Israel’s election: The battle between change and anti-Palestinian sentiment 

With Israel’s governing and opposition blocs failing to secure a majority in Israel’s election, and neither appearing ready to ally with Arab parties that could allow them to form a coalition, speculation is growing over the future shape of the government.

The vote on Tuesday, billed as one of the most important in Israel’s history, saw turnout reach 77.7 percent of eligible voters – the highest level since 1999.

With nearly 80 percent of votes counted by Wednesday afternoon, the outgoing coalition led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, centred around his Likud party, had secured 54 seats, short of the 61 needed to establish a governing coalition.

Former military chief of staff Gadi Eisenkot’s self-styled Zionist opposition, drawing from parties as diverse as Yair Golan’s relatively left-wing Democrats and Avigdor Lieberman’s hard-right Yisrael Beiteinu, had 49 seats, also short of a governing majority in the 120-strong Knesset.

Holding the balance of power, in theory at least, are the Arab-dominated Ra’am and Joint List, with 17 seats, more than enough to give either bloc a majority with which to appoint a speaker, pass legislation and form a working government.

Those figures are not final, however, with the final tally expected by Friday and official results formally published on November 4 .

What happens next is a matter of procedure as much as politics.

President Isaac Herzog will consult party leaders on who they want as prime minister, before tasking the candidate he believes has the best chance of forming a government. That candidate has 28 days to build a coalition, with a possible 14-day extension. If they fail, the mandate can pass to another member of parliament, and if that also fails, the Knesset is dissolved and Israelis return to the polls, with the current cabinet staying on as caretaker.

Turnout

Turnout among Palestinian citizens of Israel, who account for one-fifth of the total population, reached about 80 percent, according to some estimates, also above the 1999 figures.

Analysts said the surge was propelled by the harsh treatment of the Israeli-Palestinian minority by the Likud-led government, which increased significantly following the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023 that triggered Israel’s genocidal war against Palestinians in Gaza. Netanyahu’s outgoing government is the most right-wing in Israeli history, featuring far-right figures such as National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, whose policies and rhetoric against Palestinians have essentially made him a recruiting sergeant for the pro-Arab parties.

Analysts also attributed the strong performance to a well-organised campaign that targeted the demands of Israel’s Palestinian community and the opportunity for a greater voice in the Knesset.

“Having just two well-organised lists significantly improved their vote-collecting efficiency and ground-level mobilisation – particularly for Ra’am, the Islamist party, which ran a much more efficient campaign than usual,” Roi Zur, a lecturer at Essex University and specialist in Israeli voting behaviour and election strategies, told Al Jazeera.

“The broader shift, however, comes down to how voters view their place in Israeli politics,” he added, “especially following October 7 and the subsequent war,” Zur added.

“On one hand, many voters feel more integrated into Israeli society, driven by shifts in how the public processed both the October 7 attacks and the government’s subsequent policies, making them feel more invested in the political system.”

Polarised puzzle

However, both blocs ran campaigns that critics have described as profoundly racist. Likud spent much of the election race making unsubstantiated claims that the opposition was planning to form a government reliant on Arab parties after the vote, while petitioning to bar the Joint List from running.

On the opposition side, Lieberman ruled out a coalition with either Arab or ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) parties, while Together’s Naftali Bennett, whose 2021-22 coalition included Ra’am, told an activists’ conference there was “no mandate” to form a government with Arab parties after the October 7 attack.

“The ‘opposition’ bloc continues to think you beat Bibi by being Bibi-lite, offering no substantive alternative or hope,” said former government adviser Daniel Levy, using a common nickname for the Israeli prime minister. “Really, the opposition got what they deserved,” he added, arguing it would have won the election if its members’ commitment to removing Netanyahu had outweighed their “commitment to a racist ethno-centric version of Zionism”.

Levy sees four possible scenarios ahead for either bloc, listed in no particular order: the possibility of a new election; Likud drawing enough defectors from the right of the opposition to form a government; a so-called “unity government” led by Netanyahu that draws on the right across the Knesset; and “Eisenkot and company biting the bullet and using the anti-Netanyahu majority to form a minority government with Arab support,” he said.

“Even if they announce it’s time-limited before another election, the Arab parties’ asking price will not be particularly high,” he said, with the caveat that he considered such a coalition unlikely.

Wheeling and dealing

The chance of defection amidst what is seen as a highly polarised society remains unclear.

Much of the Eisenkot bloc’s campaign, and by extension its vote, rested upon opposition to the de facto exemption from military service offered by the Likud-led government to the Haredi parties in return for their support in the Knesset. Rivalling the pressure to extend the draft to Israel’s ultra-Orthodox youth were the calls for an independent inquiry into the government’s alleged security failings before the October 7 attack, calls rendered more pressing in light of the reports of the alleged advance warnings given by the United Arab Emirates and Egypt.

“I think it would be very hard to see Eisenkot working with anyone in Netanyahu’s camp because of the ultra-Orthodox draft issue and because of October 7,” said Mairav Zonszein, an analyst with the Crisis Group. “His main demands are a state commission of inquiry and a universal draft for everyone, so he couldn’t work with a lot of the partners there, including Netanyahu,” she added.

“However, Bennett and Lieberman are different stories. Bennett has swerved once before,” she said, referring to him reneging on election promises and working with Ra’am in 2021.

“Lieberman, as much as he hates Netanyahu, is also a very hard-right politician,” she said of the likelihood of Yisrael Beiteinu allying with Likud to prevent any liberal-leaning politics.

For now, though, speculation continues. For some, including Levy, that includes the possibility of the Netanyahu government seeking a military escalation, potentially against Iran, as a pretext to establish an emergency government.

For others, such as Israeli political psychologist Daniel Bar Tal of Tel Aviv University, the future rests upon the more prosaic mathematics of a government coalition.

“It is a very challenging moment in the history of Israel,” he said, reflecting on the many opportunities to gain power missed by the opposition.

“It is hard to know [what will happen] because the majority of Israelis are rightists, racists, religious and nationalists,” he said, before cutting to the heart of the dilemma faced by many in Israel on the day after the election: “They want change but do not want to cooperate with Arab parties.”