Short of a majority, Netanyahu accuses Arab parties of stealing the election

A prime minister who won the most seats; and lost the election

On Thursday 29 October 2026, Israel's Central Elections Committee published the final count of Tuesday's parliamentary election, the country's first since the 7 October 2023 attacks. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's right-wing bloc held 53 of the Knesset's 120 seats; the opposition bloc led by former military chief Gadi Eisenkot held 48; the Arab-led parties held a record 19. Both blocs fell short of the 61 seats needed for a majority.

Before the ink was dry, Likud, Netanyahu's party and still the largest single faction, declared the election stolen. In a statement, it accused Arab parties that "support terror and the elimination of the Jewish state" of winning through "bribery, threats, violence, forgeries and the use of illegal software to mobilize voters," and demanded police and Shin Bet investigations. The attack turned the election's arithmetic into its politics: 19 legitimately won seats, recast overnight as a crime scene.

The numbers, the names, and the statements on the record

The final figures, announced by CEC chairman Justice Noam Sohlberg after every ballot, including the last double envelopes, was counted: Netanyahu's bloc 53, with Likud the largest party alongside United Torah Judaism, Shas, Jewish Power and Religious Zionism; Eisenkot's bloc 48, with his Yashar party second-largest on 21 seats, plus Beyachad on 12, the Democrats on 8 and Yisrael Beiteinu on 7; the Arab-led parties 19, the Joint List on 12 and the United Arab List on 7. It was the landscape the Bureau's election-night coverage had been tracking since Tuesday.

Joint List chairman Yousef Jabareen said his party stood ready to help oust Netanyahu, denouncing a "government of bloodshed" and calling for "genuine Jewish-Arab partnership": either the continuation of racism, exclusion and supremacy, he said, or a genuine partnership between Jews and Arabs. Democrats leader Yair Golan urged the opposition to form a change government with the Arab parties, writing that "we can no longer accept Netanyahu's racist distinction between Jewish and Arab votes"; a position his allies inside Eisenkot's bloc largely rejected.

How did a bloc that "won" end up short of a majority?

Because the 120-seat Knesset demands 61 for a majority, and the fragmentation of both camps handed the arithmetic to the Arab lists. With 71 percent of ballots counted, Netanyahu's bloc led 54 to 47; as the count completed, the Arab parties climbed to 19; an unprecedented combined strength. With neither Jewish bloc able to govern alone, those 19 seats became the only road to 61, for either side.

The government that exists only on paper

Whether Eisenkot can turn 48 plus 19 into 67. His bloc's partners have mostly refused a partnership with the Arab lists, and the Joint List has never sat in an Israeli government. Whether Netanyahu can instead peel defectors from the opposition, a maneuver he has executed in past deadlocks. Whether the Shin Bet investigation ordered by the CEC chairman produces evidence of foreign funding; or becomes a political instrument against the Arab vote itself. And whether Israel faces weeks of bargaining under a caretaker Netanyahu, or the road to yet another election.

Nineteen seats that changed what an Israeli majority means

This was the first Israeli election since October 7, fought after three years of war in Gaza and across the region, and the Arab minority, roughly a fifth of the population, voted in numbers that made it the election's decisive force. Markets noticed immediately: on Wednesday the shekel slid about 2 percent to 3.1185 to the dollar, its worst day in 16 months, while Tel Aviv's TA125 index fell around 3 percent, as investors priced in a fragile government, or none at all. The surge recalled the exit-poll shock of Tuesday night, when the Arab bloc's rise first stunned both camps.

Why do 19 seats make both blocs losers?

Because each bloc's only path to power now runs through votes its own rhetoric has spent years delegitimizing. Netanyahu's camp won the most seats yet cannot govern; Eisenkot's camp promises change yet recoils from the partners who could deliver it. The result exposes a fault line deeper than any coalition math: whether a fifth of Israel's citizens count as full participants in its democracy.

The delegitimization playbook, tested at the ballot box

Netanyahu's "stolen election" claim follows a familiar script: cast the Arab vote as a security threat, then demand the security services treat it as one. But the arithmetic resists the script; 53 plus 48 is 101, and the missing 19 are not a rounding error. Jabareen's partnership offer and Golan's lonely endorsement of it have trapped the opposition in a bind of its own making: it cannot replace Netanyahu without the Joint List and the United Arab List, and much of it cannot say so aloud. As the Bureau noted when the hung parliament first took shape, the election has staged the question Israeli politics has dodged for decades; not who forms the government, but whose votes are allowed to count.

Shekels, Shin Bet, and the next campaign that has already begun

Beyond the coalition talks, three aftershocks are already moving. Financial markets are pricing prolonged instability, with the shekel and long-dated bonds under pressure. The foreign-funding probe, with Qatar and Turkey named as suspects, risks becoming a permanent cloud over Arab political participation. And Likud's fraud narrative, issued before any evidence, sets the template for the next campaign, exactly as the battle lines drawn this week suggested: if this count stands, the fight over its legitimacy has only started.

Sixty-one names on a list

The coming days bring presidential consultations and a mandate to form a government; most likely weeks of bargaining while Netanyahu remains caretaker prime minister. Eisenkot must decide whether 67 with the Arab lists is a government he can build; Netanyahu must decide whether defection or delegitimization is the sharper weapon. Failure on both tracks points toward another election, and toward a precedent neither side will be able to take back.