Netanyahu bloc trails at 56 seats as right questions Arab turnout

Israel’s right wing is questioning the integrity of Tuesday’s election results after exit polls suggested a setback for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s alliance. Neither major political camp secured a clear majority, leaving Arab-led parties in a strong position to decide who forms the next government. The lack of a decisive winner has intensified friction between the camps over voter behavior and settlement plans.

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich spoke early Wednesday at his party’s headquarters in Jerusalem. He pledged to protect the expansion of settlements in the occupied West Bank and declared that Jewish settlements would be established in Gaza. Israel dismantled its settlements in Gaza in 2005. Smotrich argued that his opponents would not reverse the government’s settlement revolution.

Earlier on Tuesday, Smotrich posted on Facebook that turnout was unusually high in Arab communities and left-wing strongholds. He offered no specific figures to support the claim but warned that a failure to mobilize right-wing voters could allow supporters of terror to enter government. Netanyahu made similar appeals while voting was under way. He warned that Arab voters were rushing to polling stations and that an opposition victory would threaten Israel’s Jewish character.

Netanyahu also accused three senior figures from the Arab-majority Ra'am party of trying to steal the election. Police confirmed that they arrested three people on suspicion of voter bribery, but there was no indication that any of them held senior positions in Ra'am. Transportation Minister Miri Regev repeated the theft allegations in a post on X, stating that it was either the right or Palestine.

Arab political leaders condemned the prime minister’s election-day messages as racist and inflammatory. British-American political scientist Dov Waxman told Al Jazeera that Netanyahu is likely to hammer home the message that a governing coalition including Arab parties would be illegitimate. This strategy aims to sway public opinion in the days following the vote.

As of Wednesday, about 55 percent of ballots had been counted. Netanyahu’s bloc of right-wing and religious parties was projected to win 56 seats. That total is short of the 61 seats needed for a majority in the 120-seat parliament. Mansour Abbas, the leader of Ra'am, said he had been approached by both Netanyahu’s Likud party and the opposition camp led by Gadi Eisenkot.

Eisenkot, a former military chief who heads the Yashar party, is leading the opposition effort to form a government. The race for the final seats will determine whether the right maintains power or cedes control to the center and left. Arab parties are currently the decisive factor in that calculation.