Rivals in Israel Election Strike Tone of Triumph, but Outcome Is Far From Clear

The exit polls, if accurate, suggest that neither Mr. Netanyahu’s bloc nor the one led by Mr. Eisenkot, a former military chief whose son was killed in the Gaza war, will be able to form a government without relying on two Arab parties that were projected to win as many as 17 or 18 seats in Parliament. Mr. Netanyahu effectively ruled out including them in a governing coalition, and Mr. Eisenkot and his partners have balked at the idea, too.

One option analysts are already weighing is whether Mr. Netanyahu, who has led the most far-right government in Israeli history, could join with Mr. Eisenkot or others in the opposition to form a unity government. But a unity government would face major obstacles, given how deeply Mr. Eisenkot’s voters despise Mr. Netanyahu, and because the two would have to agree on which of them would serve as prime minister. Mr. Netanyahu is unlikely to give up control, while Mr. Eisenkot has called the prime minister unfit to lead Israel.

Much remained unclear early Wednesday morning in Israel. Making matters even murkier, Israel’s exit polls have a spotty history of accuracy, particularly in tight races.

Mr. Eisenkot appeared onstage past midnight at his post-election party and attempted to strike a tone of triumph — as well as defiance toward Mr. Netanyahu.

“Tonight we got the answer: The public wants change,” he said.

Mr. Netanyahu addressed his supporters a few hours later, invoking his relationship with President Trump and repeating his pre-election talking points about removing the threat of Iran. He sounded triumphant, saying it was clear that Likud had emerged as the largest party in Israel and mocking months of pre-election polls that showed his party trailing behind that of Mr. Eisenkot.

“We must form a strong right-wing government,” he declared.

In the coming days, after official vote totals are released and parliamentary seats are allocated to parties, Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, will invite the party leader he thinks has the best chance to assemble a governing coalition. Such a coalition would usually have to be made up of at least 61 lawmakers, though Mr. Eisenkot has floated the idea of forming a minority government.

One factor not reflected in exit polls are the hundreds of thousands of votes cast by Israelis at special polling stations, including at military bases, hospitals, prisons and embassies. In the previous election, those votes tended to favor the coalition of Mr. Netanyahu and his allies.

Here’s what else to know:

• Arab parties: The exit polls pointed to at least one surprise in projecting that two Arab parties would win as many as 17 or 18 seats in the 120-seat Parliament. That would be their strongest showing ever, and potentially give them an important role in forming the next government. Read more ›

• War fears: Amid reports that Mr. Netanyahu has been pushing for renewed attacks on Iran, Mr. Eisenkot warned him in his speech to supporters not to abuse his power as caretaker prime minister to influence the process of forming a new government. “Netanyahu, don’t dare use Israel’s security for your political needs,” he said.

Mansour Abbas, the leader of Raam, told a television interviewer that the turnout showed that Arab voters, who make up about 20 percent of Israel’s population, had channeled their “frustration and despair” into “hope.”

He said 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.

The Arab parties’ strong showing may make them kingmakers. But building a governing coalition with Arab participation remains a fraught exercise in Israel. Many Israeli Jews believe that a parliamentary majority should not rely on the support of Arab lawmakers.

Most Arab citizens are the descendants of Palestinians who remained in their homes during the 1948 Arab-Israel war at the time of Israel’s independence.

Today, they mostly live in separate towns from Jewish Israelis and face violence and discriminatory housing policies.

Over the decades, disagreements, including over Israel’s nature as a Jewish state, have led many Arab voters to avoid the ballot box.

This week, many Arab voters said they were furious at Mr. Netanyahu for his treatment of the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza and for policies that they feel treat Palestinians in Israel as second-class citizens. Indeed, throughout the campaign, Mr. Netanyahu made overt appeals to anti-Arab prejudice.

