Israel’s Tuesday election, which drew the highest voter turnout since 1999, left both Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition and its challengers without a governing majority. Stanford’s Israel scholars say negotiations to form a government could take weeks.

Netanyahu’s bloc of far-right and ultra-Orthodox parties won 53 of 120 seats in the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. The opposition “Change Bloc,” led by former military chief Gadi Eisenkot, won 48. Two majority-Arab parties, the Joint List and Ra’am, took the remaining 19. Neither bloc reached the 61 seats needed to govern. The Central Elections Committee published final tallies on Thursday and will deliver them to President Isaac Herzog on Nov. 4, after checking for errors or inquiries.

One side must now build a majority from outside its own ranks, form a minority government or send voters back to the polls. Amichai Magen, director of Stanford’s Jan Koum Israel Studies Program, said the seat count is only the start. “That is just the arithmetic, not the architecture,” Magen wrote in an email to The Daily. “The real game of coalition formation will start immediately after the election and will likely last several weeks.”

According to Magen, “perhaps the most significant development” to emerge from the election is “a substantial third bloc, an Arab Israeli bloc.” That bloc is not a formal alliance, since the Joint List and Ra’am – the two Arab Israel parties –  ran separate lists, but its 19 seats hold the balance: neither Netanyahu’s 53 nor the opposition’s 48 reaches 61 without Arab-party votes.

“They’ve lost their majority,” Diamond said of Netanyahu’s coalition, which he said held 61 seats before the vote, but only won 53. “And they don’t have a clear pathway to recover that majority.”

According to Diamond, neither bloc is likely to shed members. He noted how ultra-Orthodox parties will not cross over to Eisenkot’s coalition, and opposition parties will not defect to Netanyahu. They remember Benny Gantz, the former military chief who joined his unity government in 2020. That move “basically ended his career,” Diamond said.

He explained how this leaves three options. The first is a minority government led by Eisenkot that relies on outside votes from the Arab parties. “I think a minority government is probably most likely,” Diamond said. The second is a coalition that brings in Arab party Ra’am, which he described as more cooperative than the “more militant” Joint List. Even with Ra’am’s eight seats, the opposition would hold 56. The third is new elections, which Diamond said Netanyahu “would be just fine” with, because a failed government after a historic turnout would humiliate the opposition.

Netanyahu stays prime minister until a new government is sworn in, and Diamond expects him to fight any outcome that removes him. Netanyahu has been on trial since 2020 on charges of fraud, breach of trust and bribery. He denies wrongdoing and has asked Herzog for a pardon.

“He doesn’t want to cease to be prime minister,” Diamond said. “Not for four years, not for four months and not for four days.”

Diamond was most surprised by the share of seats the Arab parties gained, nearly 16% of the Knesset. “That’s a very striking development,” he said, “and it’s one that poses challenges for governability.” Without them, the opposition tops out at 48 of the 120 total seats in the Knesset. If the opposition governs with their support, Diamond said the right could later claim it “sold out” Israelis.

Turnout for the election reached 77.9% in a vote many experts framed as a referendum on Netanyahu. Comparative literature professor Russell Berman, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution who chairs the working group on the Middle East and the Islamic World, called the turnout “far beyond what we see in the U.S,” in an email to The Daily. 

“It was clear from campaigning that there was going to be a large turnout,” Orly Noy, who stood for the Palestinian-dominated Balad party, said to Al Jazeera. “The [governing] coalition had shown there were no red lines in Gaza and Palestinians in Israel sensed they might be next.”

The role of the Arab parties, Berman wrote, is “a big question.”Arab Israelis voted at an estimated 80% rate. On election day, after police arrested three men on suspicion of a scheme to bribe voters for Ra’am, Netanyahu claimed that “they are trying to steal the election from us.” The Central Elections Committee said it found no evidence of systematic tampering.

A Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) background update in 2023 found that Arab citizens of Israel, who have the same legal rights as Jewish Israelis, face discrimination and socioeconomic disadvantages, and that nearly all Arab towns have lower standards of living than predominantly Jewish cities.

In 2021, Ra’am became the first Arab party to join an Israeli governing coalition in decades. After this election, its leader, Mansour Abbas, has signaled he would join an Eisenkot-led government if one proves viable. However, he told party members Thursday that the chance of a minority government relying on Ra’am’s outside support is “slim to non-existent.” That cuts against Diamond’s forecast: the route he called most likely is the one Abbas has all but ruled out. Together, the opposition and the Arab parties hold 67 of 120 seats (56%).

“Will one join a coalition (it would not be the first time) or will they tolerate a minority government?” Berman wrote. “It will surely be a long process before a government is finally formed.”

On election night, Eisenkot declared that “the era of us and them is over.” According to Magen, he “will have to decide whether his message of unity was for Jews alone, or for all of Israel.”

The Daily has reached out to The American Middle East Network for Dialogue at Stanford (AMENDS) for comment. Israeli students declined to comment for fear of retaliation.

Herzog will consult the leaders of every party elected to the Knesset on who should get the first chance to form a government. The 26th Knesset is set to be sworn in on Nov. 10.

For Stanford’s Israel scholars, the count was only the beginning. Diamond expects the process to be “messy and complicated for a while.”