Netanyahu's Majority Lost as Palestinian Parties Surge; Coalition Math Turns on Eisenkot's Choice

By Wednesday, the count from Israel's Tuesday election had made one thing plain: Benjamin Netanyahu no longer had a governing majority. What was left was a standoff in which his political survival, and that of his rivals' hopes, depends on whether Jewish opposition parties will join forces with Palestinian parties whose support surged at the ballot box.

The opposition leader, the retired general Gadi Eisenkot, complicated that choice overnight. He declared victory for what he called a "Zionist majority", a declaration that proved premature and that appeared to rule out a broad coalition including Arab Israeli parties. Exit polls had put his bloc narrowly ahead of Netanyahu's coalition, but as counting went on the prime minister's bloc edged forward. About 14% of the electorate, mostly deployed soldiers and other absentee voters, had yet to be fully counted.

With the other 86% tallied, neither Jewish bloc looked likely to reach the 61 Knesset seats needed to govern. Arab Israeli parties were heading for a record 16 to 19 seats. That leaves Eisenkot and his allies with two options: strike a pact with those parties, or give Netanyahu a lifeline through fresh elections or a unity government. Turnout was nearly 78%, the highest since 1999, with a marked rise in voting by serving military members.

On Wednesday night Netanyahu responded to the Arab turnout by claiming the election had been "stolen". He offered no evidence, though he said on X that Likud had sent "hundreds of testimonies and pieces of evidence" to the central elections committee and the Shin Bet. Both bodies have become politicised under his government, and the committee had tried before the vote to ban Arab Israeli parties, until the supreme court overturned the attempt. Donald Trump, meanwhile, took credit for Netanyahu's better-than-expected showing, saying his endorsement "helped him a lot" and that the outcome looked like a stalemate or a Netanyahu win.

Inside the opposition, pressure to deal with the Palestinian parties came from Yair Golan, leader of the centre-left Democrats, a junior partner in Eisenkot's Change bloc. He urged talks with the Joint List and Ra'am, writing on X that Israelis could not accept "Netanyahu's racist distinction between Jewish and Arab votes", and noting that Netanyahu himself relies on ultra-Orthodox parties that are non-Zionist and oppose conscription. Haaretz commentator Noa Landau argued that by making Zionism the test for coalition partners, Eisenkot had fallen into a trap Netanyahu laid during the campaign. Joint List leader Yousef Jabareen said his party "can't be ignored under any political scenario" and pledged to help oust the government of Netanyahu, Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich. Another Joint List official framed the choice as "supremacy or building democracy".

The final count could take several more days. The army vote usually leans right, though that may be blurred this time because many older, more moderate reservists are on active duty. Once results are final, President Isaac Herzog will give one party leader six weeks to build a government; if that fails, the chance passes to the rival. Both Netanyahu and Eisenkot are expected to court defectors from the other side. Netanyahu stays on as caretaker meanwhile, and could gain from a repeat vote: tens of thousands of diaspora Israelis who flew home to vote, mostly against the coalition, might not do so again. Israel held five elections between 2019 and 2022. Herzog urged parties to keep an "open mind" and said everything should be done to avoid another round.

The Palestinian parties and the Jewish centre-left have suggested the opposition start with common ground in the Knesset: replacing the speaker and passing legislation all can accept, such as an independent review of the security failures behind Hamas's 7 October 2023 attack.

The war in Gaza was barely mentioned in the campaign. On Monday a UN commission of inquiry reported that Israel had continued genocidal acts in Gaza after the October 2025 ceasefire; it said 1,431 Palestinians, including 300 children, have been killed by the Israeli military since. Israel's UN ambassador, Daniel Meron, rejected the report as an attempt to destroy the Jewish state. Since October 2023, more than 74,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza. Eisenkot and much of his bloc back the war and tried to cast the vote as a referendum on Netanyahu, who has governed for 19 of the past 30 years, faces a corruption trial and is wanted by the International Criminal Court. His campaign included a post showing a nuclear blast over Tel Aviv. What comes next rests on the final count and on Eisenkot's answer.