The day after Israel’s election, many supporters of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu felt relief that the results tallied so far showed that the opposition’s path to forming a new government was narrow. Others who had hoped for a decisive opposition victory were crushed by results that could well lead to a political stalemate.
Almost everyone was asking the same question: What now?
“I’m hopeful,” said Merav Katz, 57, a Netanyahu supporter, as she got her hair straightened at a salon in Jaffa. She said she would like to see an all-Jewish unity government with some opposition parties but not including the Arab parties, which made a strong showing.
Ms. Katz expressed a sentiment shared by many right-wing voters: An indecisive result among Israeli Jewish voters would put pressure on the opposition to join a coalition with Mr. Netanyahu to avoid another round of elections.
The preliminary results show that Mr. Netanyahu’s hard-right alliance and the bloc of parties led by Gadi Eisenkot, his main opponent, are both likely to be short of the 61 seats needed to form a majority government.
Mr. Eisenkot could extend his hand to the two main Arab parties to form a minority government. Arab citizens, fearing another far-right government, turned out in historically high numbers.
Still, it would be difficult for Mr. Eisenkot, who ran on a center-right campaign, to form an alliance with the largest Arab party, the Joint List, whose leaders often harshly criticize Israel’s actions in Gaza and the West Bank.
At the salon in Jaffa, Ms. Katz’s hairdresser, Saado Zorob, 48, an Arab citizen, said that Jewish Israelis seemed happy to be treated by Arab physicians at hospitals and to eat at Arab restaurants but that many were unwilling to give Arab citizens a role in charting the country’s future.
“I feel like garbage,” he said as he was blow drying Ms. Katz’s hair. He added that he wished Mr. Eisenkot had the courage to form a government with the Arab caucus. Another election might benefit Mr. Netanyahu. “I’m worried that if the deadlock yields another round of elections, many Arabs will stay home,” he said
To many supporters of Mr. Netanyahu, a Jewish-Arab coalition would be a nightmare.
Yakov Matzlawi, 51, a Likud member who manages a men’s undergarment stall in a market in Ramla, near Tel Aviv, said the mood among Netanyahu supporters he knew was subdued. Mr. Netanyahu didn’t lose, he said, but he didn’t win either, and many of on the right were still confused about what the results meant for the country.
“What’s important is that we remain in the game,” he said.
Five miles south, in the city of Rehovot, Shira Barkan, 49, a therapist who wanted to see Mr. Netanyahu’s government fall, sat with her teenage daughter at an açai shop, their bowls only half eaten. “I don’t have much of an appetite,” she said.
She had gone to bed the night before hopeful, she said, but “woke up in the morning with Bibi again,” using Mr. Netanyahu’s nickname. In her view, Mr. Netanyahu’s extremist government was leading Israel toward global isolation.
“Israelis are amazing people, and they deserve leadership that will not only protect us from external wrongs, but also stop its own wrongdoing,” she said.
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