“I’m very optimistic because people understand that this isn’t like ordinary elections — we want change,” said Kholoud Al-Zeinati, 39, an Arab Israeli voter who cast her ballot on Tuesday in the mixed Jewish-Arab city of Lod, where long lines formed at polling places. “Because we, as the Arab community, are the community that pays the biggest price across so many aspects of life, it’s important to come out and take part.”

“I expect our votes to be truly decisive in shaping the next government and making things better for all of us,” she added.

Of the two Arab parties that did well on Tuesday, only Raam has joined a coalition government in the past. That happened in 2021, when it joined the short-lived anti-Netanyahu coalition of Prime Minister Naftali Bennett.

Raam’s participation in that government outraged many right-wing Jewish voters, and when it collapsed after roughly one year, they backed Mr. Netanyahu, who went on to form the most hard-line government in Israel’s history.

That government now faces the possibility that it may be brought down by an election result that has been deeply shaped by robust Arab turnout.

Heedo Abu Laban contributed reporting from Lod, Israel.

The longevity of his most recent governing coalition followed three years during which a cycle of collapsed coalitions and five snap elections had left the country without a functional government or national budget.

In 2021, Israelis ousted Mr. Netanyahu from power and then returned him to office 18 months later. He had staged a previous comeback, in 2009, becoming prime minister a decade after his party was voted out of power.

March 2021

Ousted by a single-seat majority

In 2021, Mr. Netanyahu’s government collapsed after failing to pass a budget, setting off legislative elections. At the time, he had been indicted on charges of fraud, bribery and breach of trust, and the coalition he was leading was shaky. According to analysts, heading into an election was a gambit by Mr. Netanyahu to strengthen his grip on power before his criminal trial.

But the electorate that voted that March didn’t give him the seats he needed, ending a period of 12 straight years in office for him. It took months of wrangling for an eclectic coalition of anti-Netanyahu forces to cobble together a single-seat majority in the Parliament. Naftali Bennett, a right-wing former ally of Mr. Netanyahu’s, led the coalition as prime minister, hammering out a deal with Yair Lapid, a centrist and former broadcaster who was appointed foreign minister.

The eight-party coalition proved too unwieldy to endure. After two right-wing lawmakers defected and several on the left rebelled in critical votes, that government collapsed in June 2022.

November 2022

Returned to office by a hard-line coalition

After the resulting elections, held in November 2022, Mr. Netanyahu returned to power as right-wing voters moved to more extreme parties, diminishing the center left.

Mr. Netanyahu’s Likud party allied with far-right and ultra-Orthodox lawmakers to secure a clear majority in the Parliament, forming the most hard-line and religious conservative government in Israel’s history.

The coalition accounted for 48.4 percent of the vote but had a parliamentary majority because two anti-Netanyahu parties — one leftist, one Arab nationalist — fell just short of the share of votes needed to obtain seats.

It was a reminder of how tiny swings among voters can have a big effect under Israel’s parliamentary system.

Mr. Netanyahu has since overseen an acceleration of the country’s rightward shift, including an effort to overhaul the judiciary that prompted huge street protests. Questions about whether his government could have better pre-empted the Oct. 7 attack have also become hot-button issues.

In April, Mr. Lapid and Mr. Bennett said they would reconstitute their centrist alliance of 2021 for the 2026 election. Mr. Netanyahu will also face Gadi Eisenkot, a former military chief of staff who leads the largest opposition party.

“It’s over,” he said. “It’s only a matter of time.”

The comments were a reflection of Israel’s deepening global isolation, with even once-staunch allies imposing or threatening economic sanctions and embargoes after years of war in Gaza and rampant violence by Jewish settlers against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.

With settlers advancing into areas that were previously off limits, Britain last month decried what it called “ethnic cleansing” and announced trade sanctions on settlements that it said would also apply to entities that financed their construction. Though Israel’s banking system has not been directly targeted by sanctions, a dozen countries, including Canada, France and Spain, have said they support restrictions on trade with settlements, raising the prospect of further penalties that could affect Israeli financial institutions.

