Israel looks set for a lengthy period of back-room deals, coalition negotiations and potential political instability after neither of the two main camps won a clear victory in Tuesday’s election, despite a record turnout. Partial results at 8 a.m. Israeli time on Wednesday, with 57.3 per cent of the votes counted, gave Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud 27 seats, with 21 for Gadi Eisenkot’s centre-right Yashar, reported the Times of Israel.
Both sides fall short of the 61 seats needed to form a governing coalition in Israel’s 120 seat parliament
Yashar’s ‘Change bloc’ allies are the centre-right Beyachad, the centre-left Democrats and the right-wing Yisrael Beiteinu. Early results give the grouping 49 seats with 55 going to Likud and its religious and far-right allies. However, Likud’s stronger showing does not guarantee victory or that Netanyahu will remain in power. Both sides fall short of the 61 seats needed to form a governing coalition in Israel’s 120 seat parliament, known as the Knesset. President Isaac Herzog must now decide who to invite to form a coalition. Thus the two Arab parties, the moderate Islamic Ra’am which won four seats and the left-wing secular nationalists, the Joint List, which won a surprisingly high 12 seats, could hold the key to power.
The leaders of both Likud and Yashar claimed victory. Netanyahu told a crowd of cheering supporters, ‘The Likud is the biggest party in Israel. The right-wing bloc has a clear, decisive majority among the Zionist public, among the Jewish public and all those who support the state.’
The mood was flatter at the Yashar party headquarters in North Tel Aviv, although flag-waving supporters were optimistic that the party would still be able to dislodge Netanyahu and lead a coalition government. Gadi Eisenkot, a former career army officer and chief of staff of the Israeli military, called for Netanyahu to step down. ‘The public has voted for change. The coalition of failure has lost the people’s trust… A worthy leader would accept the people’s vote of no confidence and announce his retirement from political life today’. Eisenkot called for ‘a stable Zionist government that serves all its citizens’.
The result confounded many analysts as final opinion polls before the voting had predicted a stronger showing for Yashar, giving the party two or three seats more than Likud. Netanyahu’s campaign also appeared to be increasingly erratic in its final days. He shared a photograph of Tel Aviv being attacked by a nuclear weapon and claimed that Israel could use blockchain and cryptocurrency to evade international sanctions. This triggered a stern rebuke from the Israel National Bank, which usually steers clears of politics.
However, a strong endorsement by President Trump may have helped swing wavering voters towards Likud. Across the political spectrum Israel’s relationship with the United States is regarded as vital to its security. The catastrophic security failures around the October 7, 2023 terror attack, which took place under the Likud government, do not appear to have deterred many of its ultra-loyalist voters.
Both Netanyahu and Eisenkot have ruled out a coalition with the Arab parties, dismaying many Israelis and outside observers who hoped that the high turnout among Arab voters could herald a new era of political and civic engagement among the 2.1 million Arab citizens and their Jewish compatriots. Instead, it seems that the dividing lines, which became sharper after October 7, have been even further entrenched.
Netanyahu firmly ruled out any coalition with the Arab parties, saying it would ‘endanger Israel’. He accused them of seeing Hamas as a ‘charitable organisation’ and calling Israeli soldiers ‘war criminals’. In any case several of Likud’s current coalition partners, which include the far-right Jewish Power and National Zionism parties would almost certainly refuse to serve in a government with Arab parties. The feeling is mutual.
During the campaign Eisenkot laid out the four key principles for his vision of Israel for any future coalition partner: accepting Israel as a Jewish and democratic state, accepting the values of the Declaration of Independence, mandatory military or civic service and acceptance that Hamas is a terrorist organisation that must be dismantled. He said he did not see any Arab party ‘that accepts my principles’.
In response Arab politicians rejected the idea of ‘loyalty tests’. Arab parties and society as a whole strongly condemned the October 7 attack. Many Arab politicians say the minority is ready to fully take part in Israeli life. In addition, they argue, no such requirements are applied to supporters of hard-line orthodox Jewish parties, some of whose supporters do not recognise Israel as a Jewish state for religious reasons.
However electoral mathematics may yet persuade Eisenkot at least to consider some form of de-facto alliance at least with Ra’am. Otherwise if no new government can be formed, Netanyahu will remain in power as a caretaker prime minister and the country will have to go to the polls again. For now, the divide between his supporters and opponents seems deeper than ever.
Adam LeBor is currently writing The Promised Land: The Modern History of Israel.
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