s government fall, said she had gone to bed hopeful, but “woke up in the morning with Bibi again,” using Netanyahu’s nickname. In her view, Netanyahu’s extremist government was leading Israel toward global isolation.
“Israelis are amazing people, and they deserve leadership that will not only protect us from external wrongs, but also stop its own wrongdoing,” she said.
Netanyahu could also end up losing if Eisenkot, 66, chooses to partner with the Arab parties that had a historically strong showing Tuesday. That could mean either including those parties in a majority coalition government or relying on their support to form a minority government.
Arab voters said they were furious at Netanyahu for his treatment of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and for discriminatory treatment of Arab citizens in Israel.
Netanyahu had made overt appeals to anti-Arab prejudice, including Tuesday, when he sought to motivate his supporters by accusing Arab citizens of “trying to steal the elections.”
Likud kept up those attacks Wednesday and called on police and intelligence services to investigate the Arab vote, even though Israel’s official election committee had said there was no indication of widespread irregularities.
Mansour Abbas, the leader of one of the major Arab parties, Raam, told a television interviewer that Arab voters, who make up about 20% of the Israeli population, had channeled their “frustration and despair” into “hope.” He said he wanted to replace Netanyahu’s government “in every possible way” and that his first priority was to “ensure that there is a chance of forming a government” that achieved that goal.
But Eisenkot could face blowback from Jewish Israelis if he were to work with Arab parties, given how Israeli public opinion has hardened since the Oct. 7 attack. Even though Arab leaders in Israel generally condemned the attack, many Jewish Israelis would not want them to influence security policies or foreign affairs.
“After Oct. 7, Israeli society will not accept that,” said Shalom Yerushalmi, a veteran political writer at the news site Zman Yisrael, referring to a partnership between Eisenkot’s bloc and Arab parties. “There’s no chance.”
At a hair salon in Jaffa, Saado Zorob, 48, an Arab citizen, said that Jewish Israelis seemed happy to be treated by Muslim doctors and to eat at Arab restaurants but unwilling to give Arab citizens a role in charting the country’s future.
“I feel like garbage,” he said.
He added that he wished Eisenkot had the courage to form a government with Arab parties. “I’m worried that if the deadlock yields another round of elections, many Arabs will stay home,” he said, benefiting Netanyahu’s coalition.
Eisenkot, for his part, did not explicitly mention the Arab parties Wednesday and instead projected confidence that he could build “a stable, Zionist government.”
“The public opted for change,” he said.
Some of Netanyahu’s allies floated the idea that he could join Eisenkot and other centrists to form a broad unity government to stay in power. That would be a comfortable scenario for Netanyahu, who has formed such coalitions before.
But it would be awkward for Eisenkot, who had vowed not to serve under Netanyahu and had denounced him as unfit to lead.
Netanyahu could also to try to block a new government from forming and force new elections. His opponents — who poured years of energy and planning into the vote Tuesday — would struggle to perform any better, analysts said.
“There’s a general sense that this was the opposition’s big chance,” Sachs said. “From Netanyahu’s perspective, he can throw the dice again and again.”