Opponents of Mr. Netanyahu’s government decried his pronouncements, which also drew a rebuke from the generally reserved central bank.

“Crypto currencies cannot serve as a route to bypass sanctions against Israel,” the Bank of Israel said in a statement. The bank added that the government would do better “to focus on preventing sanctions” and preserving Israel’s economic ties with its main trading partners.

Commentators said that Mr. Netanyahu’s outlook sounded apocalyptic, and some said it was part of a scare campaign to improve his election prospects.

Last year, amid growing global condemnation of the Israeli military’s conduct of the war against Hamas in Gaza, where it has been accused of war crimes, and the imposition of some arms embargoes, he warned that Israel would have to become a more self-sufficient “super-Sparta.” That reference to the ancient, insular Greek city-state that practiced militaristic self-reliance was, to critics, a frightening scenario for a small country whose economy is largely driven by a tech sector that is reliant on foreign investment.

Gadi Eisenkot, Mr. Netanyahu’s main rival in Tuesday’s election, said in a social media post that the prime minister’s “Bibi-coin vision,” a nod to cryptocurrency, would “dismantle the Israeli economy for generations.”

“No internet purchases, no high-tech investments, no national security,” he added.

Yair Lapid, the opposition leader who has served as prime minister and finance minister, wrote on social media that a vote for Mr. Netanyahu was a vote for “a ruined economy, sanctions that will lead to insane price hikes, and no military alliance with the United States.”

And a former governor of the Bank of Israel, Jacob Frenkel, told Israel’s Channel 12 on Sunday that moving away from the international financial system would turn Israel into “a leper.”

Mr. Netanyahu later walked back his remarks slightly, saying that he had heard the criticism and that cryptocurrency was only one option to deal with potential financial sanctions.

In a somewhat jarring contrast, Mr. Netanyahu’s campaign has argued that Israel’s economy overall is healthy despite years of war, helped by record export revenues, relatively low inflation and unemployment, and a strong shekel.

But many Israelis are not feeling it. The State Comptroller, a government watchdog, warned last year that the cost of living was “skyrocketing” in part because of structural challenges in Israel’s consumer market and low competition levels.

While foreign affairs and national security have dominated the political conversation ahead of the election, a recent survey by the Israel Democracy Institute, a nonpartisan research group, found that the economy was the top issue for many voters heading into Tuesday.

“The Israeli government has enormous influence over our lives,” said Montaser Amro, 32, a supermarket owner in Majd, a village near the southern city of Hebron. “It chooses when roadblocks open and close, it controls the borders, and it decides on how much of our economy functions.”

He added, “Why can’t we vote when settlers living hundreds of meters away can?”

Israel captured the West Bank in 1967 and reached an agreement with the Palestine Liberation Organization to establish the Palestinian Authority in the 1990s. The Palestinian Authority administers parts of the West Bank and has not held parliamentary or presidential elections for roughly 20 years.

Many Palestinians have long hoped the Palestinian Authority would transform into an independent Palestinian state. In recent years, those hopes have dwindled. The Israeli government promotes the expansion of settlements in the West Bank that are widely considered illegal under international law and rejects Palestinian self-determination there and in Gaza. Palestinian officials have also failed to unify their ranks and renew their leadership.

Alaa al-Khabass, 40, a resident of Hebron, said it was unjust that Palestinians could not cast ballots.

“Israel controls just about everything related to us, and I don’t see that changing any time soon,” he said. “We should be able to vote, but we live in painful reality where we lack rights and sovereignty.”

Turnout

This is considered one of the most consequential elections in Israel’s history, and voters turned out in record numbers.

Recent polls had suggested that voter turnout could be at least as high or higher than in the last general election, in 2022. That year, slightly more than 70 percent of eligible voters — nearly 4.8 million out of nearly 6.8 million people — participated. That election followed four other votes in quick succession from 2019 to 2021 in which turnout hovered near 70 percent.

This year, there are 7.3 million eligible voters, about 540,000 more than in 2022.

