Israel’s
Parties Gird for Wrangling to Form a Government, With No Clear Path
Votes are
still being counted, but it appears that neither Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition nor the opposition alliance headed by Gadi
Eisenkot will have a majority.
Torn Likud party campaign ad featuring Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and President Trump in Jerusalem on
Wednesday.Credit...Ohad Zwigenberg/Associated Press
By Isabel KershnerJohnatan ReissAaron BoxermanQasim Nauman and Michael Levenson
Isabel
Kershner and Aaron Boxerman reported from Jerusalem, and Johnatan Reiss from
Tel Aviv
Oct. 28,
2026
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/28/world/middleeast/israel-government-formation-negotiation.html
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 to 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 and 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.
Isabel Kershner, a senior
correspondent for The Times in Jerusalem, has been reporting on Israeli and
Palestinian affairs since 1990.
Aaron Boxerman is a Times
reporter covering Israel and Gaza. He is based in Jerusalem.
Qasim Nauman is a Times
editor in Seoul, covering breaking news from around the world.
Michael Levenson covers
breaking news for The Times from New York.
.jpeg)
