--- title: "Israel's Election Results Are a Mess" description: "Israel's first election since October 7th has delivered inconclusive results, with neither Netanyahu's coalition nor the Zionist opposition securing the 61 seats needed for a majority. Both camps have declared victory whilst coalition negotiations loom. Meanwhile, Netanyahu remains in power, with potential military action against Iran still on the table." url: https://fronts.co/videos/israels-election-results-are-a-mess.md canonical: https://fronts.co/videos/israels-election-results-are-a-mess/ datePublished: 2026-10-29T00:30:03.000Z dateModified: 2026-10-29T00:30:03.000Z author: - name: Fronts Staff url: https://fronts.co/authors/fronts-team/ publisher: Fronts type: NewsArticle language: en access: members isAccessibleForFree: false tokens: 4529 --- When he throw into the polls yesterday for the first time since the October 7th attacks, the question front and center in voters' minds was whether longtime Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu deserved to keep his job. This is the Middle East, though, so the answer to that question remains a decisive...maybe. At the time of recording, 11am Central European time, the results are incon clusive. That doesn't mean politicians aren't already jockeying for ways to oust BB and form their own government, though, far from it. The trouble is the maths. Nobody's coalition currently seems to have a majority or even a realistic path to get one. All this could mean weeks, or perhaps even months, of back and forth negotiations. And across that period, Netanyahu is going to remain atop it all. With Iran very much in his sights and the US's midterms just a week out, Israel 's next big decision could be reached even before we really know who won the election. So, who won? At the time of recording mid-morning here in Prague, October 28th, votes are still being encountered, and realistically they could continue to be counted well into the day, or even into Thursday. Unlike many other countries, Israel votes exclusively on paper ballots, and safer diplomats abroad and soldiers on active duty, there are no absentee options. That said, we do have a pretty good idea of where things currently stand. With 70% of the vote in, Netanyahu's coalition was projected to win 54 seats, compared to 47 for the Zionist opposition, with Arab parties taking the remaining 19. Followed by Gadi Eisenkots Yesha with 20. So please bear in mind, it takes us several hours to record and edit these videos, so these totals will have changed at least somewhat by the time you see this video. Turnout was also really high, reaching nearly 78%, the highest since 1999, with unusually strong participation from Arab communities. This has been yet another polling mess. Heading into election day, most polls showed the BBC's governing coalition, as well as the primary opposition bloc, were roughly tied. And critically, both were well short of the magic 61C threshold needed for an outright majority in the Knesset. The rest of the seats were set to go to the Arab parties, which neither camp was particularly eager to court. Shortly after polls closed, it looked like that was exactly how things were going to go. Most of Israel's main networks at St Paul's projected that the Zionist opposition would place first, but come up short of a majority, with BBC's coalition hot on their tails, and a surprisingly strong showing for the Arab parties taking the rest. So no majority, no clear winner for a while. Right? In the most Israeli politics way possible, they all declared victory, to some extent. Opposition leaders, Eizen Khat and Boyer Shahd's Yair Lapid both wasted precious little time in declaring victory, Lapid calling the results a complete defeat for BB, going so far as to say that the state of Israel was saved today. Netanyahu, not to be one-art, also declared victory by saying that his right- wing bloc had a "decisive majority" of Zionist voters. As the night dragged on, though, those projections began to shift slowly but steadily in Netanyahu's favor, keeping election watchers around the world, and up well past the early hours of the morning. For now, at least, the biggest question is whether these results will allow Netanyahu's coalition to get across the finish line to the magic 61 number. If he does, then that's a wrap. Prime Minister BB would be headed to his seventh time. At the time of recording, though, it still seems more likely that neither camp will secure a majority. But if they don't, things are likely to get really messy, really fast. Given the BB's coalition seems to have performed noticeably stronger than the Zionist opposition, President Isaac Herzog will likely give him the first crack of forming a new government, and while it would then be up to BB to get to 61, Herzog has reportedly backed the idea of a unity government between LeCoud and Yashar, so it could come with a bit of nudging. That might sound like it'd work, not paper, at least. Maybe he's a Zionist, Isaac God's a Zionist, so it's a match made in Jerusalem, right? Well, not quite. The entirety of the Zionist opposition, which is made up of four parties, has repeatedly ruled out propping up another BB-led government under any circumstances. In fact, none of the opposition's leaders, Yisrael Beiteinu's Avigdor Lieberman, wrote to the country's Attorney General requesting that she open an investigation into Netanyahu on charges of treason. We'll get to the intricacies of that love letter later on, but suffice it to say, the opposition doesn't exactly scream co-operate with BB. It would be a tough sell for someone having run on replacing him, but is especially precarious, given how terribly it went for the last man to try such a deal. Back in 2020, opposition figure Benny Gantz and his blue and white party joined LeCoud in a unity government. Gantz had similarly run on a resolutely anti-net and Yahoo platform, and this was seen as selling out his base. The government collapsed within a year, and Gantz's party was finished. With the Zionist opposition seemingly unwilling to play ball, reports indicate that LeCoud may have turned to the only alternative