Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu emerged from Tuesday’s election with Likud still Israel’s largest party, and his political bloc ahead of Gadi Eisenkot’s opposition alliance, reversing the advantage projected for his opponents in several major pre-election polls. Yet that stronger-than-expected showing has left him without a parliamentary majority.
With over 93% of votes counted as of Thursday morning, Netanyahu’s bloc was projected to win 53 seats, compared with 48 for Eisenkot’s change bloc and 19 for the Arab parties. Hundreds of thousands of ballots remained uncounted, leaving the distribution provisional. Netanyahu is currently eight seats short of the 61 needed for an absolute majority, while his principal opponents have also fallen well short of securing one independently.
“I would call these elections the elections of mutual disappointment,” Daniel Ayalon, former deputy foreign minister, former ambassador to the U.S. and chairman of Silver Road Capital financial advisory firm, told JNS.
Winners and losers
Netanyahu’s strongest achievement was outperforming his principal challenger. Thursday’s 10:30 a.m. projections put Likud at 26 seats against Yashar’s 21, reversing Channel 12 News’ final pre-election forecast of 21 and 23, respectively. Likud nevertheless remains below the 32 seats it won in 2022, distinguishing its success against polling expectations from its losses since the previous election.
For Eisenkot, the disappointment extends beyond finishing second. B’Yachad is projected at 12 seats against Channel 12’s forecast of 15, the Democrats at eight against 10, and Yisrael Beiteinu at seven against eight. Together, the four parties lack both a majority and the lead over Netanyahu’s bloc anticipated by that survey. “We’d hoped for a better result,” Manuel Trajtenberg, a Yashar co-founder and former Labor lawmaker, told JNS.
Netanyahu’s partners also suffered uneven losses. Shas stands at seven seats, down from 11 in 2022, while United Torah Judaism retains its previous seven-seat strength. Otzma Yehudit and Religious Zionism together hold 13, compared with their Joint List’s 14 in 2022. Meanwhile, Yoaz Hendel’s Reservists–Economic list and Ofer Winter’s People of Israel have failed to cross the electoral threshold in the partial count.
The polling discrepancy is substantial: Channel 12’s six-seat opposition advantage became a five-seat deficit. But pollsters differed sharply; i24NEWS’s final survey correctly projected Likud at 26. Professor Gideon Rahat, a senior fellow at the Israeli Democracy Institute, identified Arab turnout as a forecasting difficulty: “I think that they can hardly predict what will happen with the Arab vote, and this is a major influence,” he told JNS.
The Arab parties recorded the election’s clearest projected parliamentary gains. Ra’am and the Joint List together stand at 19 seats, nearly double the Arab parties’ combined 10 seats in the outgoing Knesset. If confirmed, that would surpass the previous record of 15 won by the unified Joint List, then including Ra’am, in 2020.
Channel 12 estimates Arab voter turnout at approximately 80%. Ayalon attributed the mobilization partly to anger over crime in the sector and as a reaction to the policies of Israel’s national security minister and the leader of the Otzma Yehudit Party, Itamar Ben-Gvir. “I think the chief factor was Itamar Ben-Gvir,” he explained.
Whether that participation will endure remains uncertain. “It may be a one-time burst, but it may be something that will change the Israeli system in the long run,” Rahat said.
Forming a government
With the final election picture solidifying, the various parties have already begun maneuvering in reaction to the unexpected outcome. The change bloc and Arab parties together hold a projected 67 seats, enough to command a Knesset majority if they cooperate and likely securing the mandate to form a government for Eisenkot.
Ayalon pointed to the distinction between parliamentary leverage and the ability to form a government. “Eisenkot has the advantage of a majority in the Knesset, but his position is in some sense weaker than Netanyahu,” he said.
Joint List chairman Yousef Jabareen said Wednesday that his faction was prepared to help replace Netanyahu’s government, while insisting that opposition parties engage with it. These calls have been met with hesitancy from members of the opposition bloc who expected to consider cooperation with the Arab parties from a stronger position. The Arab parties’ electoral gains have significantly expanded their parliamentary influence, which counter-intuitively makes translating that strength into executive power through partnership with the opposition bloc more complicated.
Speaking to JNS at Yashar’s headquarters on election night, Matan Kahana, a former cabinet minister under Naftali Bennett and deputy minister under Yair Lapid, described the possibility of external Arab-party support for an initial vote. “There may be one singular vote, in which we move Netanyahu out of the prime minister’s office, but without a stable government after that,” he said.
Trajtenberg similarly outlined a two-stage approach. “The first stage will be a minority government without the Arab parties,” he said. “Then everything is open.”
However, the partial results have sharply undermined Eisenkot’s minority-government proposal. With his bloc projected at 48 seats against Netanyahu’s 53, abstentions by the Arab parties would no longer suffice. If Netanyahu’s camp voted together against him, Eisenkot would need active Arab-party support or defections from Netanyahu’s bloc to take office.
Before the election, Eisenkot had discussed establishing a government with 58 or 59 seats and subsequently expanding its parliamentary base. At that strength, Arab-party abstentions could have enabled an initial confidence vote to pass. The substantially smaller bloc emerging from the count would instead require at least six Arab-party lawmakers to vote in favor, assuming the remaining Arab representatives abstained and all 48 opposition lawmakers supported the government. The dependence would expand beyond Ra’am, with whom political cooperation has precedent, to active coordination with the even more radical Joint List.
That requirement conflicts directly with the positions of essential prospective partners. Bennett has rejected dependence on Arab-party votes or abstentions, while Liberman has ruled out supporting a minority government even temporarily. Excluding Arab representatives from ministerial positions would not remove that dependence.
