Netanyahu's Likud Accuses Arab Parties of 'Stealing' Election; Opposition Calls It Delegitimisation

On Thursday, two days after Israelis voted, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party accused the country's Arab-led parties of "stealing" the election. The charge came after the head of the Central Elections Committee asked the Shin Bet security service to look into what he called "serious suspicions" of foreign interference.

The numbers behind the dispute are stark. Final results confirmed that neither Netanyahu's bloc nor the Jewish opposition won a majority in the 120-seat Knesset. Netanyahu's bloc took 53 seats and the bloc led by his rival, Gadi Eisenkot, took 48. The two Arab party lists, the Joint List and Ra'am, won a record 19 seats between them, defying expectations after a surge in turnout among Arab voters. That leaves them as potential kingmakers.

Likud alleged that voters had been "bribed" to back Arab parties. Israeli media reported that the elections committee had been presented with a claim that Qatar provided funding meant to raise turnout in Arab communities. The Shin Bet is investigating whether the parties received illegal money from Qatar and Turkey. Qatar's foreign ministry "categorically" denied the claim, calling it "ridiculous and dangerous" and accusing Israeli politicians of running a disinformation campaign against Doha. Both Arab parties rejected the allegation, and the Joint List alliance called it baseless.

Netanyahu and Likud described the matter as a "political earthquake" and "an attack on democracy" aimed at toppling their right-wing government. Officials responsible for the investigation struck a more cautious note. The Shin Bet clarified that its inquiry did not implicate an entire community that had voted legally. Dean Livne, the acting director general of the elections committee, said there was "no basis for allegations of systematic violations of election integrity."

Eisenkot, who has been briefed on the investigation, said it was "too early to determine what happened, or if anything happened at all." He accused Netanyahu of running "an orchestrated and organized campaign to delegitimize the election results." Sami Abu Shehadeh, chairman of Balad, which is part of the Joint List, went further. "The losing side is constructing a racist blood libel," he said, accusing it of calling on the security agencies to use force to overturn the result.

Netanyahu's rhetoric about Arab voters did not begin Thursday. Through much of election day he posted on social media that high Arab turnout was an "emergency" and a "matter of life or death" for the Israeli right. He also shared AI-generated images of Arab voters at polling stations, hoping to push right-wing supporters to turn out.

Arab Israelis, many of whom call themselves Palestinian citizens of Israel, make up about one fifth of the population. For years many boycotted national elections, arguing that voting would legitimise a system that treats them as second-class citizens. This time, their turnout was driven by a wish to remove the most right-wing governing coalition in Israel's history, which Netanyahu leads.

Critics read the interference row as an effort to delegitimise the Arab parties and make it politically impossible for Eisenkot to work with them, which is currently his bloc's only route to power. The results leave three plausible paths: a national unity government of Netanyahu and Eisenkot; a right-wing coalition of Netanyahu and defectors from Eisenkot's bloc; or an Eisenkot-led government backed by the Arab parties. Eisenkot and every member of his bloc but one have previously refused to govern with Arab parties, though speculation has swirled in recent days that a deal might still emerge. A snap Hebrew University poll found that voters from every opposition party preferred Eisenkot forming a minority government with Ra'am, supported from outside by the Joint List. How the Shin Bet inquiry ends may help decide whether that option stays open.