Israelis voted in record numbers yesterday, and ballot-counting continued through the night. Every official update triggered fresh bravado from the two front-runners, Benjamin Netanyahu and Gadi Eisenkot.
Prime Minister Netanyahu showed that his right-wing policies, while controversial in Israel and around the world, still appeal to a majority of Israeli Jews. Meanwhile, those hoping for change united around Eisenkot’s opposition coalition.
But neither has dared declare victory just yet.
They don’t have the parliamentary seats for a workable majority. They have only one choice to get that support, a choice considered politically distasteful among many Jewish voters — to join with Arab parties.
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Israeli exit polls show no clear winner in the national election widely seen as a referendum on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s leadership. Neither Netanyahu nor his main rival Gadi Eisenkot appear to have secured a governing majority.
Flush with more seats than ever before after an 80 per cent turnout in their communities, the Arab parties have become potential kingmakers. There are two main groups: the Joint List, led by Yousef Jabareen, and the United Arab List, or Ra’am, led by Mansour Abbas.
As the spotlight turned to them on Israeli’s Channel 13 last night, Jabareen opened the door to joining any party offering a “genuine alternative to Netanyahu’s government of bloodshed” to create a “Jewish-Arab partnership.”
That wasn’t the tone from Netanyahu, whose current coalition includes ideological hardliners, ultra-religious Jews and settlers eager to annex Palestinian territory in the Occupied West Bank and Gaza. His government has also been criticized for turning a blind eye to a “horrific” crime wave in Arab communities.
“We must form a strong right-wing national government,” Netanyahu insisted, rejecting any co-operation with Arab parties, while claiming leadership of the country’s “Zionist public.”
The anti-Netanyahu contingent
Eisenkot, a former military chief and retired general, is Netanyahu’s main challenger and leader of the Yashar party.
Much of Eisenkot’s support comes from more centrist Israelis who blame Netanyahu for the devastating attack on Oct. 7, 2023 — for ignoring documented warnings that Hamas militants were about to cross from Gaza and for refusing to call an inquiry into security failures. About 1,200 Israelis were killed and 251 were taken hostage that day. Eisenkot has promised a commission to investigate.
His opposition coalition could oust Netanyahu and form a solid majority in Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, if it joined with the Arab parties.
An Arab-Israeli man casts his ballot during Israel’s general elections on Oct. 27, 2026, in Umm El Fahem, Israel. (Amir Levy/Getty Images)
But two of his partners – Naftali Bennett, leader of B’Yachad and a former prime minister, and Avigdor Liberman of Yisrael Beytenu – have flatly rejected it. Eisenkot has resisted any formal coalition, though he has been less clear on the possibility of an informal arrangement of voting support in the Knesset.
Arab lawmakers were part of Bennett’s coalition government in 2021, but the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel changed the political landscape. Now, says Israeli political analyst and pollster Dhalia Scheindlin, the opposition parties’ “self-imposed” reluctance to include Arab parties is an “arbitrary, and, frankly, racist constraint.”
A key barrier for Eisenkot seems to be the Arab parties’ reluctance to brand Hamas a terror organization, though Ra’am’s Abbas — a part of that earlier coalition — told Israeli media “we have condemned every act of terror and all the crimes that took place on October 7th” and reject the “loyalty test.”
High turnout for Arab voters
The election results could put pressure on the opposition to reconsider, especially since political support of the Arab parties has surged among Arab citizens of Israel.
They jammed polling stations yesterday despite threats from hard-line Jewish Israelis, some of whom showed up armed.
In last-minute appeals that the opposition called “desperate,” Netanyahu even went on social media to warn that Arabs would “steal the election” if his supporters didn’t vote.
That only seems to have encouraged more Arabs to turn out, including Osayadeh Makladeh in the Druze town of Daliyat Al-Karmel.
“We are now in a bad situation because of the government,” she said. “We are here to demand change.”
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The Arab parties’ offer to help the opposition is an attempt to remove hardline settlers in Netanyahu’s cabinet from power. That includes politicians like National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who has been convicted in the past of incitement to racism and boasted during the campaign of promoting harsher treatment of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.
Arab politicians also want talks on a two-state solution or some other resolution in the Palestinian territories, an especially controversial issue in today’s Israel.
In Palestinian communities, issues are often more basic, like housing, infrastructure and crime.
A stalemate
But election math doesn’t seem to be adding up for either Netanyahu or Eisenkot at the moment, with no clear formula to create a majority.
The Knesset has 120 seats, elected through a national proportional representation system that relies on party lists to fill them. Since 1948, no single party has ever won the 61 seats needed for a majority. Both Netanyahu’s and Eisenkot’s coalitions are significantly short of that.
Netanyahu has found himself in similar situations in the past. As Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, he has often engaged in complex political manoeuvres to keep the top job over more than 19 years.
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks during a ceremony commemorating Israel’s Remembrance Day for fallen soldiers, or Yom HaZikaron, at the Military Cemetery on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem on April 21, 2026. (Ilia Yefimovich/Pool/Reuters)
Throughout the campaign, he was seen as fighting for his political life, something that may be critical for his personal life as well. He is on trial for corruption, with charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust. He has used his position as prime minister to delay hearings and seek a presidential pardon, all while proclaiming his innocence.
As the first exit poll results were announced, analysts like Amit Segal on Channel 12 news concluded that Netanyahu “suffered a major blow.” Segal said the best he could do would be to “salvage a tie” by sharing government with Eisenkot or by facing a new election if no leader has a workable majority.
If that is the result once again, President Isaac Herzog will ask the leader with the best chance of forming a lasting majority to govern. If he fails, his opponent will have an opportunity.
It’s a process that could take months of negotiations and coalition building — and might still end with Israelis having to go through this all over again, with another election.
That is, unless the taboo on Israeli Jews and Arabs forming a Knesset coalition is lifted.