With no clear winner in Israel’s election, here’s what could happen next

Israelis went to the polls in the highest turnout for decades on Tuesday, with initial exit polls showing a slight edge but no majority for the opposition, meaning the next government will be formed by whoever can cobble together a coalition.

The country’s main pollsters projected the opposition bloc, led by ex-army chief Gadi Eisenkot, to win 52 or 53 seats, and Netanyahu’s bloc to win 50.

Israeli Arab lists made strong gains, with exit polls showing them winning 17 or 18 seats between them.

Here are four possible scenarios:

The parties will immediately begin negotiations to try to reach a 61-seat majority in the 120-member Knesset, but the path forward is far from clear.

President Isaac Herzog will name a candidate who has the best chance to form a government — not necessarily the party with the most seats, which the initial exit polls showed to be Netanyahu’s Likud.

The Arab Israeli parties, particularly Raam, have voiced openness to working with Eisenkot’s bloc, but the camp has kept them at arm’s length, perceiving their support as a liability during the campaign.

For Netanyahu’s bloc, however, there is no obvious place to pick up more seats after some smaller right-wing parties failed to meet the vote threshold for entering parliament.

Coalition negotiations can be arduous, with parties insisting on parochial interests, and can produce unstable governments.

Following the previous election in November 2022, it took Benjamin Netanyahu 58 days to form his government.

If no bloc manages to secure 61 seats, a candidate could attempt to govern without a majority but rather through support on an ad hoc basis from other lawmakers.

In this scenario, lawmakers from the Arab Israeli parties — whose community makes up 20 percent of the population and generally identifies as Palestinian — could play a critical role.

Raam, led by Mansour Abbas, has been a kingmaker in the past, having been the first Arab party to join an Israeli government in a short-lived 2021-2022 coalition led by Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid.

Another Arab movement, the Joint List, has said it would be unlikely to join a coalition government outright, but has offered to provide a “safety net” for any one that ousts Netanyahu from power.

Political commentator Tal Elovitz said especially high Arab turnout “indicates a strong desire for partnership”.

Eisenkot has not publicly even entertained the possibility, and Netanyahu in his campaign relentlessly told Jewish voters that a vote for the opposition could bring Arabs into government.

“Bottom line, at the moment it appears there is a possibility of forming a minority government headed by Eisenkot, but this could still shift depending on the final results,” Elovitz said.

Considering Israel’s extreme polarisation, a national unity government would appear fanciful, but it could theoretically create a less extreme government.

Israeli commentators have often mused on the possibility of a national unity government in which Netanyahu would jettison his provocative far-right allies as well as ultra-Orthodox parties and team up with Eisenkot, who shares Netanyahu’s views on many security issues.

Such a grand coalition would also exclude Arab parties.

A poll published on October 16 found that 55 percent of Israelis would prefer a national unity government over new elections if the vote did not produce a clear majority.

This scenario has a recent precedent. In 2020, Netanyahu and Benny Gantz, like Eisenkot a retired general appealing to the centre, reached a power-sharing agreement after three elections in less than a year.

The agreement stipulated a rotation of the prime ministership, but the partnership fell apart after a year, triggering another election.

A unity government in the present situation would face strong opposition from both sides, particularly the opposition bloc, which has built its campaign around ousting Netanyahu, casting him as unfit to lead.

If no candidate manages to form a government, Israel will have to return to the polls.

The country held four elections between April 2019 and March 2021 due to the inability of politicians to forge a lasting coalition.

The candidate designated by the president will, in principle, have 28 days to form a coalition, with a possible 14-day extension, although there are other procedural ways to prevent an immediate calling of new elections.

Early Wednesday, Eisenkot spoke against this option, saying that Israel had chosen change and that he would seek to form a new government.

“In an election with such a high turnout, it would be a mistake to go to another round of elections.”