Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spent much of election day warning his base that Arab citizens were voting in record numbers. He was right.
The opposition bloc led by Gadi Eisenkot is widely expected to hold talks with one, if not both, of the Arab parties to boost his numbers.
The former military chief has said he won’t accept a party that doesn’t acknowledge Israel as a Jewish state or recognise Hamas as a terrorist organization that must be dismantled. That could make them kingmakers in what’s likely to be a fraught period of negotiation over who will form the next government and how – with Netanyahu’s right-wing religious alliance and the opposition bloc led by Gadi Eisenkot almost neck and neck. Eisenkot is widely expected to hold talks with one, if not both, of the Arab parties to boost his numbers, although several issues need to be resolved. In a statement late Tuesday, Eisenkot called the preliminary results a “complete vote of no confidence in the Netanyahu and the Oct. He promised to “act immediately to implement the will of the people. The two parties differ in their ideologies and political strategies but were united ahead of the vote in a high-energy campaign that sought to oust Netanyahu and his right-wing government.
Exit polls on Tuesday showed the two Israeli Arab parties are likely to have almost doubled their number of seats in parliament to 18, well ahead of forecasts, after party leaders rallied supporters to help oust the country’s longest serving leader. Eisenkot’s bloc is on track to secure 52 of Israel’s 120 parliamentary seats, according to exit polls, compared with 50 for Netanyahu. That leaves both well short of the majority of 61 needed to form a government. 7 government,” a reference to the blame many Israelis attach to the prime minister for allowing the Hamas attack on that date in 2023. 7, with police neglect in the face of rampant crime a particular problem.
That would likely exclude one Israeli Arab party, The Joint List, although its leaders have said they could support any non-Netanyahu government from outside the coalition. They said life had become all but intolerable for their communities since Oct.
