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In the frantic hours after Israelis cast their ballots Tuesday, Benjamin Netanyahu’s political enemies briefly indulged in their favorite pastime: imagining a future in which the Israeli prime minister was finally gone.
Tough luck for them.
Early exit polls appeared to offer a glimmer of hope to the left wing, prompting speculation that Netanyahu’s lengthy political career might at last be approaching its final chapter. By Wednesday morning, however, reality had rudely interrupted the festivities.
With roughly 71% to 77% of ballots counted in the election for the 26th Knesset, Netanyahu’s right-wing and religious alliance stood at approximately 54 seats, short of the 61 needed for a parliamentary majority. The opposition’s anti-Netanyahu “change bloc,” [sounds kind of like Democratic socialist] led by former military chief of staff Gadi Eisenkot, trailed at roughly 47 seats, despite turnout reaching 77.7%, Israel’s highest since 1999.
On paper, the numbers suggest another exhausting round of political deadlock. In practice, they suggest that Netanyahu’s opponents may have spent an enormous amount of energy trying to defeat a man who still holds the stronger hand and actually knows what a woman is.
The opposition’s problem is that arithmetic, unlike political commentary, refuses to cooperate with wishful thinking. Eisenkot cannot assemble a governing majority without the support of Arab parties, the Joint List and Ra’am, which collectively secured 19 seats amid an extraordinary 80% Arab turnout.
That presents a rather substantial public relations challenge in a country still reeling from the October 7 Hamas massacre. Asking a Zionist coalition that includes bereaved families who lost loved ones to Hamas to govern alongside Arab lawmakers accused of dismissing the threat posed by terrorist organizations is not exactly a recipe for national unity. It is, however, the sort of predicament that emerges when a political movement builds its entire identity around removing one man without agreeing on what to do after he leaves.
Eisenkot, whose Yashar party captured approximately 20 seats to finish behind Netanyahu’s Likud with 27, now faces what might generously be described as a governing challenge. A less charitable assessment would call it a political trap with no particularly attractive exits.
If Eisenkot embraces the Arab parties, he risks alienating right-leaning voters whose support he needs. If he rejects them, his coalition remains short of a majority. And if he pushes for another election, he could find himself facing an electorate that has shifted even further to the Right, particularly as ultra-Orthodox voters return to the polls in greater numbers.
Netanyahu, meanwhile, can afford to be patient. With Likud established as the largest single party, he has several options available while his opponents argue over which impossible compromise they would prefer to make.
He can wait for soldiers’ ballots, which have yet to be counted and traditionally favor the political Right. He can attempt to recruit defectors from an opposition already struggling to hold itself together. He can negotiate a broad unity government while demanding terms favorable to his own camp. Or he can allow negotiations to collapse and head into another election, betting that demographic trends and religious mobilization will work in his favor.
In other words, Netanyahu does not need to win every political battle immediately. He merely needs to avoid losing the one that matters, while his opponents attempt to construct a government out of factions that agree on little beyond their shared dislike of him.
The opposition had hoped that public anger over the war, disputes surrounding religious exemptions and years of political exhaustion would finally deliver a decisive verdict against Netanyahu. Instead, the results have left his rivals confronting the uncomfortable possibility that their campaign against him has produced another election in which he remains the central figure.
For Netanyahu’s opponents, the arithmetic is merciless. They can denounce him, negotiate against him and promise voters that his departure is finally within reach. But unless they can assemble a workable majority, their victory remains largely theoretical.
Netanyahu’s phone lines remain open. His rivals, having failed to remove him at the ballot box, may soon discover that the next stage of their political future depends on getting him to answer.
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