Israel Election: Rival Blocs Seek State Power

Initial vote counts put Gadi Eisenkot’s bloc ahead of Benjamin Netanyahu’s, but neither leader had a clear path to forming a government. The numbers moved as officials counted ballots. On Wednesday morning, the pro-Netanyahu bloc briefly reached 57 seats, then fell to 54. Final results could take several days.

The contest centers on who gets to direct the government, and both candidates have said plainly what they want to do with that power. Eisenkot promised a government committed to “universal military service” and “dismantling Hamas.” Netanyahu called for “a right-wing, nationalist, strong government” and invoked a “historic, one-time opportunity” with President Trump to “remove the Iranian threat once and for all.” The slogans differ. Both leaders want voters to authorize another government with power over the country’s people and institutions.

A coalition built on exclusions

Exit polls projected that anti-Netanyahu parties, including two Arab parties, could outnumber the ruling bloc. But forming a coalition would require Zionist party leaders to break campaign promises and work with Ra’am and the Joint List. Several leaders have already drawn that line. Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid ruled out a government with either Arab-led party, including Ra’am, which the article says heeded calls to recognize Israel as a Jewish state.

Lapid said the opposition had a mandate to form a government and that it “may not be perfect on day one,” but could grow stronger and expand. The arithmetic remains less tidy: Channel 12 later showed Netanyahu’s bloc with 52 seats and the Jewish-led opposition with 49, while two other major network polls projected a 51-51 tie. More than one-third of votes had been counted by Wednesday morning, and ballots in the “double envelope” from IDF soldiers, diplomats and other voters away from their assigned polling stations were still to come.

At the Joint List headquarters in Nazareth, chair Yousef Jabareen said the party hoped to send “Bibi [Netanyahu], [Bezalel] Smotrich, and the bloodstained government home.” He said Arab-led parties had shown they were “a political force that cannot be ignored,” adding: “You can’t build a future here without our voice in any political scenario.” Jabareen named violent crime, state demolition of Arab homes and “racism in every area of life” as concerns his party would represent. Those concerns sit alongside a coalition scramble where other leaders have treated Arab parties as negotiable numbers—or ruled them out.

What the parties promise to do with power

The arguments aren’t abstract. Itamar Ben Gvir cited death penalty legislation, demolition of illegally constructed Bedouin homes in the Negev and harsh prison conditions for security prisoners as policies his party delivered in the last government. Bezalel Smotrich rejected opposition claims of a bloc defeat and said: “They are celebrating because they think they’ll succeed in reversing our settlement revolution in Judea and Samaria.” He added: “Jewish settlements will rise in Gaza.”

Eisenkot, meanwhile, said the public had voted for change and that the “coalition of failure has lost the people’s trust.” He said his proposed government would “serve all” and urged officials in the security establishment and public service to “serve the country and the interests of Israeli citizens alone.” The election rhetoric offers a choice between rival governing programs, including military service, Hamas, settlements, demolitions and prison policy. It doesn’t offer a way around the institutions empowered to impose them.

The count is still the count

Netanyahu said the right-wing bloc had a clear majority among Jewish voters, while acknowledging: “We are still waiting for the true results.” He called the Likud “the biggest party in Israel” and said he would work to form the next government. Eisenkot had declared victory and demanded that Netanyahu “accept the people’s vote of no confidence,” even as the figures remained unsettled.

The largest bloc usually gets the first chance to form a government and can likely take control of the Knesset while government formation is pending. Yet even a larger Eisenkot victory wasn’t expected to make coalition-building easy. Avigdor Liberman had refused during the campaign to accept a government or minority support from Israeli-Arab parties; Yair Golan, head of the Democrats party, welcomed the possibility of working with Ra’am. The parties are counting seats, testing red lines and bargaining over who gets a place in government. For the people named in their policy promises, the count isn’t an escape from state power. It’s the contest to decide who will wield it.