EXPLAINER: Israel, 53 seats for Netanyahu, 61 needed, and 19 Arab seats almost everyone refuses

Fifty-three seats. In the partial count, Benjamin Netanyahu’s bloc comes first.

Governing takes 61.

The Knesset has 120 seats. A majority starts at 61. Nobody has one.

The incumbent lacks eight.

Eight. It is little. It is enormous.

Two leaders, one chair

Opposite him, Gadi Eisenkot leads the other bloc. He is further still.

For Eisenkot, “the coalition of failure has lost the people’s trust”. Netanyahu answers with the count.

Both claim the mandate. Each says he will try.

Between the two blocs, the Arab parties could hold the balance.

Almost all the Jewish parties have pledged not to work with them. The balance exists. Almost nobody touches it.

Leading is not governing

The count says who leads. Not who will govern.

Alliances will. Each will cost a promise.

Otherwise, Israel votes again.

97% of ballots are counted. Counting continues.

On Thursday, October 29, the last count begins. It covers up to 480,000 absentee ballots: soldiers, diplomats, hospital patients.

None could reach the polls.

Votes that can still shift

The system is proportional. These votes count. They can move seats.

One seat saves nobody. It changes the bargaining.

Nobody has a margin.

Turnout of 77.7%

Turnout reached 77.7%. Israelis voted in force.

No election had done better in more than twenty years.

President Isaac Herzog applauds. He sees “a badge of honour for Israeli society”.

Another vote? Herzog wants none. He wants “an open mind”.

Herzog expects the official results in early November. He will consult each elected faction.

In his view, the best placed gets the mandate. It can take weeks.

Absentee ballots still to count, a president consulting faction by faction, a mandate to hand out: the machine moves at its own pace.

Nothing is promised.

Netanyahu’s bloc brings together Likud and its allies. The far right is in. So are the ultra-Orthodox.

Eisenkot’s bloc brings together Yashar and three other Jewish opposition parties. Yashar is the biggest.

In the partial count, this bloc would get 48 seats. It lacks 13.

The night of the exit polls

On election night, three broadcasters gave Eisenkot’s bloc 52 or 53 seats, against 50.

Eisenkot spoke of change. It did not hold.

Two broadcasters revised. They showed a tie. Fifty-one each.

The third gave Netanyahu a three-seat lead. His bloc did better.

The leader who slips

Netanyahu claims a “great majority”. The numbers say otherwise.

Fifteen seats fewer than at its peak in the last Knesset, the BBC says.

The leader slips. Still, he leads.

Leading the count gives no key to the Knesset.

No party has ever won a majority alone in Israel. Never.

Coalitions make every government.

The math is short. The two Jewish blocs total 101 seats. Neither reaches 61 alone.

The total nobody claims

On paper, the opposition and the Arab parties total 67 seats, six above the bar, in the BBC’s partial count.

That total exists. Nobody brandishes it.

Analyst Ahmed Najar sees in it perhaps the only “realistic” route for Eisenkot.

Eisenkot does not take it.

A hundred and one seats, one promise

The other total is blunter. Netanyahu and Eisenkot together would make a broad majority.

Union would fix the arithmetic. It would require Eisenkot to go back on his word.

The threshold does not move. The alliances will have to.

Netanyahu has ruled. For him, a coalition with the Arab parties would be “a shame and a disgrace”.

His word for them: “anti-Zionist”. His coalition refuses any partnership.

Eisenkot’s conditions

Eisenkot hedges. He keeps the door ajar.

His conditions, reported by the Times of Israel: a Jewish and democratic state, the Declaration of Independence, national service for all.

Each one can be defended.

NPR adds Hamas. Each Arab party would have to denounce it as an organisation that must be destroyed.

The Guardian judges these conditions politically impossible for them to meet.

The door stays narrow.

The opposition’s right bolts the door

The right refuses curtly. Bennett wants only “Zionist” parties.

Liberman shuts it too. So do Likud’s allies Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, writes the Jerusalem Post. The right is unanimous.

The context weighs. Since the Hamas attack of 7 October 2023, mistrust of Arab political leaders has climbed, NPR reports.

The reason is real. So is the arithmetic.

Arab-led parties could win 19 seats, in the partial count. It is unprecedented.

In the outgoing Knesset, Ra’am and the Joint List held five seats each. Their weight would almost double.

Arab turnout surged. This vote shook the cage.

Arab citizens make up about a fifth of the population. Many call themselves Palestinian citizens.

“We want a real say”

Take Mahdi Kabaha. He lives near Haifa. He pushed the Arab vote.

Kabaha calls the result “historic”. He sums it up. “We want a real say in this country.”

Jabareen sets the terms

Yousef Jabareen leads the Joint List. It unites three parties. Hadash, Ta’al and Balad.

“The opposition parties cannot dictate any conditions,” he told the BBC. Jabareen names the price.

Another route exists. It has been used before.

Ra’am or the Joint List could support a government from outside, writes the Jerusalem Post.

Mansour Abbas leads Ra’am. He holds out a hand. A Jewish lawmaker, Yoav Segalovitz, holds the second spot on his list.

The gesture is made. The answer is slow.

One word sorts the right. Zionist.

The Guardian notes a detail. Palestinian parties do not call themselves Zionist. Neither do some ultra-Orthodox parties in Netanyahu’s coalition.

The word shuts out some.

The word spares others. They already sit in government.

“The right or Palestine”

The slogan featured on many Netanyahu posters, writes the Guardian. The paper sees Palestinian citizens cast as an enemy within.

