Israel Election Final Results Leave No Majority
Final results from Israel’s general election gave Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s bloc 53 seats in the 120-seat Knesset, well short of the 61 needed to form a government. The Israel election final results confirmed a deadlock that partial counts had pointed to for two days, and they handed a decisive role to Arab parties that won a combined 19 seats.
Netanyahu’s coalition of right-wing and far-right parties finished ahead of the opposition, but not by enough to govern alone. His Likud party remained the largest single faction, with 27 seats. The opposition bloc, led by centrist former military chief Gadi Eisenkot, secured 48 seats. The two Arab political formations, Raam and the Joint List, won 19 seats between them. Raam took eight seats and the Joint List took 11, according to seat breakdowns published with the final tally.
The final voter turnout stood at 77.9 per cent, with 5,716,665 votes cast. The election was held on Tuesday, October 27, and it was Israel’s first national ballot since October 7, 2023. The newly elected 26th Knesset is scheduled to be sworn in on November 10. The official results will be submitted to President Isaac Herzog on November 4, after checks for possible errors and electoral inquiries. Herzog will then begin consultations with party leaders before tasking one of them with trying to form a government.
Israel election final results: what changed from Thursday
Thursday’s reporting had carried a partial count, with nearly 93 per cent of votes tallied and the same three numbers in view: 53 for Netanyahu’s bloc, 48 for the opposition, and 19 for the Arab parties. Friday’s final results confirm those numbers rather than changing them. That confirmation matters, because it removes the last room for either major bloc to claim a late swing. Neither side can now reach 61 without the Arab parties or without a partner crossing from the other camp.
The final results also arrived after a day of pressure on the Arab parties. On Thursday, Netanyahu’s bloc intensified its attacks on Arab-Israeli political leaders over unproven allegations of foreign funding. Supreme Court Justice Noam Sohlberg, who heads the Central Elections Committee, requested an investigation by the Shin Bet security service into suspicions that foreign players tried to intervene in the election. The controversy centred on allegations that Raam, led by Mansour Abbas, received money from Qatar.
Netanyahu’s Likud party called the allegations a political earthquake and claimed the election had been stolen. Abbas denied any connection to the affair and welcomed an investigation. The Joint List accused Netanyahu and his allies of inciting hostility towards Arab citizens. President Herzog called for an investigation but cautioned against stigmatising the Arab-Israeli community, whose turnout in Tuesday’s election reached unprecedented levels. Qatar’s foreign ministry spokesman, Majed Al Ansari, described the accusations as ridiculous and dangerous.
Israel election final results: the kingmaker question
The central question now is what the Arab parties will do with 19 seats. Yousef Jabareen, head of the Joint List, told AFP he was willing to cooperate with the opposition to bring down Netanyahu but would not join an opposition-led government. That position gives Eisenkot a path to 67 seats with outside support, but not a stable coalition that includes the Arab parties as members. Eisenkot has resisted cooperation after repeated attacks by Netanyahu, who warned his right-wing supporters that voting for the opposition could bring Arabs to power.
Only the Democrats have publicly indicated openness to including Arab-majority parties in a government arrangement, according to the reporting. The Central Elections Committee also said on Thursday that some information that had circulated about the election was entirely unfounded, and that the investigation would have no impact on the final results submitted to the president. That statement undercuts the claim that the results themselves are in doubt, even as the funding investigation continues.
Left-wing politician Yair Golan accused Netanyahu of attempting to challenge the election results after failing to secure a majority. Eisenkot accused Netanyahu of seeking to delegitimise the results. Police said at least seven people had been arrested in southern Israel since Tuesday on suspicion of voter fraud, following Likud complaints of suspected bribery at ballot stations in Arab towns. Those arrests concern individual cases, not a finding that the overall result is invalid.
