Israel’s election has weakened Benjamin Netanyahu but failed to produce a clear alternative, with Arab parties holding the balance of power
Israel has voted again and, once more, answered nothing. Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing and ultra-Orthodox bloc won 53 seats in the 120-member Knesset, down from the 68 it held before the election. Gadi Eisenkot’s opposition alliance took 48. Neither is close to the 61 needed to govern. The decisive voters are the ones both camps swore never to touch. Arab-led parties, the Joint List with 11 seats and Ra’am with eight, won a record 19 as turnout in their communities roughly doubled to about 80 percent. Add them to the opposition and the anti-Netanyahu total is 67.
That is the paradox of this election: Netanyahu lost his majority, yet the majority that beat him is one its own leaders have promised not to use. The Arab parties are not passive kingmakers. Joint List leader Yousef Jabareen will not enter any government but says he will vote with one that removes Netanyahu, Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich. Ra’am’s Mansour Abbas would join if given the internal security portfolio.
A confidence-and-supply deal, with Arab parties outside the cabinet but backing the government in key votes, is the obvious design. It is also the one Avigdor Liberman, with seven seats, has ruled out, even as he endorses Eisenkot for prime minister. Can the opposition govern? Arithmetically, yes; politically, only after broken promises. An Eisenkot minority government needs either Arab votes or the abstention of ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism. If its seven MPs sit out a confidence vote, Netanyahu’s side falls to 46 against 48. UTJ is reportedly weighing exactly that. The price would be softening the draft-exemption fight Eisenkot campaigned on. He must choose which promise to break. Netanyahu’s odds of returning are long. He is eight seats short, would need to peel away eight opposition MPs under anti-defection rules, and President Herzog is unlikely to hand him the first mandate. His claims of a stolen election have been rejected by the Central Elections Committee. His real path is delay: the opposition fails, a new election is called, and he stays on as caretaker. The experts put his chances at no better than one in three, and mostly via that route. A rerun is a gamble, since this turnout will be hard to repeat, but not a foolish one for him.
The regional stakes are real but narrower than headlines suggest. On Iran, Netanyahu leans toward acting alone, and he reportedly pressed Washington for fresh strikes before the vote, which he denies; Eisenkot would coordinate more closely with Washington. Yet Eisenkot opposes a Palestinian state and full withdrawal from Gaza, and Riyadh wants a credible path to statehood before normalisation, whoever governs.
The opposition’s biggest mistake would be to treat 19 Arab mandates as contamination rather than a democratic fact. President Herzog wants unity, and the new Knesset is sworn in on November 10 regardless. Eisenkot’s task now is to prove he can win the peace among his own allies.