Israel Plunges Into Post-Election Wrangling

Israel finds itself in a very familiar place following the general election on October 27.

Pundits touted it as one of the most consequential in Israel’s history and a referendum on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s leadership. But with about 90 percent of the ballots having been counted, Israel seems to be back where it was before Israelis went to the polls.

The voter turnout in the Jewish and Arab sectors was the highest in decades, with 77 percent of Jews and 80 percent of Arabs having voted. But with no bloc having won enough seats to form a government, the path forward for Netanyahu and his main challenger, Gadi Eisenkot, will be exceedingly complicated and uncertain.

Weeks and perhaps months of negotiations probably lie ahead before a new government can be established. If these talks fail, fresh elections will have to be called.

Israelis do not have to be reminded that no less than five elections took place between 2019 and 2022 stemming from the deep and seemingly unbridgeable divisions in Israeli politics. Such is the polarization that no party in Israeli history has ever won a majority in the 120-seat Knesset.

In the meantime, as Israel enters yet another tense period of political paralysis, Netanyahu will be the caretaker prime minister.

He is a controversial and divisive figure, to say the least.

He has refused to take personal responsibility for Hamas’ October 7 attack and has resisted calls for an independent commission of inquiry into it. He has enraged many Israelis by exempting ultra-Orthodox men from military service and by planning to overhaul the judiciary and weaken the Supreme Court.

Netanyahu, having been indicated on three charges of corruption, is still on trial after six years and faces possible imprisonment. The International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant against him for alleged war crimes.

Contrary to pre-election exit polls, Netanyahu has outperformed his rivals. His right-wing coalition has forged ahead of Eisenkot’s “change bloc” of centrist, right-wing and left-of center parties.

U.S. President Donald Trump, who has twice come out in support of Netanyahu, has credited his effusive endorsements with helping him.

As of October 29, Netanyahu and his allies had won 53 seats, five more than Eisenkot’s bloc. The Likud, Netanyahu’s party, has won 26 seats to date. Yashar, Eisenkot’s party, trails by five seats.

A poll from Channel 13 on the eve of the election predicted that the “change bloc” would receive 54 seats, while the parties loyal to Netanyahu would amass 50 seats, both falling short of the 61 necessary for a Knesset majority.

After the last election, the Likud picked up 32 seats, thereby managing to form a government with a total of 64 seats, eight more than the opposition.

The Israeli Arab parties, which represent about 21 percent of the electorate, performed far better than expected, adding one more layer of complexity to the equation.

The Joint List, an amalgamation of parties on the left and the right, captured 12 seats. Raam, a conservative party with roots in the Muslim Brotherhood, acquired seven seats. With a record number of 19 seats so far, the Arab bloc is the third largest party after the Likud and Yashar. It could be a potential kingmaker in deciding the outcome of the election.

The chairman of the Joint List, Youssef Jabareen, recently expressed a willingness to support any anti-Netanyahu faction, subject to conditions he has yet specify. On October 28, the Joint List expressed a readiness to “work with all its strength to bring an end to Netanyahu’s rule. We are ready for political cooperation to establish an alternative government …”

Eisenkot could possibly establish a unity government with Netanyahu. But since Eisenkot has vowed not to serve under Netanyahu and denounced him as unfit to lead, this option appears to have no legs.

Alternatively, Eisenkot could enlist the assistance of Arab parties, but at the moment this scenario seems unrealistic.

The previous government, formed by the rightist Naftali Bennett and the centrist Yair Lapid in 2021, brought Raam, headed by Mansour Abbas, into its coalition and secured a parliamentary majority. It was the first time an Arab politician had been invited to join an Israeli government. Yitzhak Rabin, a former prime minister, was tacitly supported by Arab parties after roaring back to power in 1992.

Due to defections arising from sharp policy disagreements, the Bennett-Lapid government crumbled, enabling Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, to return to office at the end of 2022. He then formed the most right-wing, religiously conservative government since Israeli statehood in 1948.

Three years after Hamas’ deadly raid into Israel on October 7 – which led to the deaths of roughly 1,200 people, the abduction of 251 Israelis and foreigners, the two-year Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip, Israel’s invasion and occupation of southern Lebanon and small parts of southern Syria, and the outbreak of two successive wars between Israel and Iran – emotions in Israel still run high.

With the Jewish public’s trust in Arabs at a low ebb, Netanyahu and his partners are adamantly opposed to including Arab parties in a coalition. Eisenkot, Bennett, Lapid (the leader of the Yesh Atid Party) and Avigdor Liberman (the head of the Yisrael Beytenu Party and the former defence minister), have categorically ruled out another partnership with Arab parties.

