Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's right-wing coalition looks to be coming to an end. Final results released early on Friday local time showed Netanyahu's bloc won 53 seats, compared with 48 for the grouping led by rival Gadi Eisenkot. Palestinian parties won 19 seats, a record high. This was reported by Qazaqyia.kz citing The Guardian.
With neither bloc reaching the 61 seats needed for a majority in the Knesset, Israeli president Isaac Herzog is expected to invite the party most likely to be able to form a government to start coalition negotiations, and has already urged politicians to have an "open mind" before talks begin. The country potentially faces weeks of rancour and uncertainty.
Yair Golan, the leader of the centre-left Democrats, a junior partner in the Jewish Israeli opposition bloc, told Israeli media on Thursday that he was meeting Eisenkot and others for initial talks. If the opposition can't agree some kind of coalition, or even secure Palestinian support for a minority government, Netanyahu may have a lifeline. He is already pushing for a right-wing governing coalition, and would probably welcome new elections or a lengthy period of uncertainty during which he will stay on as caretaker prime minister.
And yet throughout the campaign, voters' discontent with Netanyahu was evident. That didn't mean a shift to the left: young Israelis are more rightwing than older generations. The national conversation ahead of the election was dominated by security at home and abroad. Although he was in charge on 7 October 2023, when Hamas attacks resulted in the deaths of about 1,200 people, the majority of them civilians, the prime minister tried to shift blame on to the security services.
His opponents pledged a state commission of inquiry into the events of 7 October, and spoke to voters' concerns about the social toll of three years of multi-front wars, and anger about the draft exemption for ultra-orthodox young men when other Israelis are spending hundreds of days on reserve duty.
Throughout the campaign, Netanyahu and his far-right allies have framed Palestinian voters – who make up about 20% of the population – as a direct threat to the state, with Netanyahu repeating the slogan "the right or Palestine", which rhymes in Hebrew.
"It's both tragic and depressing," Emma Graham-Harrison, our chief Middle East correspondent in Tel Aviv, tells me. "Attempting to paint Palestinians as untrustworthy citizens with dual loyalties, a racist trope that also appears in antisemitic attacks."
This tactic extended to election day, when voters received a robocall purporting to come from the prime minister falsely claiming that Palestinian party leaders had been caught with envelopes full of cash. Netanyahu and his allies repeatedly made claims about high turnout in Palestinian areas, in a bid to get his own voters out.
Then on Wednesday night, Netanyahu reacted to the high Palestinian turnout and success of Arab Israeli parties by claiming, again without providing evidence, they had "stolen the election", despite Israeli authorities insisting there is no evidence of election fraud.
The campaign was mired in racism, during which Israel's far-right demonised the Palestinian population as the enemy within. Netanyahu has gone further since Tuesday's vote, claiming that Palestinian-led parties have "stolen the election", despite Israeli authorities insisting there is no evidence of election fraud.
As coalition talks commence, the country that is desperate for change remains bitterly divided. Netanyahu's coalition appears to be ending, but whether the opposition can agree to govern with Palestinian parties, or whether Netanyahu will stay on as caretaker prime minister, will become clear in the coming weeks.