Israeli voters on Tuesday gave opposition parties a narrow edge over ICC fugitive Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, initial projections showed, after a decades-high turnout in the country's first election since the 7 October 2023 attacks.
Netanyahu, Israel's longest-serving prime minister who has led the country for nearly two decades, had run on promises to fight enemies from Hamas to Iran and had spent election day raising fears of the strength of Israeli Arab voters.
Early projections broadcast by Israeli television networks showed that the bloc led by Gadi Eisenkot, a centre-right former military chief, had a narrow edge over Netanyahu's bloc, which includes the far-right.
Early exit polls showed Arab parties made sweeping gains, likely giving them a critical role in the next parliament.
With no single party winning a majority, Israeli politicians will likely spend weeks in high-stakes negotiations to cobble together a coalition.
The country's main pollsters, Channels 11, 12 and 13, projected the opposition bloc to win 52 to 53 seats, and Netanyahu's bloc to win around 50, although his Likud would be the largest single party in parliament, with 24 or 25 seats.
In a dash to secure as many votes as possible, Netanyahu had charged that Israeli Arabs were out to "steal the election" and his Likud party unsuccessfully asked election authorities to keep polls open past 10:00 PM (2000 GMT).
His efforts led the opposition to charge that he was looking for pretexts to challenge the results.
"We cannot leave this battle here in the hands of the left and the Arab parties that want to bring an end to the Jewish state," a visibly tense Netanyahu told supporters as he tried to bring up turnout in a Likud stronghold.
Nationwide turnout as of 8 PM stood at nearly 75 percent, the highest in decades.
Arab minority in spotlight
Some 7.3 million people were eligible to vote, with tens of thousands of Israelis estimated to have flown in from abroad for an election seen as crucial to deciding the future character of their country.
Netanyahu, 77, has served as prime minister on and off for more than 19 years.
Throughout his career, he has repeatedly raised the spectre of Arab voters as a threat. He warned Tuesday of Arabs voting by the busload, writing on social media that Israel could wake up to a "government of the left wing and Muslim Brotherhood".
Netanyahu said that three senior officials of the United Arab List had been arrested with envelopes full of cash in the south.
The acting director general of the Central Elections Committee, Dean Livne, said that police had "caught individuals who tried to bribe voters", adding that the unidentified suspects were not at polling stations and were caught near their homes.
He said the matter was a localised case and under investigation.
United Arab List head Mansour Abbas, who could emerge as a kingmaker in a close election, accused Netanyahu of "lying and inciting" to mobilise his voters.
Exit polls from the main Israeli television channels showed the two Arab lists winning 17 or 18 seats in the 120-member parliament between them, up from 10 in the last election in 2022.
In Tel Aviv, left-wing party The Democrats, which is part of Eisenkot's opposition bloc, said police had arrested a man with a knife who had moved threateningly towards its leader Yair Golan.
"Incitement and violence will not intimidate us," Golan said in a statement, blaming the incident on the "poison machine" of Netanyahu.
Netanyahu last returned to power in December 2022, bringing into his coalition far-right ultra-nationalists who have since seen their political clout skyrocket and have aggressively championed settlements in the West Bank.
In the last days of the campaign, he posted an image of a nuclear bomb destroying Tel Aviv and talked up his endorsement by US President Donald Trump, who is also fond of alleging election fraud.