Israeli political leaders braced on Wednesday for days or weeks of negotiations over the shape of the next government after election results showed no clear winner between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition and a diverse bloc of opposition parties.
About 80 percent of the votes had been counted as of Wednesday afternoon local time in an election that had the highest voter turnout in Israel since 1999. Those votes, combined with exit polls, indicated that Mr. Netanyahu’s alliance will have more seats than the opposition bloc led by Gadi Eisenkot, a former Israeli military chief of staff, but neither will have the 61 seats needed to secure a majority in the Knesset, Israel’s Parliament.
That means either side would need to find support from outside its bloc to form a government and select a prime minister. Two Arab parties were projected to win a total of about 18 seats — a remarkable show of strength that could make them Mr. Eisenkot’s only path to toppling Mr. Netanyahu.
Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, said he would not begin consulting party leaders about forming a government until next week, when he expects to receive the full, official vote count. As head of state, Mr. Herzog will pick whoever he thinks has the best shot at assembling a majority in the Knesset.
The wrangling among parties can be drawn out and bruising. If the first candidate fails to gain support, Mr. Herzog can ask up two others. If they also fail, new elections would be held. “We must do everything we can, certainly after yesterday, to avoid another round of elections,” Mr. Herzog said on Wednesday.
The election on Tuesday was Israel’s first since the Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7, 2023, and was widely seen as a referendum on Mr. Netanyahu and the coalition of hard-line nationalists and ultra-Orthodox Jews that he formed in 2022, the most far-right in Israeli history.
The early results, though subject to change, indicated that Mr. Netanyahu, a canny survivor over more than three decades in Israeli politics, had emerged with a good chance of clinging to power even though he fell short of an outright victory.
His alliance could drop from 68 seats to roughly 54 and lose its majority in the 120-member Knesset. Mr. Eisenkot’s bloc could control about 49 seats.
Analysts said the results could lead to protracted political gridlock — a scenario that suits Mr. Netanyahu. He will remain the caretaker prime minister until a new government is formed or new elections are held. And Mr. Netanyahu, 77, has a reputation for outmaneuvering almost every rival who has tried to end his rule.
“Netanyahu is still in the driver’s seat,” said Natan Sachs, an expert on Israeli politics at the Middle East Institute, a Washington-based research group. “He’s still in control of most events, and that’s where he likes to be.”
Mr. Netanyahu sounded triumphant in a post-election speech Wednesday morning as he noted that his party, Likud, would still be the largest in the Knesset. “We must form a strong right-wing government,” he said.
Some Israeli voters who wanted to oust Mr. Netanyahu saw the election as a chance to save the country’s democracy were despondent on Wednesday.
In Rehovot, south of Tel Aviv, Shira Barkan, 49, a therapist who wanted to see Mr. Netanyahu’s government fall, said she had gone to bed hopeful, 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.
Mr. Netanyahu could also end up losing if Mr. Eisenkot, 66, chooses to partner with the Arab parties that had a historically strong showing on Tuesday. That could mean either including those parties in a majority coalition government or relying on their support to form a minority government.
Arab voters said they were furious at Mr. Netanyahu for his treatment of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza and for discriminatory treatment of Arab citizens in Israel.
Mr. Netanyahu had made overt appeals to anti-Arab prejudice, including on Tuesday, when he sought to motivate his supporters by accusing Arab citizens of “trying to steal the elections.”
Likud kept up those attacks on Wednesday and called on the police and intelligence services to investigate the Arab vote, even though Israel’s official election committee had said there was no indication of widespread irregularities.
Mansour Abbas, the leader of one of the major Arab parties, Raam, told a television interviewer that Arab voters, who make up about 20 percent of the Israeli population, had channeled their “frustration and despair” into “hope.” He said that he wanted to replace Mr. Netanyahu’s government “in every possible way” and that his first priority was to “ensure that there is a chance of forming a government” that achieved that goal.
But Mr. Eisenkot could face blowback from Jewish Israelis if he were to work with Arab parties, given how Israeli public opinion has hardened since the Oct. 7 attack. Even though Arab leaders in Israel generally condemned the attack, many Jewish Israelis would not want them to influence security policies or foreign affairs.
“After Oct. 7, Israeli society will not accept that,” said Shalom Yerushalmi, a veteran political writer at the news site Zman Yisrael, referring to a partnership between Mr. Eisenkot’s bloc and Arab parties. “There’s no chance.”
At a hair salon in Jaffa, Saado Zorob, 48, an Arab citizen, said that Jewish Israelis seemed happy to be treated by Muslim doctors and to eat at Arab restaurants but unwilling to give Arab citizens a role in charting the country’s future.
“I feel like garbage,” he said.
He added that he wished Mr. Eisenkot had the courage to form a government with Arab parties. “I’m worried that if the deadlock yields another round of elections, many Arabs will stay home,” he said, benefiting Mr. Netanyahu’s coalition.
Mr. Eisenkot, for his part, did not explicitly mention the Arab parties on Wednesday and instead projected confidence that he could build “a stable, Zionist government.”
“The public opted for change,” he said.
Some of Mr. Netanyahu’s allies floated the idea that he could join Mr. Eisenkot and other centrists to form a broad unity government to stay in power. That would be a comfortable scenario for Mr. Netanyahu, who has formed such coalitions before.
But it would be awkward for Mr. Eisenkot, who had vowed not to serve under Mr. Netanyahu and had denounced him as unfit to lead.
Mr. Netanyahu could also to try to block a new government from forming and force new elections. His opponents — who poured years of energy and planning into the vote on Tuesday — would struggle to perform any better, analysts said.
“There’s a general sense that this was the opposition’s big chance,” Mr. Sachs said. “From Netanyahu’s perspective, he can throw the dice again and again.”
That happened in 2019, when two inconclusive elections failed to yield a government, keeping Mr. Netanyahu in power as a caretaker.
Some Netanyahu voters were more circumspect.
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 the prime minster’s supporters was subdued. Mr. Netanyahu didn’t lose, he said, but he didn’t win, either, and many 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.
Reporting was contributed by Adam Rasgon, Heedo Abu Laban. Gabby Sobelman, Liam Stack and Leo Sands.
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