By Lena Marchetti
BUFFALO — Israelis voted Tuesday at the highest rate since 1999, and woke up Wednesday without a clear winner.
With about 42 percent of ballot boxes counted as of 5:58 a.m. Israel time (11:58 p.m. Tuesday in Buffalo), partial results from the Central Elections Committee gave Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s bloc 57 of the Knesset’s 120 seats, the opposition bloc led by former military chief Gadi Eisenkot 47, and the two main Arab-led parties, the Joint List and Ra’am, the remaining 16, according to The Times of Israel. A government needs 61.
Those numbers will move. Ballots cast in so-called double envelopes, including soldiers’ votes, are counted last, and several small parties are hovering near the 3.25 percent threshold needed to enter parliament. Mr. Netanyahu told supporters that final results would come “over the next day or two.”
Record turnout, with Arab voters surging
Turnout reached 77.7 percent, the highest since 1999 and 7.1 points above the 2022 election, the committee reported, according to Israel National News. Turnout among Arab citizens of Israel reached about 80 percent.
In the partial count reported by Israel National News, Mr. Netanyahu’s Likud led all parties with 28 seats, followed by Mr. Eisenkot’s new Yashar party with 21 and the Joint List with 12. Ra’am was above the threshold with four seats. The Reservists-Economic Party was below it at 2.72 percent.
The Arab parties’ showing is the central puzzle. Exit polls had projected a record combined 19 seats for the Joint List and Ra’am, Al Jazeera and Reuters reported. Mr. Eisenkot and other leaders of his bloc pledged during the campaign not to build a coalition with Arab parties, which leaves them short of a majority by their own rules.
“With the numbers we have now, there is no government,” Ra’am leader Mansour Abbas told Israel’s Channel 12, according to Al Jazeera. Mr. Abbas, whose party sat in the 2021–22 governing coalition, said both main blocs had reached out to his party.
Two victory speeches
Both leaders spoke as if they had won.
“The public has chosen change. The coalition of failure has lost the people’s trust,” Mr. Eisenkot told supporters in Tel Aviv after exit polls were released, according to a full text of his speech published by The Times of Israel. He conceded that “these are still only exit polls, and we must wait for the real results.”
“I will do everything in my power to form a Zionist government that drafts everyone,” he said, referring to his campaign’s central promise to end broad military-service exemptions for ultra-Orthodox men. He also called Mr. Netanyahu “a caretaker prime minister, without a mandate and without the public’s confidence,” and told security chiefs to “stand firm against any attempt to pressure you.”
Mr. Netanyahu, speaking at Likud headquarters in Jerusalem, said Likud was “the largest party in Israel” and that the right-wing bloc had “a clear, decisive majority among the Zionist public,” according to The Times of Israel’s full text.
“We must form a strong, national, right-wing government,” he said. “It is simply forbidden to endanger Israel and form a government that rests on anti-Zionist Arab parties.”
He also pointed to Iran, saying Israel “stands before a historic, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, with our partner President Trump, to remove the existential threat from Iran once and for all.”
What happens next
Once results are certified, President Isaac Herzog will consult party leaders and assign the task of forming a government to the lawmaker he judges most likely to succeed. That person gets up to 28 days, with a possible 14-day extension.
If the partial count holds, neither Jewish-led bloc reaches 61 on its own. That leaves three paths: one side breaks a campaign pledge on Arab parties, a party crosses from one bloc to the other, or the country heads toward another election. Mr. Eisenkot said that after turnout this high, “it would be a mistake to go to another election.”
Former Israeli diplomat Alon Pinkas told Al Jazeera that Arab-led parties will not simply lend their votes. “There’s a price to pay,” he said, because “Arabs can’t be kept outside and only being considered and co-opted when you need their votes.”
For Washington, the result bears directly on the war in Gaza, the confrontation with Iran and the Trump administration’s close partnership with Mr. Netanyahu. Until a new government is sworn in, Mr. Netanyahu stays in office as caretaker.
The Buffalo Chronicle will update this story as the official count is completed.
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