available. The Arab parties, which BB has made a major issue of running against. Rahm leader Mansur Abbas said yesterday that figures from both political blocs had reached out to him about forming a government. This is the same Netanyahu who, just hours earlier, was warning that Arabs in Israel were racing to the ballots as a way to stir up more voter turnout with Jewish Israelis. Even if Rahm was willing to partner with him after that, and we want to be very clear that this is a wildly unlikely prospect, it would, on current numbers, still only get the bloc to 60 seats. And that would involve a wild scenario where Rahm agreed to work with a coalition that prominently features Ben Gavir, a man who until recently hung a portrait in his home of the Jewish extremist who gunned down 29 Palestinians in the 1990s, so yeah, like we say, unlikely. So if that goes better, Herzog will likely give Isaac got the opportunity to form a government himself. And despite likely needing to make up more seats, his bloc's maths is slightly more friendly, mostly on accounts of just how personal the opposition to BB is at this point. But at this point, we do need to remind you that while Israel is going through various rounds of group therapy on who to choose as their next leader, there is still going to be someone calling the shots. That man is of course none other than the Netanyahu himself who will have considerable sway over the country's foreign and military policy in the period to come. The Iran Question When it comes to foreign policy, loyal viewers of Warfront will know that there 's one conflict going on in the region that from Jerusalem's point of view far eclipses the rest. And oh boy, has this become quite the concern. In the lead up to this election, one of the more incredible stories to break was that the PM had reportedly found himself locked in a fight, not just with his opposition, but with IDF Chief of Staff Eyal Zameer over a potential return to war. According to a report on October 25 from Channel 12, Netanyahu had instructed the military to kick off an unspecified operation that senior defense officials worried could escalate into a return to all-out war with the Islamic Republic just days before the most consequential election the country has faced in years. Zameer reportedly resisted those instructions, and the fight was apparently so severe that subsequent reporting shows that Netanyahu was considering dismissing the general if he won another term. The timing of all this was hardly lost on the opposition. Lapid accused BB of trying to stir up trouble so as to delay the election. And this was also what caused Lieberman to write that letter, calling the PM's actions potentially treasonous. Whether any of those accusations are justified remains an open question, and Netanyahu's office has categorically denied that any such argument happened. But regardless of what was or was not said behind closed doors, it's no secret that factions in Jerusalem and Washington are itching for a return to the fight with Tehran, having grown bored with the status quo stalemate. No final decision has been announced on this, and it's likely to wait until after the US midterms on November 3, but with the Israeli election out of the way at least, Mr. Security has little reason to abandon the objective he was openly campaigning on, finishing the job and bringing down the Iranian regime altogether. BB has already made the argument that anything short of regime change would leave Tehran free to rebuild its military and nuclear capabilities once the fighting ends. So if Netanyahu either hangs on, because nobody can agree on who to replace him, or manages to win another term outright, another confrontation with Iran remains a distinct possibility. In the event of an Eisenhower government, Israel wouldn't necessarily be looking at abandoning military action against the Islamic Republic. Having previously served as the IDF's chief, Eisenhower is hardly a dove when it comes to national security. Despite being hawkish on Iran, he does differ with BB over what is realistically possible through military force, arguing that regime change through what Israel has at its disposal is simply not on the cards. In fact, he's gone so far as to say that another strike on Iran would only be justified if Tehran seemed to be making a serious push towards developing a nuclear weapon, and earlier this month, he said that he hadn't seen any evidence of such a development. Of course, this is complicated by Eisenhower's coalition partners, which is a recurring theme throughout just about any aspect of Israeli politics. Former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett has argued that Israel should retaliate against Hezbollah attacks by striking Iran directly, while his Be a Chard partner, Lap id, has gone even further, calling for the destruction of Iran's oil infrastructure on Karg Island. So, while we can say that an Eisenhower premiership would be a little less all- out war with Iran all the time, we can't really say that they'd be pushing for a renegotiated ceasefire either. But at the end of the day, Iran is not the only issue Israel is facing, though Netanyahu's campaign posting an AI-generated image of Tel Aviv being nuked by an Iranian missile as a warning of what would happen if he lost might lead people to think it was. Still, there are other important questions to consider. After all, Iran isn't the only war that Israel is still deeply involved in. What comes next? One of the other major questions, when it comes to security, is Gaza, where the IDF currently occupy about 60% of the strip, and despite three years of war, repeated Israeli offensives and massive destruction across the territory that seemed Jerusalem accused by South Africa of genocide in international court, Hamas is still there and still controls significant portions of the strip. They're a shell of their former self, certainly, but they're still kicking. Whoever becomes Israel's next prime minister will have to decide what to do about this, both from a domestic Israeli security perspective, as well as from managing the international fallout of the now