With 71% of vote counted, neither the right-wing nor the left-wing blocs have an outright majority, as Arab factions nearly double in strength.
By David Rosenberg, World Israel News
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing and religious bloc fell to 54 seats in the latest partial results of Israel’s Knesset election on Wednesday morning, as the predominantly Arab parties increased their combined representation to 19 seats, further complicating efforts to form a new government.
With 70.7% of the votes counted, Netanyahu’s bloc is currently projected to win 54 of the Knesset’s 120 seats, compared with 47 for the opposition change bloc led by former IDF chief of staff Gadi Eisenkot. The predominantly Arab Joint List and United Arab List (Ra’am) parties are projected to receive the remaining 19 seats.
The results leave Netanyahu seven seats short of the 61 needed for a parliamentary majority, while the opposition parties would require support from both of the anti-Zionist Arab parties to form an alternative government.
Likud remained the largest party, with a projected 27 seats, followed by Eisenkot’s Yashar party with 20. The Joint List, comprising Hadash, Ta’al and Balad, is projected to win 13 seats, making it the third-largest faction in the Knesset.
Former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s Beyachad (Together) party is projected to receive 11 seats, followed by the Democrats, led by Yair Golan, and Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beytenu, with eight seats each.
Within Netanyahu’s bloc, United Torah Judaism, Shas and Itamar Ben-Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit were projected to receive seven seats each, while the joint Religious Zionist Party-Zehut list was projected to win six.
The UAL, led by Mansour Abbas, was also projected to receive six seats
The latest figures mark a further weakening of Netanyahu’s bloc compared with the early hours of Wednesday morning, when partial results initially gave his coalition as many as 59 seats.
As additional votes were counted, the bloc gradually lost ground, falling to 57 seats with approximately 37% of votes counted, 55 seats with nearly half the votes counted, and 54 seats as the count passed two-thirds.
The Arab parties, meanwhile, have steadily strengthened. At the halfway point of the count, the Joint List and UAL were projected to receive a combined 15 seats. Their projected representation has since increased by four seats.
The latest update also saw the Joint List rise from 12 to 13 seats, while Eisenkot’s Yashar declined from 21 to 20.
The growing strength of the Arab factions has become a central factor in the post-election political calculations, with neither Netanyahu’s bloc nor the four main opposition parties holding enough seats to govern independently.
This election marks the first time in Israel’s history that Arab Israelis outvoted Jewish Israelis, with turnout in the Arab sector estimated at 80%, compared to 77.7% for the total population.
On Wednesday morning, Democrats chairman Yair Golan called on opposition leaders to form a government with the support of the Arab parties, arguing that refusing to count their parliamentary representation would undermine Israeli democracy.
“We have a majority. We have a responsibility. And we have an opportunity to establish a government of change in partnership with Israel’s Arab citizens,” Golan wrote on X.
However, other opposition leaders, including Eisenkot, Bennett and Lieberman, have opposed forming a government dependent on the anti-Zionist Joint List, leaving the prospects for such an arrangement uncertain.
Netanyahu, addressing Likud supporters early Wednesday, called for the formation of “a strong, right-wing national government,” despite the absence of a majority for his existing political allies.
The latest results also leave smaller parties facing the possibility of failing to cross the 3.25% electoral threshold, including the Reservists and Economic Party led by Yoaz Hendel and Yaron Zelekha, and Ofer Winter’s Amcha Yisrael party.
Currently, the Reservists-Economic party joint ticket has received 2.64% of all ballots counted, while Amcha Yisrael received just 1.65%.
Noam, a national religious party which ran in 2022 on a joint ticket with Otzma Yehudit and the Religious Zionist Party, received 0.16% of the vote.
Even after the preliminary vote count is completed, hundreds of thousands of double-envelop ballots cast by soldiers, diplomats, police officers, hospital patients, displaced civilians, and others unable to vote at a polling station, must be counted.
Some 460,000 double-envelop ballots were cast in the 2022, and it is estimated that between 600,000 to 650,000 were cast in this election, representing approximately 13 to 14 seats.