According to critics cited by the paper, Netanyahu’s strategy had two aims. It was meant to mobilise. It was also meant to hobble the opposition.

The calculation still holds

The campaign is over. The slogan is not. It still weighs.

Every negotiation goes through it.

The same word shuts one door and leaves another open.

A second calendar starts. The law wrote it already.

The president consults the factions. He names a candidate. No criterion is imposed.

Custom favours the leader of the largest party. Nothing requires it. The real test is simple.

Who wins the Knesset’s confidence?

Twenty-eight days, plus fourteen

The mandate goes to the nominee. He has 28 days. He can request 14 more.

NPR speaks of six weeks.

After one failure, the president can give it to another lawmaker. He gets only 28 days, with no extension.

After a second failure, 61 lawmakers can demand a third name. That one gets 14 days.

At the end, dissolution

After that third failed attempt, the Knesset is dissolved and new elections are called, according to the Israel Democracy Institute.

The law pulls the plug.

The three mandates total at most 84 days.

In twenty years, no government has been sworn in in less than 50 days.

The full process has ranged from 20 to 100 days, according to the institute. The real delay is long.

Every day of waiting keeps Netanyahu in office. The calendar suits him.

Ra’am has governed before. That was in 2021.

Ra’am’s support was then vital to the Bennett-Lapid government. That government was short-lived. It existed all the same.

Mansour Abbas sat in it. He still leads Ra’am.

Rabin and support from outside

Earlier, Yitzhak Rabin relied on Arab parties that stayed outside his coalition, Najar recalls. He led a minority government.

That was three decades ago, the Guardian notes. The precedent rarely comes up in the current debate.

An obstacle of a political kind

Najar is blunt. “The obstacle is, therefore, neither constitutional nor practical but ideological.”

The law allows the alliance. Almost every leader refuses it.

The deadlock is a choice.

Likud cries theft. Its target: the Arab parties.

On Wednesday, October 28, it filed a complaint. The complaint cites bribery.

Threats and violence are added. Fraud and banned software too.

According to the BBC, no evidence comes with it. The Central Elections Committee promises to examine it.

Likud puts forward a figure. It claims 620 reports. All target polling stations in the Arab sector.

Judge Sohlberg turns to the Shin Bet

Judge Noam Sohlberg chairs the Committee. On Thursday, October 29, he orders the Shin Bet to investigate.

Sohlberg cites “serious suspicions”. They concern foreign funding. He gave no details.

Doha denies

According to Haaretz, cited by the BBC, a source says the Committee was presented with a claim that Qatar funded turnout in Arab communities.

Doha denies it. Its spokesman calls the accusations “ridiculous and dangerous in equal measure”.

Balad answers too.

Sami Abu Shehadeh chairs it. He accuses the losers.

The losers are calling on the security services to overturn the result by force, he says.

Likud accuses without public proof. The judge has it checked.

The accusation precedes official results.

Honaida Ghanam heads the Palestinian Forum for Israeli Studies. She describes four outcomes.

None is free.

First outcome: national unity. Eisenkot has pledged not to serve under Netanyahu.

Second outcome: defections. Opposition lawmakers would join Netanyahu.

Third outcome: a minority government. Arab support from outside.

Fourth outcome: a new vote. It comes on its own. Nobody owes anything.

The incumbent keeps the upper hand

Netanyahu remains prime minister. He runs the caretaker period.

Nothing is urgent for him. NPR mentions a new election next year if nobody succeeds.

Trump, Iran and the unity calculation

Trump backed Netanyahu. He urged Israelis to reelect him to “finish the job that we started”.

Washington weighs in too. Tehran hangs over it all.

Danny Citrinowitz used to head the Iran desk in Israeli military intelligence. He sees a calculation.

In his view, a war against Iran would serve Netanyahu while the government is formed.

The pressure would target Eisenkot. War would push unity.

Yair Golan leads the Democrats, the left wing of Eisenkot’s bloc. Two sentences suffice. “Netanyahu lost. I know how to count.”

Golan calls for a change government with the Arab parties. He is almost alone.

Voters ahead of their leaders

Eran Halperin cites a survey.

A clear majority of opposition voters in it backs a government with Ra’am. The aim: to unseat Netanyahu.

Voters have spoken. Their leaders were silent. That was Wednesday, October 28, the Guardian notes.

Avigail Levine lives in Kfar Saba. She voted for Bennett.

“The people in power on 7 October should not be in power now,” she told the BBC.

Gal voted for Netanyahu. He lives in Ramat Gan. He says he is “afraid of the strengthening of the Arab political parties”.

Mansour Abbas does the math

Mansour Abbas hoped for 61. Ra’am and the opposition, together.

Abbas also said this. “With the numbers we have now, there is no government.”

Think of an Arab voter.

Arab representation almost doubles. He still awaits an invitation.

The Arab ballot counts in the box and still waits at the door.

Fifty-three leads. Sixty-one governs.

One reading rule

Eight seats separate the two. A promise is missing too.

I keep one rule. A promise must give. The first names the government.

What remains to be counted

The absentees will be counted. The official results will follow. Herzog will consult the factions.

In Israel, governing begins where a promise ends.

Netanyahu holds 53 seats, Israel demands 61, and almost everyone refuses the 19 Arab seats.

Which promise will give first, the one made to the parties or the one made to the voters?

By Maxime Marquette, columnist

Editorial stance

I am not a journalist but a columnist and analyst. My expertise lies in observing and analysing the geopolitical, economic and strategic dynamics that shape our world. My work is to take political strategies apart, to understand global economic movements, to put the decisions of international actors in context and to offer analytical perspectives on the changes that are redefining our societies.

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