“They need active support,” Rahat said. “I mean, the whole minority government idea is not an option anymore, really.”
The arrangement remains legally possible, but under the projected distribution it would require opposition leaders to reverse explicit commitments and Arab lawmakers to affirmatively support the government’s formation. Without those changes, Eisenkot’s proposed interim route to power has no viable parliamentary majority.
With a minority government likely off the table, the opposition may instead choose to reap the short-term benefit of their legislative majority together with the Arab parties. Channel 12 reported on Wednesday that Eisenkot’s bloc was seeking Arab-party support to replace Likud’s Amir Ohana as Knesset Speaker, although no agreed candidate had emerged. Joint List lawmaker Ahmad Tibi had already publicly pledged support for an opposition candidate before the election.
Electing a new speaker would give Netanyahu’s opponents greater influence over the legislative agenda, potentially facilitating legislation establishing an Oct. 7 state commission of inquiry or limiting prime-ministerial tenure. Each measure would still require its own parliamentary majority; agreement on replacing Ohana would not guarantee agreement on those initiatives.
Martin Sherman, a senior researcher at the Israeli Defense and Security Forum, told JNS that opposition control of the speaker’s office would pose a serious threat to the current coalition. “The left wing, together with the Arabs, can remove the chairman of the Knesset and basically have the Knesset in the hands of an adversarial individual who can control the agenda of the Knesset,” he said.
“The opposition may start with the blitz,” Ayalon observed, suggesting that an early legislative offensive could precede negotiations over a broader political compromise as a way to strengthen the opposition bloc’s position before coalition negotiations proceed. From that stronger position, he said, “they can start compromising” and seek a “modicum of understanding.”
Despite the possible political gains of an early legislative offensive, it will not resolve the critical issue of actually forming a government. With the option of a minority government undermined by the opposition’s poor performance, a coalition spanning Likud and major opposition factions offers another route to a parliamentary majority. Wednesday’s 2 p.m. projections gave Likud, Yashar, B’Yachad and Yisrael Beiteinu a combined 66 seats, sufficient to govern without the Arab, ultra-Orthodox or religious-nationalist parties.
“If I am pushed to the wall to guess, I say unity government is currently the most likely outcome,” Ayalon said.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s determination to prevent another election adds pressure for compromise. Before the vote, he publicly identified unity as an option he would pursue, while acknowledging uncertainty regarding its feasibility. On Wednesday, he urged party representatives to approach consultations with open minds and work to avoid another election.
Netanyahu’s larger party and stronger bloc give him a basis to press for retaining the premiership. Eisenkot, however, has explicitly rejected serving under Netanyahu, including through rotation, while leaving open cooperation with Likud under different leadership. “Netanyahu cannot serve in a leadership role after Oct. 7; we’ve said this all along,” Kahana declared.
A rotation arrangement would therefore require Eisenkot to reverse an unequivocal commitment. A government led by another Likud figure would instead require Netanyahu’s party to accept a leadership change. Neither compromise is very likely.
Dan Diker, president of the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs (JCFA), told JNS that “it is very hard to see Eisenkot working together with Netanyahu or under a Netanyahu-led government.”
Resistance also extends beyond the two leaders. Ben-Gvir has warned against unity with Eisenkot, while Bennett and Lapid have rejected serving alongside Netanyahu. Herzog can encourage negotiations, but assembling the potential majority would require the parties themselves to reconsider their commitments.
If unity negotiations fail, Netanyahu would in turn likely get the mandate and could seek additional partners through factional splits or individual defections. ‘I think Netanyahu’s best strategy at this point is to try to recruit defectors,” Sherman explained. With his bloc projected at 53 seats, he needs eight additional lawmakers to establish a 61-seat coalition. Eisenkot could pursue the reverse strategy during his turn.
“I think it would be difficult to get defectors from either bloc,” Ayalon noted.
Failure to recruit additional support would leave both camps facing the statutory government-formation process. Herzog’s first nominee receives 28 days, with a possible 14-day extension. If that effort fails, the president may appoint a second candidate for another 28 days or declare that he sees no possibility of forming a government. If the second attempt also fails, or Herzog declines to appoint another candidate, lawmakers have 21 days to nominate a candidate backed by at least 61 Knesset members, who would then receive a final 14 days to form a government. If all avenues are exhausted, another election follows.
“I think a second election is not a very popular idea among the voters. It’s an exhausting prospect,” Sherman said.
Rahat suggested that Netanyahu might ultimately prefer that outcome: “He might decide that he wants to have another election.” A repeat vote would offer another opportunity to seek a majority, but no assurance of securing one. Netanyahu would remain caretaker prime minister until a successor government takes office.
Diker also raised the possibility that Netanyahu would prefer to wait out the impasse with a “caretaker government under his leadership” and potentially face another election. However, Diker warned that “the current security situation makes a second election politically difficult. It would cost hundreds of millions of shekels, and would be distracting politically,” he explained
Ayalon, however, emphasized continuity in security decision-making during the political transition. “I would say that there is continuity in terms of the executive power,” he said. He argued that the military would continue answering to the government and taking action when needed.
The provisional results leave Netanyahu ahead of his principal opponents, Eisenkot short of the parliamentary strength his strategy anticipated, and the Arab parties with substantially increased representation. None has secured an agreed governing majority. Israel’s next government will depend on whether its political leaders can reconcile their competing commitments, or whether voters will again be asked to resolve a deadlock that negotiations could not.
