Palestinian Parties' Knesset Gains Force Israel's Opposition to Choose: Cooperate or Hand Netanyahu a Lifeline

In the early hours of Wednesday, at the Joint List's victory party in Nazareth, one party official put the choice facing Israel's opposition in blunt terms: the Zionist opposition, he said, will have to choose between supremacy and building democracy. It was a reaction to Tuesday's exit polls, which suggest the election has handed Palestinian parties their strongest showing in the Knesset in years.

The projections have Palestinian parties winning 17 to 18 seats, up from 10. That is the biggest change between the old parliament and the new one, and it alters the arithmetic of the whole contest. Arab Israelis, the analysis in The Guardian argues, will not be so easily sidelined and ignored.

The same exit polls put the opposition bloc led by Gadi Eisenkot and Benjamin Netanyahu's governing coalition in a tie. Netanyahu's Likud could still end up as the largest single party, but neither side reaches the 61 seats needed for a majority in the 120-seat Knesset. Eisenkot declared the polls a victory for Israel's Zionist national majority, though the real outcome looks far more complicated than that.

If actual results confirm a deadlock, President Isaac Herzog would have discretion over whom to ask first to try to form a government. A candidate who cannot succeed within six weeks sees the task passed to the next option. The process could run very long, and through all of it Netanyahu's coalition would remain in place in a caretaker role.

Eisenkot can argue that he still has a path to a majority. But he and his partners in the so-called change bloc would have to sit down with the two Palestinian groupings: the Joint List and Ra'am, short for the United Arab List.

Ra'am, led by Mansour Abbas, would probably be the easier partner. Abbas has already served in a right-leaning government under Naftali Bennett, who is now a junior partner in Eisenkot's bloc. He has a Jewish Zionist deputy, has shown willingness to compromise, and said emphatically on Tuesday that his priority is to bring down Netanyahu, Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir. The difficulty is size: most estimates based on the exit polls make Ra'am the smaller grouping, with seven projected seats, and it is unclear that would be enough for a majority even with the consent of everyone in Eisenkot's bloc.

The Joint List, projected at 11 or more seats, would be a tougher negotiation. Eisenkot has set four conditions: recognise Israel as a Jewish and democratic state, accept the values of its declaration of independence, accept conscription for Palestinian citizens of Israel, who are currently exempt, and denounce Hamas as a terrorist organisation. Amjad Shbita, general secretary of Hadash, the socialist party that is the largest faction in the Joint List, rejected the approach as votes were being counted. "Laying down conditions won't work with the Joint List," he said. "We will negotiate as equals because we need each other."

Without a deal with one or both groupings, Eisenkot could try to run a minority government, relying on informal vote-by-vote agreements. That would be unstable and would make another election more likely, giving Netanyahu a chance to rally conservative Jewish voters and claim vindication for his campaign slogan, "the Right or Palestine," which rhymes in Hebrew.

Netanyahu has looked beaten before in three decades at or near the top and has come back each time on the strength of his tactical skill as a dealmaker. No one is ruling out another escape. This time, though, if he returns, he would owe it to his declared opponents for offering a lifeline rather than making historic compromises across Israel's deep racial divide. The next things to watch are the final counts and whether Herzog's first call goes to Eisenkot.