three-year-old campaign. It should probably go without saying, at this point, what Netanyahu's position on Gaza is. Him winning another term would largely see a continuation of the status quo, though his coalition would likely take a harder line on it than a liquid-led unity government as the latter would presumably boot far-right ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezel El-Smotridge to the curb. Eisenhower got his attempt to portray himself as being a more effective Bebe on Gaza, essentially portraying Bebe as being very willing to use military force, but not very good at accomplishing much with it. In fact, Yeshua released a campaign ad showing Netanyahu congratulating Hamas leader Yaha Sinwa as a way of presenting the Israeli PM as allegedly being pro-Palestine. So on our front, we wouldn't recommend holding your breath for a massive change of policy. There are some issues that do seem to offer more of a window for change under a unity government, and especially if the opposition manages to pull off a win. The West Bank has received far less attention than the Gaza Strip, but the situation there is grim, attacks by settlers on Palestinian civilians have absolutely skyrocket ed during this government, with some battalions in the IDF reportedly spending the vast majority of their time combating Jewish terrorism in the area. Their ability to actually stop the violence has been severely constrained by the fact that the man who runs the police and is thus in charge of enforcement is Ben-Gvir, who made it clear from the outset that he would give settlers broad latitude to more or less act with impunity. Ironically, Ben-Gvir may have done more to mobilize Arab voters than anyone else in Israel. Arab turnout reportedly surpassed 80%, which is the highest in decades. By the end of the day, the situation in the West Bank has earned Jerusalem a lot of negative press, including from some rather unlikely sources, like the US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee. While past Israeli governments were criticized for not exactly being proactive on combating settle of terrorism, it paled in comparison to what's going on there now. Many of the opposition leaders have pledged that they would crack down on this situation from day one. When Eisenhower government would also likely freeze or even reverse some of the most aggressive expansion efforts by the current Israeli government. While Eisenhower supports the existence of settlements in the West Bank, which is essentially orthodoxy across the little spectrum in the country, he opposes the rollout of the E1 settlement project, which would essentially cut the West Bank in half ostensibly with the intention of ensuring that a Palestinian state would never be able to take off. There is a pretty massive issue that would face any Eisenhower government, though. Many of the parties that he would need to support him don't agree on much of anything. One of the best examples of this is be a card itself, which depending on who you ask is either an inspiring unity party or an awkward marriage between Naftali, but its religious nationalist party and Yair Lapid's secular, socially liberal Yesh Ateid. The two other history, including when they work together during the coalition that briefly removed Netanyahu back in 2021, but the whole thing collapsed after about a year and triggered the election that brought the current government into power. For this year's campaign, they seem to have largely agreed to disagree on some of the most contentious issues between them, and while that might work while in opposition, it gets a lot harder when you are actually running the country. All of this is made even more complicated by the fact that Eisenkot would also depend on support from the right-wing and very hawkish Yizrael Bataenu, while also balancing it out with the Democrats who are the only Jewish party left in the country that can still be called left-wing. And remember, at least at the time of recording, this would still not get them to a majority - if projections at this stage are correct, Eisenkot's already broad and unstable coalition would have to add additional Palestinian parties on top to reach that magic 61 number. Put all of that together, and it'd take a miracle just to get a majority in the first place, let alone one that's actually capable of governing. All of that kicks the ball back into BB's court, at least for the next month or two, while everyone tries to figure out what's going to happen next. If nobody is actually able to agree on who should lead next, though, the Kness id would then be dissolved and the country would once again head for yet another round of elections. While it's hard to know for sure exactly what would happen, there are indicators that a second election would favour BB. Given that there are no absentee ballots in Israel, dual citizens living abroad who wanted to vote had to fly back, but a lot of them did, like tens of thousands, which is an unusually high number. BB, despite having a core constituency inside Israel, is distinctly unpopular amongst Jewry abroad, and those who returned to vote in this election likely skewed heavily towards the opposition. While tens of thousands isn't a complete game-changer and a sea of 5.7 million votes cast, given just how close this race was, even a relatively small change in turnout could make a difference. Of course, we have no way of knowing whether another election is actually going to produce a different result, which is another problem entirely. Israel could spend the next several months arguing over who should run the country next, hold another election, and still find itself in a similar situation. This has been sort of the standard operating procedure in the country in recent years. Israel is, after all, the country that held 5 elections in just 4 years between 2019 and 2022. Basically, these guys get through elections the same way that we Brits get through prime ministers. And if this election was supposed to finally settle the question of where Israel goes next, the reality is that Israelis may have simply earned themselves the privilege of voting on it all over again.