JERUSALEM — As Israelis woke up Wednesday to count votes from a historic election and calculate possible permutations for their next government, little was certain except one thing: The great survivor of Israeli politics, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, did more than enough to fight another day.
Although neither the bloc led by Netanyahu nor that of his primary challenger, Gadi Eisenkot, won enough seats to form the next government outright, Netanyahu’s camp is likely to end up as the largest vote-getter, according to multiple exit polls conducted by Israeli TV channels. Just a few weeks earlier, the same polls had Netanyahu trailing Eisenkot.
As of 11 a.m. Wednesday, with 70 percent of the votes counted, Netanyahu’s bloc was on track to win 54 parliamentary seats compared with Eisenkot’s 47, while what are known as Arab parties were on track for an unprecedented tally of 19 after a historic wave of Palestinian citizens of Israel turned out to vote, according to Israel’s Central Election Commission.
Sixty-one seats are needed to form a government in the 120-member Knesset.
President Donald Trump, who endorsed Netanyahu last week, claimed credit for Netanyahu’s apparent outperformance. “When President Trump endorsed Bibi Netanyahu, the whole tide turned, and now, rather than a decisive defeat for a Great Prime Minister, it looks like a big come-from-behind stalemate, or even a WIN for Netanyahu,” he posted on social media.
Now, the key question in the coming weeks is whether Eisenkot’s bloc will agree to join hands with the historically marginalized Arab parties to reach the 61 seats needed. Two right-wing members of Eisenkot’s broad coalition — Avigdor Liberman, a hawkish former defense minister, and Naftali Bennett, a former prime minister who once headed a West Bank settlement council — have ruled out forming a government with Arab parties.
But while Eisenkot tries to cobble together a coalition, Netanyahu has options of his own, his supporters say.
Even though his current ruling coalition, which had 68 seats, is projected to fall significantly to the mid-50s once voting is finished, Netanyahu may try to peel off parties from the opposition to return to power — or offer to form an emergency unity government with Eisenkot in the event war with Iran resumes, his supporters say.
As revelers danced Tuesday at Netanyahu’s election night party, Michael Loeb, a marketing consultant and Likud official, said Netanyahu could force Eisenkot to join a unity government if Israel was to return to war alongside the United States in the coming weeks and Israel’s national security was at stake.
“We say in Judaism, ‘An emergency is bigger than everything, even the Torah,’” Loeb said. “If it’s an emergency and Netanyahu puts [a unity government] on the table, I think Eisenkot will have to say yes.”
For now, Netanyahu appears to be pursuing a strategy of simply preventing Eisenkot from forming a government.
As early as spring, Netanyahu said in campaign ads that Eisenkot would have to ally with Arab parties to become prime minister, raising pressure on the opposition camp to downplay the prospect.
On Tuesday, Netanyahu warned in last-minute statements that Arab voters and “Muslim Brotherhood supporters” were “raiding” polling stations and that Jewish Israelis had to “fight for our home.” After voting closed, Netanyahu repeated the message that Palestinian Israelis, who make up a fifth of the population, were a threat.
“We must not endanger Israel by forming a government that relies on anti-Zionist Arab parties,” he said before a rapturous crowd of Likud supporters before dawn Wednesday. His right-wing bloc, Netanyahu said, had secured “a clear majority among the Zionist public.”
So far, Eisenkot allies such as Liberman and Bennett have been tight-lipped about whether they would reconsider forming a government with Arab parties. Liberman urged Likud members to break away and join the Eisenkot-led camp.
Meanwhile, their left-wing ally, the retired general Yair Golan, urged his partners to embrace Palestinian Israelis and not squander the opportunity to unseat Netanyahu.
“We have no future here unless we stop being afraid, and unless we stop the racism,” Golan said. “We can no longer accept Netanyahu’s racist division between Jewish votes and Arab votes.”
“Whoever tries to erase the votes of Arab citizens is surrendering to Netanyahu and giving up on Israel,” Golan added.
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