The results of Israel\u2019s pivotal parliamentary election will not be finalized at least until Thursday and it could be weeks until it is clear what kind of government will be formed and who will lead it. But some conclusions are already inescapable.<\/p>\n
Arab citizens of Israel turned out to vote in record numbers. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu\u2019s Likud party gobbled up many votes that his right-wing and Orthodox Jewish coalition partners had expected would be theirs. And the pre-election polls failed to anticipate both phenomena.<\/p>\n
Much could still change. But with most of the votes counted by Wednesday afternoon, here are some initial takeaways.<\/p>\n
Netanyahu didn\u2019t win, but Eisenkot lost.<\/p>\n
Mr. Netanyahu\u2019s coalition appears to have shrunk considerably from the 64 parliamentary seats that it won in 2022: The latest results show it with around 54, well short of a majority in the 120-member Knesset, or Parliament. But he could wind up in better position to form a government than his chief rival, Gadi Eisenkot<\/a>.<\/p>\n Mr. Eisenkot, a former Israeli military chief of staff, had two goals in the election: to lead the Jewish opposition parties to an outright majority or at least get very close to one, and to make sure his own party, Yashar, got more votes than any other. He failed on both counts, the initial results indicate.<\/p>\n Reuven Hazan, a political science professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, said that it had been hard to imagine better conditions for Mr. Eisenkot\u2019s alliance ahead of the election. Mr. Netanyahu and his coalition were weighed down by anger over the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023 attacks and their failure to do more to free Israeli hostages; by anger over ultra-Orthodox Jewish draft-dodging in wartime; and by outrage over the government\u2019s efforts to neuter the judiciary and allow growing settler violence against Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, he said.<\/p>\n \u201cThe anti-Netanyahu camp had an election handed to them on a silver platter, and they still lost,\u201d Mr. Hazan said. \u201cIsraelis have sent an ambiguous message: \u2018We don\u2019t really like the current government, but we don\u2019t see a viable alternative.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Netanyahu\u2019s coalition shrank, but he has options.<\/p>\n As votes were being counted on Wednesday afternoon, Likud was poised to be the largest party in the larger of the two blocs of Jewish-led parties, meaning Mr. Netanyahu could well be given the chance to form a government, Mr. Hazan said.<\/p>\n The long-serving Israeli premier may try to peel away some of Mr. Eisenkot\u2019s putative partners in order to achieve a majority of 61 seats in Parliament. A number of them are as right-wing as he is, though all have more or less ruled out entering a Netanyahu-led government.<\/p>\n