The 3.25 percent threshold

Parties must clear a threshold of 3.25 percent of the total vote in order to get a seat in the Knesset, or Parliament.

But no party is expected to gain a majority of 61 parliamentary seats, according to the polls. That means there will likely be lots of post-election negotiations among those parties who pass the threshold.

Parties or lists that do not reach the threshold lose those ballots. As a result, parties and candidates lobby voters not to waste their votes on a list that seems unlikely to meet this criterion.

At least one party has also faced repeated attacks from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party and the far-right Religious Zionism party led by Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s finance minister.

The targeted party, People of Israel, is led by Ofer Winter, a former Israeli brigadier general with hawkish views on national security. Some polls show that much of Mr. Winter’s support comes from voters who would normally choose Likud. Mr. Winter has faced claims that a vote for his party will be wasted or may end up going to the leading challengers.

While Mr. Winter initially said that he would support Mr. Netanyahu, he has refused any deals to withdraw from the race and has since signaled the pledge may have been premature.

Disinformation and challenges

Israeli election officials have said there is no evidence of threats to the integrity of this election in terms of widespread fraud or vote counting irregularities. But experts are concerned about disinformation campaigns undermining the vote or thwarting turnout.

Critics fear that some moves by the governing right-wing coalition may cast doubt on the outcome even before the vote happens or may thwart turnout among some voters.

Absentee voting is mostly prohibited in Israel. But by some estimates, tens of thousands of Israelis living abroad were expected to fly in to vote, a factor that could potentially swing the outcome.

Likud had filed a lawsuit challenging an initiative to fly in Israeli voters from abroad — a move widely perceived as an effort to limit opposition voters from showing up. The party had said the nonpartisan program provided benefits that could sway voters in violation of Israeli law. But it withdrew the suit this month after the initiative’s organizers agreed to limit flights and not to defray travelers’ costs.

Likud and other right-wing parties also filed motions to limit participation of several Arab candidates in the election.

The Central Elections Committee can vote to bar candidates or lists on certain grounds, such as expressing support for armed conflict against Israel. But the nation’s Supreme Court gets the final say. This month, it rejected a challenge to the Joint List, a merger of three majority-Arab parties, and to Raam, a historically Islamist party led by Mansour Abbas, who is running with Yoav Segalovitz, a former deputy minister of national security who was previously in the centrist Zionist party There Is a Future.

Voter suppression

In 2022, turnout in five of the largest Arab localities in Israel was lower, sometimes significantly, than the national figures. This year, officials in Arab communities worked to get voters to the polls in larger numbers and prepared for potential resistance.

Likud and the Religious Zionism party announced plans this month to deploy thousands of religious Jewish “observers” to “prevent fraud in voting and vote-counting in Arab communities.”

Critics contend that the presence of such observers, likely from far-right Zionist parties, was intended to intimidate Arab citizens of Israel, who make up 20 percent of the population and could be critical to the election’s outcome.

“The main issue we want to avoid is ‘fake news,’” said Abed Shahada, who leads voter turnout efforts for an organization representing mayors and other officials in Arab localities.

One major issue expected to drive voters is high crime in Arab communities. But if there are reports of or disinformation about criminal or violent episodes on Election Day that could keep people from the polls, Mr. Shahada said, teams are preparing by setting up a system to share verified information.

Mr. Netanyahu has a long track record of appealing to his supporters by invoking the specter of the Arab vote. Arab citizens represent about 20 percent of Israel’s population, but have long complained that they are treated as second-class citizens and subject to discrimination.

In 2015, Mr. Netanyahu called on right-wing Israelis to vote because “Arabs were heading in droves to the polls.” His comments were widely condemned at home and abroad, including by the Obama administration. Mr. Netanyahu was accused of race-baiting and was forced to issue an apology for the remark.

On Tuesday, as initial data showed high turnout in Arab cities and towns, Mr. Netanyahu again used almost the same language to vilify Arab voters in several different statements over the course of the day.