To Israeli Arabs, the descendants of the 160,000 Palestinians who remained in the country after the first Israeli-Arab war in 1948, their collective policy of exclusion reeks of racism.

Objectively speaking, Israeli Arabs are second-class citizens in terms of government budgetary allocations, job prospects, and access to housing in most towns and cities. That being said, a relatively small number of Israeli Arab citizens have been appointed to high positions in government, the judiciary, the military and the health care system.

The apparent refusal of almost all the Jewish/Zionist parties to work collaboratively with Arab parties means that the two major blocs will have great difficulty cobbling together a coalition, leaving Israel in limbo once again. However, the left-of- center Democrats, headed by Yair Golan, appears ready to break that consensus.

Thirty eight parties contested this election, but only 11 were able to meet the 3.25 percent threshold, the equivalent of four Knesset seats, and gain seats in the Knesset. Among the parties that fell short were Benny Gantz’s centrist Blue and White Party and Ofer Winter’s right-wing Amcha Yisrael Party.

Gantz, who dropped out of the race on October 19, was the former chief of staff of the armed forces and a defence minister in one of Netanyahu’s cabinet. Reportedly prepared to join either Netanyahu’s or Eisenkot’s coalition, Gantz argued that unity among Zionist parties was critical to stop the erosion of support for Israel abroad. Winter, an ex-general, leaned toward an alliance with the Likud.

The smouldering and unresolved Palestinian issue, which lies at the heart of the Arab-Israeli dispute, was addressed by only one Jewish party, the Democrats, during the election campaign. This is not hard to understand. In the wake of Hamas’ attack, Israeli public opinion hardened, even among Israelis who believe that a peaceful solution with the Palestinians may be possible.

According to Tel Aviv University’s Peace Index, which publishes surveys on Israeli attitudes toward peace with the Palestinians,  only 29 percent of Jewish Israelis currently favor any form of negotiations with the Palestinian Authority, which governs part of the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Broken down into right-wing and left-wing categories, only 7 percent of right-wingers support such talks, compared to 83 percent of those on the left.

Netanyahu staunchly opposes a Palestinian state, as do Eisenkot, Bennett, Lapid and Liberman. Golan wants separation from the Palestinians through a two-state solution. Lapid, prior to October 7, endorsed this arrangement, but he has since cooled on the idea.

In light of this reality, no one should be surprised that the majority of Israeli Jews support the existence of settlements in the West Bank. A poll published by the Israel Democracy Institute recently indicates that around 55 percent of Israeli Jews endorse policies fostering the establishment of settlements. Thirty two of Israelis oppose settlement expansion, the poll found.

These settlements are designed, in part, to break up the geographic contiguity of the West Bank so that a viable Palestinian state can never be created.

As expected, Israel’s conflict with its arch enemy, Iran, figured prominently in the campaign. Trump, on October 25, said that Netanyahu needed to be reelected so that Israel and the United States can “finish the job” against Iran. In the last 16 months, they have fought two wars with Iran.

During the final stretch of the campaign, news reports strongly suggested that Netanyahu sought a renewal of war with Iran to boost his reelection prospects or to delay the election altogether, an accusation he stoutly denied.

Netanyahu’s apparent calculations enraged Eisenkot, who posted a message on X saying that Netanyahu cannot exploit Israel’s security as a tool in his political survival kit. “I see the polls, I know the data, and I know Netanyahu. He’ll stop at nothing … to stay in power.”

Even if Eisenkot prevails, the policies he pursues may well bear a striking resemblance to that of Netanyahu, as Aluf Benn suggests in Foreign Affairs.

“An Eisenkot victory is unlikely to change Israel’s foreign policy or approach to the Palestinians,” writes Benn, the editor-in-chief of Haaretz. “Almost all of Israel’s Jewish political parties, Eisenkot’s included, are opposed to Palestinian statehood, not just Netanyahu’s Likud. They all believe that Israel’s brutal war on Gaza was morally just and practically necessary. And almost all of them think that Israel was right to attack Iran and to establish and create what its government and military call ‘security zones’  – occupied territory – in Lebanon and Syria. In fact, the only real disagreement between Eisenkot and Netanyahu on matters of security is whether the latter made the right tactical decisions in each of these conflicts, such as when Netanyahu rejected a ceasefire in Gaza that would have freed Israeli hostages earlier.”

All this may be true, but Eisenkot may fall short of succeeding Netanyahu as Israel’s next prime minister. Netanyahu, who keenly values his political survival, even at the age of 77, may yet pull through.