Israel Election Results Leave Netanyahu’s Bloc at 53 Seats and Eisenkot’s at 48, Short of 61

Neither of Israel’s two main blocs won a majority in the 27 October Knesset election: with about 85 per cent of ballots counted, Benjamin Netanyahu’s bloc held 53 of 120 seats, Gadi Eisenkot’s 48 and the Arab parties 19, short of the 61 needed.

Those were the figures on Wednesday afternoon in The Times of Israel’s live count, which called the 19 Arab seats a historic high. Ynet gave the same bloc totals, with 93 per cent of polling stations and 85.6 per cent of votes counted, excluding the double-envelope ballots cast by soldiers and others voting away from their home stations. Ynet put those at more than 500,000; The Times of Israel at roughly 600,000, with about 7 per cent of ordinary ballots also under further checks. The count is not final. President Isaac Herzog expects to receive the official results next week from Justice Noam Sohlberg of the Supreme Court, The Times of Israel reported.

Both leaders claimed the night. “The public has decided in favor of change,” Mr Eisenkot, who leads the new Yashar party, told supporters, according to The Jerusalem Post. Mr Netanyahu told supporters in Jerusalem: “The Zionist majority must come to its senses and unite. Only that way can we guarantee Israel’s future,” Ynet reported.

How are the 120 seats divided?

Eleven lists won seats. The table gives Ynet’s party figures and this publication’s grouping of them into the blocs the outlets used; the party numbers add up to 120 and to Ynet’s bloc totals.

The figures are provisional and not uniform. Ynet’s own article gives Ra’am seven seats in one passage and six in another; six is the number consistent with its totals, and other running tallies have split the same 19 Arab seats differently between the two lists. Seats at the margin may still move when the double-envelope votes are added. Below the 3.25 per cent threshold, according to The Times of Israel, were the Reservists at 2.6 per cent, People of Israel at 1.6 per cent and Charedi Public at 0.2 per cent.

Why is 61 harder than it looks?

Because both leaders have already narrowed the pool. Mr Netanyahu’s appeal was to a “Zionist majority.” The Times of Israel headlined Mr Eisenkot’s address “I will do my utmost to form a Zionist government, with national service for all.” Take the 19 Arab seats out and 101 remain, of which a government needs 61. Mr Lieberman, part of Mr Eisenkot’s bloc, refused during the campaign to accept a government relying on Arab parties, the Post reported. Yousef Jabareen of the Joint List and Yair Golan of the Democrats have both spoken of an opposition government with Arab support, according to Ynet.

The second table is this publication’s arithmetic from the party figures above. It lists combinations, not negotiations; none has been proposed by the parties named.

Three things follow from the numbers. Mr Lieberman’s seven seats would not, on these figures, carry Mr Netanyahu over the line. Every route for Mr Eisenkot that leaves out the Arab parties needs Likud or at least two parties now counted in Mr Netanyahu’s bloc; the two ultra-Orthodox parties together would do it, but they would be joining a government whose leader has promised “national service for all.” And the one route that needs no party to change sides, the Eisenkot bloc with the Joint List, reaches exactly 61, with no seat to spare and a partner Mr Lieberman has refused.

What happens before anyone is asked to form a government?

A wait for official results, then consultations. Mr Herzog said he would meet every faction after receiving the results and asked them to come “with an open mind.” “We must do everything we can, certainly after yesterday, to avoid another round of elections,” he said, according to The Times of Israel. Israel may remain under a caretaker government meanwhile; it keeps its formal powers but is expected to show restraint on major decisions, Ynet noted. The deadlines that follow, a nominee’s 28 days and a possible 14 more, are set out in this publication’s timeline of Basic Law: The Government, and the surplus-vote agreements the parties filed before polling day in A Pair Is Not a Bloc.

Not every dispute is about arithmetic. Yashar filed complaints with the elections committee on polling day alleging systematic vandalism and destruction of its ballot slips at various voting sites, the Post reported. No ruling on them had been reported by Wednesday afternoon.

Mr Herzog asks each faction whom it recommends, not which coalition it will join. The recommendation costs nothing. The 61 does.