“They say their voters are heading to the polls in droves. You too must head to the polls in droves,” Mr. Netanyahu said in a video statement, addressing right-wing voters.

Yousef Jabareen, who leads the Joint List alliance of Arab parties, accused Mr. Netanyahu of “inciting against Arab citizens and undermining the legitimacy of our vote.”

“I’m telling you: the Arab community knows how to punish you,” Mr. Jabareen said. “Today we’re sending you and your bloodstained government packing.”

Arab citizens have tended to vote at lower rates than their Jewish counterparts. But in the run-up to this election, surveys suggested that they would turn out in higher numbers in an effort to vote out Mr. Netanyahu and his far-right allies. In Rahat, a large Bedouin town in southern Israel, turnout just before 5 p.m. was already at 60 percent — matching the town’s final turnout in the previous election.

Mr. Netanyahu’s Likud party and some hard-right ministers in his government have also deployed incendiary messaging to appeal to supporters to vote.

The Likud party released images suggesting that there had been higher turnout in the Arab city of Rahat than Bat Yam, a Likud stronghold, which it called “a state of emergency.”

Another poster showed women in Muslim religious veils with the caption: “Right-wing voters, don’t stay home.”

Itamar Ben-Gvir, the far-right national security minister, joined in the prime minister in trying to stoke fears over high Arab turnout. In a video filmed near the entrance of the Arab town of Kufr Qassim in central Israel, he said that Arab voters were heading to the polls “at hitherto never-before-seen rates,” threatening Israel’s Jewish character.

The prime minister also pointed to the arrests of three people suspected of planning to bribe voters for Raam, an Arab Israeli party, on Tuesday. Dean Livne, the acting director of Israel’s central elections committee, told reporters that there were no reports of widespread irregularities.

Lia Lapidot and Johnatan Reiss contributed reporting.

About 1,200 civilians and soldiers were killed that day, according to the Israeli authorities, and roughly 250 were taken hostage to Gaza. Many of the family members of hostages held by Hamas rose to prominence as they campaigned for their loved ones in television interviews and at nationwide protests.

Most of them called for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to take responsibility for the government’s failures of Oct. 7 and to prioritize negotiating the release of the hostages over continued fighting. Others supported Mr. Netanyahu’s right-wing government and urged it to keep up the military pressure on Hamas and Israel’s other enemies.

Parties from across Israel’s political spectrum have recruited candidates from what have become known as the Oct. 7 families. Here are some of the candidates with a chance to win a seat in Parliament:

Shira Shapiro is running with Yashar, the centrist party led by Mr. Netanyahu’s main political rival, Gadi Eisenkot. Ms. Shapiro’s son, Staff Sgt. Aner Shapiro, was on leave from the army on Oct. 7 when he attended the Nova music festival, one of the bloodiest targets of the Hamas-led attack. He took shelter in a crowded roadside bomb shelter and stationed himself by the entrance when gunmen attacked it. As the militants hurled grenades inside, Sergeant Shapiro repeatedly caught the grenades and threw them back out, until he was killed, according to surviving witnesses.

Zvi Mor, the father of a released hostage, Eitan Mor, is running as a candidate for the far-right party Religious Zionism, headed by Bezalel Smotrich. While Eitan was in captivity, Mr. Mor, an educator, founded a forum of right-wing parents of hostages and soldiers who opposed making deals with Hamas and pushed for Israel to defeat the group militarily.

Omri Ronen, a reserve soldier, is running with the left-wing Democrats, led by Yair Golan. His grandmother, Nira Ronen, was killed in her home in Kfar Aza, one of the border communities worst hit in the October 2023 attack, along with her Filipina caregiver, Angelyn Aguirre. Before Oct. 7, Mr. Ronen had been one of the leaders of a grass-roots group of reservists protesting the government’s plan to overhaul the judiciary. He said in a recent television interview that Mr. Netanyahu, whom he called “Mr. Oct. 7,” must go. “The word responsibility has meaning,” he said.

