Israel's general election on Tuesday, October 27, left neither of its two main camps with the 61 seats needed for a majority in the 120-seat Knesset. In final results published overnight Thursday, the Central Elections Committee gave Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's bloc of right-wing and religious parties 53 seats, losing the majority his governing coalition had held; the opposition bloc led by former military chief Gadi Eisenkot won 48 and the two Arab-led parties a record 19. Netanyahu remains caretaker prime minister while the parties try to build a coalition. The opposition and the Arab parties together hold 67 seats, but every opposition leader except Yair Golan has called Arab parties in government a red line, and Eisenkot refuses to serve under Netanyahu. Netanyahu and his Likud party accuse the Arab parties of having "stolen" the election, which those parties deny. Police said on Thursday that they had no investigative or intelligence support for that broader claim, a day after Likud said it was handing over hundreds of testimonies; separately, police have arrested seven men in a vote-buying case in which officers found cash and Ra'am ballot slips; Ra'am calls the first three arrests, made on Election Day, baseless. The elections committee chairman has asked the Shin Bet security service to examine separate suspicions of foreign funding, saying he cannot judge their merit.
The count
Likud is the largest party with 27 seats, followed by Eisenkot's Yashar with 21 and Together, led by former prime minister Naftali Bennett with Yair Lapid, with 12. The rest: the Joint List 11, Mansour Abbas's Ra'am 8, Golan's Democrats 8, Avigdor Liberman's Yisrael Beytenu 7, and in Netanyahu's camp Otzma Yehudit and United Torah Judaism 7 each and Religious Zionism-Zehut and Shas 6 each. Turnout was 77.9 percent, the highest in 27 years. In Arab communities it was about 80 percent, Israel National News reported without giving a source for the figure, up from 53.2 percent in 2022 and a previous peak of 64.8 percent in 2020, according to the Institute for National Security Studies, an Israeli research center; both Likud's allegations and the Arab parties' answer turn on that jump. The committee says the results remain subject to integrity checks and minor adjustments, and will go to the president on November 4.
How a government could be formed
By law, President Isaac Herzog must consult every Knesset faction before giving one member the first chance to form a government; Reuters reports the nominee would then have up to 42 days. The new Knesset must be sworn in within 14 days of the election. "We must do everything, certainly after yesterday, to avoid another round of elections," Herzog said on Wednesday, adding that he expects party leaders "to arrive with an open mind." Herzog is expected to hold those consultations next week, and politicians in both blocs expect Eisenkot to get the first chance, Ynet reported.
Netanyahu, speaking to supporters early Wednesday, called for "a strong, right-wing national government." Eisenkot has ruled out serving under him. Golan says the opposition has a majority if the Arab parties are counted and wants "a government of change in partnership with Israel's Arab citizens." The other opposition leaders have called Arab parties in government a red line since the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023, and Liberman rejected an Arab-backed minority government before the vote. Joint List faction chairman Ahmad Tibi said the opposition "will be able to form a government if it has the courage." A senior official of United Torah Judaism, an ultra-Orthodox party in Netanyahu's bloc, told Ynet on Thursday that the party intends to offer to support a government led by Eisenkot if legislation exempting ultra-Orthodox men from military service is advanced. Eisenkot made mandatory military or national service a condition for coalition partners during the campaign; Liberman told party members on Thursday that his pledges not to join a government with ultra-Orthodox or Arab parties still stand, and other parties in Eisenkot's bloc also pledged during the campaign not to govern with ultra-Orthodox parties, Ynet reported. Even with United Torah Judaism's seven seats, Eisenkot's bloc would hold 55, six short of a majority; Shas, the other ultra-Orthodox party in Netanyahu's bloc, holds six, but Ynet reported no agreement involving either party.
