JERUSALEM — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his rival Gadi Eisenkot offered competing claims to lead Israel after Tuesday’s election, with Netanyahu calling for a right-wing government and Eisenkot saying voters had rejected the longtime leader, even as exit polls left their blocs deadlocked short of a majority, according to Reuters.
Neither man claimed victory. With actual votes still being counted, the Kan 11 and Channel 13 exit polls had the two blocs tied at 51-51, while Channel 12 gave Netanyahu’s Likud-led bloc a narrow 52-49 edge, Reuters reported. Other exit polls reported during the night put Eisenkot’s bloc slightly ahead. None of the projections left either side with the 61 seats needed for a majority in the 120-seat Knesset, and final results are expected on Thursday or Friday.
The deadlock could work in Netanyahu’s favour, leaving him in office as caretaker prime minister during what are likely to be prolonged coalition negotiations, or even until another election can be held. Far-right religious parties led by Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich were projected to take a combined 13 seats within Netanyahu’s bloc, with no major gains for either of them, according to Reuters.
Arab parties outside the two main blocs could hold the balance of power after a historic night for turnout among Palestinian citizens of Israel. But Eisenkot, leader of the Yashar party and a former military chief, has all but ruled out forming a government with them, complicating his own path to power. Candidates for the Joint List, an alliance of Arab parties, said they hoped a high Arab turnout would allow them to play a decisive role in blocking Netanyahu’s coalition from returning to power.
The campaign sharpened into a fight over security in its final hours. Addressing party faithful after 3 a.m. at Likud headquarters in Jerusalem, Netanyahu highlighted Israel’s military successes and raised the prospect of renewed joint action with U.S. President Donald Trump against Iran. "Israel faces a singular historical opportunity, together with our partner President Trump, to remove the existential threat of Iran once and for all," he said. Eisenkot warned Netanyahu not to use Israel’s security for political purposes, called him "a caretaker prime minister, without a mandate or the people’s trust," and called on him to retire from politics.
Voter turnout was 77.7 percent, Israel’s Central Elections Committee said — the highest in more than two decades and around seven percentage points higher than in 2022. Yohanan Plesner, president of the Israel Democracy Institute, called the exit polls a major defeat for Netanyahu’s coalition but cautioned that Eisenkot had not emerged as a clear winner and that much could change as votes were counted.
The election was Israel’s first since the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack, in which 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken hostage, and the wars in Gaza, Lebanon and with Iran that followed. Eisenkot, 66, who lost a son and two nephews in the Gaza war, joined Netanyahu’s war cabinet after the attack but quit eight months later, criticising the prime minister’s leadership. He says Israel’s response in Gaza — a war that has killed more than 74,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza health authorities — was a failure because Hamas remains in charge. Netanyahu, 77, has served as prime minister for nearly 19 of the past 30 years and entered the election facing long-standing corruption charges, which he denies, and criticism over the intelligence failures that allowed the 2023 attack.
What happens next turns on the final count and on smaller parties that could act as kingmakers in negotiations that have run for weeks or months after past elections. If neither bloc can form a government, another vote may need to be held — an outcome Eisenkot opposed, given the high turnout. Read the Reuters report at reuters.com.
