Israel's Wartime Election Deadlocks in Exit Polls, Dealing Netanyahu an Apparent Setback

On Tuesday night, as polls closed across Israel, the exit projections landed on the country's first wartime election in a near tie. Two of the three major television networks gave Gadi Eisenkot's opposition bloc a narrow lead over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's camp. The third, Channel 13, had the two sides level at 51 seats each. None of the projections gave either side the 61 seats needed for a majority in the 120-seat Knesset.

If the numbers hold, they mark a major setback for Netanyahu's coalition, which went into the vote holding 68 seats. The far-right religious parties led by Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich were projected to take a combined 13 seats inside his bloc. The deadlock could still let Netanyahu, Israel's longest-serving prime minister, stay on as caretaker while coalition talks play out. Turnout was 77.7%, according to the Central Elections Committee. That is the highest in more than two decades and about 7 percentage points above 2022.

Eisenkot's route to power is also complicated. Arab parties outside the two main blocs could hold the balance, but Eisenkot, a 66-year-old former military chief who leads the Yashar party, has all but ruled out governing with them. That limits him even in projections where his bloc finishes first. Final results could take days, and no single party has ever won 61 seats outright, so coalitions are the norm. Yohanan Plesner, president of the Israel Democracy Institute, called the polls a major defeat for Netanyahu's coalition, but cautioned that Eisenkot had not emerged as a clear winner and that much could change as votes were counted.

Opposition leader Yair Lapid was less restrained. He said the Netanyahu bloc had suffered a crushing defeat, a total collapse in which the public had told them to go home. Yair Golan, leader of the Democrats party, told supporters at a rally that a decision had been made, and that the nation had given them a sacred duty to turn its trust into action and to fortify democracy.

Eisenkot has emerged as Netanyahu's strongest challenger by stressing his security credentials while presenting himself as a centrist at home. He lost a son and two nephews in the Gaza war. He entered politics only four years ago and joined Netanyahu's war cabinet after the Hamas attack of October 7, 2023, then quit eight months later, criticising the prime minister's leadership. He offers a break with Netanyahu and his far-right allies, but not with the hardline approach to security that has deepened since 2023. He opposes Palestinian statehood and says Hamas's military wing must be destroyed or dismantled. He calls Israel's response a failure because Hamas remains in charge of Gaza. Gaza health authorities say the war has killed more than 74,000 Palestinians.

In Nazareth, the headquarters of the Joint List, an alliance of several Arab parties, erupted in whistles and applause when the exit polls came out, on a historic night for turnout among Palestinian citizens of Israel. Candidate Faten Gattas told the gathering that they refuse occupation and racism and will remain. Candidates hoped high Arab participation could help keep Netanyahu's coalition, the most far-right in Israel's history, from returning to power.

This was the first election since the Hamas-led attacks, in which 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken hostage, and the wars in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran that followed. Netanyahu, 77, has been criticised for the country's worst security failure and entered the race facing corruption charges, which he denies, along with scrutiny of the intelligence failures. He argued he had made Israel and the world safer by assassinating top leaders of Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran, and campaigned on an endorsement from US President Donald Trump, his ally in the war against Iran.

Netanyahu has been prime minister for nearly 19 of the past 30 years. His opponents have unseated him only once since 2009, after four inconclusive elections in two years, and he was back eighteen months later. With final counts days away, the question is whether Eisenkot can assemble a majority without the Arab parties, or whether Netanyahu holds on as caretaker.