The fraud allegations
On Wednesday, Likud alleged that the Arab parties had "stolen" the election through bribery, intimidation, fraud and other offenses. Netanyahu's X account carried a Likud statement demanding "a thorough investigation into the election theft by the Arab parties and the full prosecution of the criminals," CBS News reported, and on Thursday he shared another that called the affair "Ra'amgate" and declared, "They stole the election in Israel!" Likud says it has given police, the Shin Bet and the elections committee hundreds of testimonies, including allegations of cash handed out with Ra'am ballot slips, double voting and gaps between the number of voters and the number of ballot envelopes. Likud says the material it gave the elections committee includes first-hand recordings of people in Arab communities admitting they bribed voters with fuel vouchers and cash, Ynet reported, and its Election Day reports included 10 sealed envelopes missing at a polling station in Fassuta and an 11-envelope gap in Jadeidi-Makr, the Israeli site JFeed reported. Profoundd has not seen the recordings and could not independently verify them or the envelope counts. Ra'am's leader, Mansour Abbas, said "Ra'am has no connection whatsoever to the affair in question," pledged full cooperation with law enforcement and welcomed the request for a Shin Bet inquiry, telling Netanyahu, "There will be nothing [found], because there is nothing."
The Joint List said Arab citizens had voted "in response to the crimes of the Netanyahu, Ben-Gvir and Smotrich government" and called the doubts about their vote "an organized campaign" to delegitimize Arab political participation (Profoundd's translation of its Arabic statement). On Election Day the Association for Civil Rights in Israel warned that voting could be deliberately obstructed in several Arab towns, citing unusually slow processing of voters and long queues, and Haaretz reported that day, citing unnamed sources, that Likud planned to film Arab voters outside polling stations to prepare a "rigged election" campaign, adding that there was no information Netanyahu attended those planning meetings.
In a statement to the media about Likud's claims, police said Election Day had seen few integrity incidents and that "there is no investigative or intelligence evidence supporting the claims raised in your inquiry"; Police Commissioner David Levy later said every complaint would be examined thoroughly and impartially. Police are also questioning seven men arrested in a vote-buying case in which officers found cash and Ra'am ballot slips, and have not linked it to the foreign-funding inquiry. Four of the seven were arrested on Thursday, three of them school principals from Bedouin communities in southern Israel, and a Be'er Sheva court released at least three of those four to house arrest, Ynet reported. Senior officials told N12 News on Thursday night that the case is unlikely to result in an indictment and that the suspects have explained the source of the money, the Jerusalem Post reported. One suspect said the money was meant as donations to needy families from the Islamic Movement, Ynet reported; lawmakers told JFeed that some envelopes bore the words "Gift from the Islamic Movement" and that one suspect is a senior figure in a charity they link to Ra'am, and Ra'am says the three activists first arrested were detained at their homes hours before polls opened, not near polling stations or voters. Dean Livne, acting director general of the elections committee that ran the vote, wrote to Yesh Atid lawmaker Vladimir Beliak that the election was conducted lawfully and that, to the committee's knowledge, there is no basis for claims of systematic violations. He told the public broadcaster Kan that Likud and other parties had sent claims rather than evidence, and that some of the claims are real.
The foreign-funding inquiry is a separate matter. In a letter dated Wednesday, committee chairman Noam Sohlberg, a Supreme Court justice, asked Shin Bet chief David Zini to find evidence that would confirm or refute suspicions he described as serious, saying expressly that he could not assess their merits, and to report within a week. The letter named no country or party. The Shin Bet says the information came from its own intelligence on foreign influence, not from any political party; that it told Sohlberg before Election Day; and that its unfinished probe is "focused and limited in scope" and "does not cast aspersions on or accuse an entire sector that went out to vote democratically and legally." Channel 13 reported that investigators are examining whether money passed through currency exchangers and local institutions, along routes previously used to transfer terrorist funds, to encourage voting in Arab communities by unlawful means. Israeli media have named Qatar and Turkey as possible sources; the Jerusalem Post noted that the money's source, recipients and use remain under investigation and that encouraging turnout is not, by itself, evidence of bribery. Qatar's foreign ministry spokesman, Majid al-Ansari, called the accusations "ridiculous and dangerous in equal measure"; Turkey also denied interfering, and the Turkish presidency's Center for Combating Disinformation said the allegations were baseless, the Jerusalem Post reported. In a recorded statement released overnight, which he said Sohlberg had approved, Livne, the committee's acting director general, said classified intelligence that the Shin Bet chief presented to Sohlberg had led to the inquiry, and that its main points had also been shown to Netanyahu, Eisenkot and Yair Lapid, opposition leader in the outgoing Knesset. Access to the intelligence was tightly restricted, Livne said: "No further details can be disclosed, but reports published throughout the day are entirely unfounded." He did not say which reports he meant.
