With most votes counted, Israel’s election has produced no clear winner, setting up weeks – and possibly months – of political uncertainty. Several outcomes and scenarios may come into play.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing bloc has lost the majority it held in the outgoing parliament. With about 53 seats projected, it falls short of the 61-seat threshold needed to form a government in the 120-seat Knesset.
Netanyahu could try to recruit one of the opposition parties to join his government, but they all ruled out cooperation with him during campaigning. Politicians who have joined him in recent years have often found themselves significantly weakened with little substantive influence over policy. Netanyahu could also try to seek individual opposition defectors, but that would require several defections to close the gap.
The opposition, on the other hand, has won a majority in the parliament, but their path to power is crossed by ideological, national and personal divisions.
Netanyahu’s main rival Gadi Eisenkot is projected to win 21 seats, but he cannot reach the 61-seat majority without the two Arab parties, Ra’am and the Joint list, who are projected to win a record 19 seats. On Wednesday, Yair Golan, the leader of the left-wing Democrats party, called on his partners to count the Arab parties as part of the bloc, rejecting what he called Netanyahu’s “racist division between Jewish and Arab votes.”
But two of Eisenkot’s right-wing allies oppose forming a government that includes the Arab parties or a minority government that relies on their outside support.
Given the apparent deadlock, another scenario is a national unity government pairing Netanyahu’s Likud and one or more parties from the opposition, an option that would replace his current hardliner government. Both Netanyahu and the opposition leaders have ruled this out during the campaign, but it may be one of the only ways to avoid another election.