Rafael Ben Shitrit, a former mayor of Beit Shean in northern Israel, is in Yisrael Beitenu, a right-wing opposition party led by Avigdor Liberman. Mr. Ben Shitrit used to belong to Mr. Netanyahu’s conservative Likud party, but abandoned it after his son, Staff Sgt. Elroy Ben Shitrit, was killed in battle on Oct. 7 near the Gaza border. He has been an advocate for an independent state inquiry into what went wrong that day. Mr. Netanyahu has refused such an inquiry, and the opposition parties have pledged to establish one if they are elected.

Sharon Sharabi, also on Yisrael Beitenu’s list of candidates, is the brother of Eli Sharabi, a former hostage who was released from Gaza only to learn that his wife and two teenage daughters had been killed during the Oct. 7 attack. Another brother, Yossi Sharabi, was also taken hostage and killed after 100 days in captivity. Sharon Sharabi campaigned tirelessly for his brothers’ return. When Eli Sharabi was finally released, many Israelis were outraged over how emaciated he looked. “I was shocked,” Sharon said at the time. “I’d been told he would be thin, but I didn’t imagine how thin. It was extreme.”

Tali Gvili, running with Mr. Netanyahu’s Likud party, is the mother of Master Sgt. Ran Gvili, a member of a police counterterrorism unit who was shot and severely wounded in combat on Oct. 7 and then dragged into Gaza. His remains were recovered and returned to Israel in January 2026. The Gvili and Netanyahu families have become close, and the prime minister attended Sergeant Gvili’s state funeral, saying, “Our souls are bound with yours.”

Michal Hirsch Negri is running with Together, a joint slate led by right-wing politician Naftali Bennett and the centrist Yair Lapid. Ms. Hirsch Negri’s son Maj. Roee Negri was killed fighting in Kibbutz Be’eri near the Gaza border on Oct. 7.

Maj. Shahar Varon, a commander in the reserves, is another Together candidate. He fought that day in Kfar Aza, another border community, and later went to fight in Gaza. He was wounded in battle, then went back into Gaza to fight again. “There is life before October 7th, and there is life after,” he wrote recently, adding, “Our government disappeared that morning — but our people showed up instead.”

Since the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and the war in Gaza that followed, a growing number of Democrats have been under pressure from younger and progressive voters who are a crucial part of their base.

Lawmakers have begun rebuking Israel in ways that were once unimaginable. They have pointed to tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians killed in Gaza and focused much of their ire on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, whose actions and policies have left his country diplomatically isolated and who has become a political lightning rod in the United States. That has put at risk the bipartisan support for military aid that Israel has always counted on from American lawmakers.

A handful of far-right Republicans and libertarians in Congress have also questioned U.S. support for Israel, raising concern about Palestinian deaths and spending American money to defend a far-off ally. But the skepticism is far more widespread among Democrats.

The midterm elections have been shaped in part by Democratic voters’ mounting hostility toward Israel. Party leaders now view the issue as one of the major fault lines they will have to contend with next year if they win back control of Congress in November.

Over the past year, almost half of House Democrats voted to cut off aid to Israel. Democratic leaders who have long been staunch allies have said that the U.S.-Israeli relationship needs a fundamental reset, including a rethinking of the 10-year memorandum of understanding that commits billions of dollars of annual security aid to Israel, which will soon expire.

And Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the minority leader, who is the highest-ranking Jewish official in the nation, has condemned Mr. Netanyahu on the Senate floor and called for new leadership in Israel.

In recent weeks, top Democrats in the House and the Senate have proposed legislation that would impose sanctions on Israel for building settlements, making clear to Israeli companies and banks that they could be penalized for ties to such activity.

Those moves are in line with what lawmakers are hearing from voters.

A New York Times/Siena national poll conducted in May found that 74 percent of Democratic voters opposed providing additional economic and military support to Israel. A Pew Research Center poll in April found that eight in 10 Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents had an unfavorable view of Israel.