Livne said the investigation "will not affect the final results submitted to the president. Nor does it concern any particular community," and Kan reported, citing a senior committee official, that even if all the suspicions of foreign interference were substantiated, the activity would not have been extensive enough to alter the result. In a statement on Thursday evening, before Livne spoke, the Shin Bet, which has announced no findings, said its investigation is not finished, cautioned against speculation about the nature of the allegations and said that statements about the content of the suspicions did not reflect its position, Ynet and The Media Line reported. A Likud lawyer told the Jerusalem Post the party intends to seek the invalidation of results at polling stations where it suspects irregularities. Eisenkot called for every complaint to be examined but warned against using them to delay the new Knesset's swearing-in. President Isaac Herzog called for a thorough investigation, saying "election integrity is a supreme democratic value," and also warned, "We must avoid tarnishing an entire public that sought to exercise its right to vote and take an active part in democracy." Under Israeli law, a court challenge must be filed within 14 days of the official results and must show the irregularity could have affected the outcome.
What a caretaker can do on Iran
Israel and Iran have not exchanged direct fire since an April 8 ceasefire in the war the United States and Israel launched on February 28, though U.S.-Iranian hostilities, mainly over the Strait of Hormuz, have continued. Israeli law gives a caretaker government the same formal powers as a regular one, but court rulings call for restraint. Guy Lurie of the Israel Democracy Institute told Reuters a caretaker government "has the same powers as a regular government" but "has a duty of restraint." Or Asher of the Tachlith Institute said "security issues are the clearest exception to this duty of restraint" and that "a caretaker prime minister can legally take Israel to war, including against Iran."
The White House has said U.S. forces will not attack Iran before the November 3 midterm elections, and the Financial Times reported that Netanyahu would likely need U.S. backing for any new offensive. After the vote, Netanyahu said Israel and the United States have a "singular historical opportunity" to remove the Iranian threat "once and for all." Eisenkot told security chiefs that Netanyahu is a caretaker "without a mandate or the people's trust" and warned him not to use security for political ends; Defense Minister Israel Katz said Eisenkot was urging officers to defy the government and called it "an anti-democratic statement detached from reality." Netanyahu's office has previously rejected accusations that he uses the Iran conflict for political gain and did not respond to Reuters on Wednesday.
This article reflects reporting through Friday morning, October 30, 2026, Israel time. Sources: the Jerusalem Post, October 27, October 28, October 28-29, October 29, October 29, October 29 and October 30; Israel National News, October 29 and final results; the Times of Israel, October 28, and October 29: Arab parties and Likud, election committee and Shin Bet and live blog; Reuters, October 28 and October 28; the Financial Times via The Irish Times, October 29; CNBC, October 28; CBS News, October 28-29; Ynet (Hebrew), October 29, and Ynet (English), October 29: arrests, house arrest, United Torah Judaism and coalition talks, and October 30; The Media Line, October 29; JFeed, October 28; Arab48 (Arabic), October 29, for the Joint List's statement; Haaretz, October 27; the Institute for National Security Studies, November 2022, on 2020 and 2022 Arab turnout.
