With the latest Israeli election’s regular ballots now fully counted, the arithmetic already defines the power dynamics of the day after, even as the remaining double-envelope ballots are still to be tallied.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s bloc stands at 53 seats, the Change bloc led by Gadi Eisenkot is at 48, and the Arab parties are at 19. Neither side has the 61 seats needed for a majority government, but does that leave both sides in a similar position?
No. Eisenkot and his bloc (composed of the Yashar, B’Yahad, the Democrats and Yisrael Beitenu parties) face no good options, as every choice ahead of them likely comes at great political cost.
Netanyahu, by contrast, can act from a position of strength, as every option before him is a win for him and his Likud Party.
Eisenkot has no clear path to a majority government. No party in Netanyahu’s coalition would be acceptable to the Change bloc, nor would most, if any, of them govern with him.
Be assured, as we speak, that Netanyahu is locking down his coalition partners so none will bolt.
The Haredi parties collide directly with the Change bloc’s positions on reforming the draft law. Religious Zionism’s Bezalel Smotrich and Otzma Yehudit’s Itamar Ben-Gvir are viewed by most of the Change bloc as racist or far-right extremists.
The Change bloc may be open to some form of engagement with Likud, but its central campaign was about removing Netanyahu. Likud is by far the largest party and will neither serve under an Eisenkot-led government nor consider a change in leadership. Eisenkot’s failed “change coalition” therefore has no Zionist majority available.
The remaining route runs through the Arab parties, either as full coalition members (as Ra’am was in the Bennett-Lapid government of 2021-2022) or as outside support propping up a minority government in return for concessions.
Using the Joint List, which is widely viewed by much of the Jewish public as anti-Israel and anti-Zionist, to secure a temporary win against Netanyahu would carry a heavy price.
Many of Eisenkot’s voters are centrist or moderate center-right, and they will not reward him for depending on Arab parties in any form. Before the vote, he set conditions that effectively excluded the Arab parties, and Liberman and Bennett’s parties made even firmer promises against relying on them. Only Golan’s Democrats were clearly open to it, and Golan argued for this option even on election night.
If the Change bloc breaks those promises, they would likely be punished by their voter base in the next election, to the benefit of Netanyahu’s bloc.
The price of that route rose further today. It emerged that Central Elections Committee Chair Justice Noam Sohlberg has asked the Shin Bet to examine suspicions, reported in Hebrew media, that foreign (Qatari) funding was used to mobilize Arab voters illegally, with findings due within a week.
Benjamin Netanyahu governs while he waits.
Nothing has been substantiated, and the outcome remains unknown. But as long as the investigation runs, and depending on its findings, the cloud now hanging over the Arab parties’ campaign makes any cooperation with them even more politically toxic for Eisenkot and the Change bloc.
A path that was already costly has become costlier still.
Nonetheless, the Change bloc is already testing this route. Reportedly, opposition parties are discussing replacing Likud’s Amir Ohana as Knesset Speaker—the post that sets parliament’s agenda—with Arab-party backing.
They are framing this as a limited parliamentary move rather than full coalition dependence. But if it proceeds, it would likely be seen as breaking their campaign promises, costing them part of their voter base for a gain that is only temporary.
The same dilemma will surface at the first formal step of coalition-building. Once official results are published, President Isaac Herzog consults every party, asks whom it recommends as prime minister, and gives the first chance to form a government to the candidate most likely to succeed.
Party size matters, but recommendations usually decide. If the Arab parties recommend Eisenkot, he could garner more recommendations than Netanyahu despite Yashar trailing Likud, and receive the first mandate. But that mandate would rest on the very support his allies promised not to rely on.
If the Arab parties abstain, Netanyahu likely goes first.
A unity government is also dead on arrival. Eisenkot has bad blood with Netanyahu and does not want to serve under him. On election night, he called for ousting Netanyahu even after exit polls showed Yashar well behind Likud. Netanyahu, for his part, has little appetite for unity either: Eisenkot and Gantz’s 2023 wartime partnership with him ended in an acrimonious exit in 2024.
If Eisenkot neither forms a government with Arab support nor joins a unity coalition, Netanyahu can simply run out the clock. Until a new government is sworn in, he remains caretaker prime minister. After failed attempts to form a government, the law allows new elections as early as May. In that rematch, he is likely to do better.
Israeli political history shows that lists that fail to enter the Knesset struggle to retain both voter support and donor funding, especially when a repeat election comes within a few months.
This time, the lists that fell below the 3.25% threshold for entering the Knesset include Ofer Winter’s Amcha Yisrael and the Reservists list of Yoaz Hendel and Yaron Zelicha. Pressure on the right to consolidate, or deals offering slots on larger lists, will make another independent run difficult.
Hendel, however, served as a minister under Bennett and Lapid, so some of his voters may not return to Netanyahu’s camp.
Other conditions are also likely to favor Netanyahu in a rematch. Arab turnout was unusually high, the product of an intense mobilization that will be hard to repeat within months, especially under the extra scrutiny that vote-buying arrests and Likud’s complaints have brought.
Regional events, such as a war with Iran or progress toward normalization with Saudi Arabia, could further help Netanyahu.
The obvious objection is that Netanyahu lost ground: His bloc fell from 64 seats in 2022 to 53 in this election. Likud fell to 26 seats. But in a deadlock, seats matter less than the ability to wait.
Netanyahu governs while he waits, and new elections would likely take place under much more favorable conditions. While repeat elections have not always been pure victories for him, that doesn’t reverse the basic asymmetry. He remains the sitting prime minister with more workable paths than his rival.
This does not mean Netanyahu faces no risks. The draft-law dispute with United Torah Judaism and Shas remains unresolved, and his ongoing trial continues to hang over the process.
The smartest play for Eisenkot would be the one he has ruled out: offering Netanyahu his party in a unity coalition. But even then, his hand would be weak because he cannot bring Golan or Liberman, both longtime Netanyahu opponents, along with him.
Moreover, Netanyahu would have little reason to accept. He could let the talks fail, blame Eisenkot and take his chances in May. Betraying reliable right-wing and Haredi allies for a short-term arrangement is unlikely.
If Netanyahu were to accept a unity government, however, he could do so from a position of strength, agreeing only on his terms and under his leadership. If not, he has the fallback option of new elections, which will likely favor him. He knows it, and Eisenkot knows it.
New elections would likely take place under more favorable conditions to Likud.
Netanyahu’s other route is trying to incentivize a whole party, such as Bennett’s or Liberman’s, to join him despite their troubled history. Even if the remaining double envelopes move a few seats toward his bloc, Netanyahu would still need roughly five to seven more seats for a majority.
Israel’s anti-defection rules make it costly for individual Knesset members to switch sides on their own, so approaching a whole party to join him is the more realistic path. If any of them do join his coalition, Netanyahu wins as he continues his reign on his terms. But if they refuse or ask for too much in return, he has the luxury of saying no and walking away since he again has the fallback option of new elections, which will likely favor his bloc.
In every scenario, Eisenkot loses. Netanyahu’s options, by contrast, are all good. A unity government on his terms keeps him in power. So does a new election, which he would fight against a weakened Change bloc that threw everything it had at him and still fell short of a majority, despite preliminary turnout of 77.7%, the highest since 1999.
When one side chooses how to win, and the other can only choose how to lose, that is the definition of power. The partial results have produced exactly that asymmetry. The remaining ballots will adjust the margins. They will not reverse it.
Eisenkot’s dilemma is how to lose. Netanyahu’s choice is how to win.
