Final election results confirm Netanyahu and far-right allies have lost their parliamentary majority

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The results released early today showed Mr Netanyahu’s bloc won 53 seats in Tuesday’s election. The main opposition bloc took 48, while Arab-led parties secured the other 19, a historic showing.

Now parties must meet, bargain and seek a way to team up for at least 61 seats in the 120-member Knesset.

Mr Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, remains in charge. His main opponents would most likely need to partner with the Arab-led parties to replace him.

Underscoring the fraught path ahead, Avigdor Lieberman, the leader of a far-right anti-Netanyahu faction, appeared to rule out any partnership with Arab-led parties today. That alone would make it nearly impossible for Mr Netanyahu’s opponents to form a coalition to oust him.

In the hours before final results were announced, Mr Netanyahu and his Likud party amplified unsubstantiated allegations that Arab-led parties had “stolen” the election, potentially with foreign assistance.

He has suggested that it would be treasonous for chief rival Gadi Eisenkot or others to join with them.

Hundreds of Israelis have been holding rallies urging Mr Eisenkot and others to join forces with the Arab-led parties, a step that has happened only once before, briefly, in 2021.

Issa Jaber Abu-Ghosh, the former mayor of an Arab village outside Jerusalem, said: “Israel all the time claims to be the only democracy in the Middle East,” but that it’s not a “real democracy” if its politics remain divided between Jews and Arabs.

If Mr Netanyahu loses office, that would set off a cascade of events that critics say he has desperately sought to avoid.

He would be politically weakened as he faces an ongoing corruption trial, and an official inquiry into the security failures surrounding Hamas’s October 7 2023, attack would almost certainly be launched.