On October 27, Israelis took to the polls to elect the 26th Knesset, Israel’s 120-seat parliament, at a record-setting 77.7% turnout, the highest since 1999. It was Israel’s sixth national election since 2019 and the first since the Hamas attacks on October 7, 2023, and the following wars in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran. The outgoing 25th Knesset was the first to serve a full term without dissolution since 1988.
Final election results show that neither Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing bloc nor the opposition bloc led by Gadi Eisenkot secured a majority. Coalition negotiations are now expected to determine who can assemble a governing majority.
Professor Oren Kessler, the Aaron and Cecile Goldman Visiting Israeli Professor affiliated with the Center for Jewish Civilization, spoke to us about what the results reveal about Israeli politics and what comes next for Israel, the region and the U.S.-Israel relationship.
Professor Oren Kessler
Q. This is the first Israeli election after the October 7, 2023, attacks. How did that influence the outcome of this election?
A. October 7 looms incredibly large. Netanyahu was prime minister during those attacks, but has never accepted any responsibility or admitted any wrongdoing. Instead, he has shifted blame to military and intelligence officials while refusing to allow a state commission of inquiry. Moreover, his critics maintain that returning the 251 Israeli hostages was far from his top priority in waging the war in Gaza in the attacks’ wake, and that he prolonged that devastating war for his own political ends.
Gadi Eisenkot, Netanyahu’s main challenger in the election, is himself a former military chief who has a direct, intimate connection to October 7 and its aftermath. His son Gal was killed in a Hamas tunnel explosion exactly two months into the war, and the very next day his nephew was killed in similar circumstances. The following year, he lost a second nephew. The widespread perception that Eisenkot had suffered the personal cost of the failures of October 7—while Netanyahu was both unaffected by, and in some way responsible for, them—gave Eisenkot a major boost in polling ahead of the election.
Q. As Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, Netanyahu appears to have avoided a wholesale rejection by voters, while Eisenkot fell short of expectations. How should we interpret these results, and what do they reveal about the nature of public perception of Netanyahu’s leadership and the broader Israeli political landscape?
A. Netanyahu hasn’t won yet, but I would say the opposition against him may already have lost. In the weeks and months after October 7, pundits were writing his professional obituary, but yet again he has proven the ultimate political survivor.
Meanwhile, most polling over the past three years has shown Israelis shifting significantly rightward. For example, a recent survey by the Jewish People Policy Institute found that one-third of Jewish Israelis report having shifted rightward since the attacks and the start of the Gaza war—compared to 14% who have shifted leftward. The same poll found a quarter of Israeli Jews identifying as “strongly right-wing,” compared to half that many before 2023. That said, a right-wing affiliation does not necessarily translate into votes for Netanyahu—there are multiple other right-wing parties on offer, both among the prime minister’s expected coalition and even among the anti-Netanyahu opposition. The results suggest that Netanyahu and his Likud party still command deep personal loyalty among a significant swath of the electorate.
Q. Results from the election indicate that a high turnout of 77.7% set a record since 1999. What do you think explains these historic numbers, and how did that impact the results?
A. Netanyahu has been in power for most of the last 16 years, as well as for three years in the late 1990s. Many Israelis who long to see him leave the stage deemed this election the country’s most consequential in decades.
There are several reasons for that. First, as mentioned, Netanyahu was premier during and in the lead-up to October 7 and has refused to allow a state commission to investigate. Second, he continues to form coalitions with ultra-Orthodox leaders who refuse to send their young men into the military. A critical mass of Israelis now view this exemption as unsustainable, given the hundreds of thousands of reservists mobilized since October 7, many of whom have served hundreds of days over the past three years. Third, most left-of-center and many centrist Israelis fear a return to the judicial overhaul that was the Netanyahu government’s central initiative throughout 2023, before it was sidetracked by October 7. And finally, Israelis are keenly aware that their country is more isolated abroad than ever in its history and they hold Netanyahu significantly responsible for that troubling state of affairs.
Q. Netanyahu’s coalition received 53 seats, Eisenkot’s bloc 48 seats—neither has secured a majority—and Arab-led parties 19 seats. Both Netanyahu and Eisenkot have voiced their unwillingness to work with Arab-led parties. What would coalition-building look like in this context?
A. The turnout by Israel’s Arab citizens—some 20% of the population—was by far this election’s biggest surprise. Recent elections have seen Arab turnout as low as 45%, but this time—for the first time in the country’s history—it matched the percentage of their Jewish fellow citizens (some 75-80%). That massive showing translated into nearly a doubling of Arab representation in the Knesset: from 10 seats to 19.
The two major Arab political groupings are the Joint List and the United Arab List, also known by its acronym, Ra’am. The latter is particularly interesting—its roots are in political Islam, but its chairman Mansour Abbas has long championed political integration and in 2021 made Ra’am the first independent Arab party to join a government (during an 18-month interregnum in which Netanyahu was replaced by a big-tent right-left coalition under opposition figures Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid).
Like Netanyahu, Eisenkot has said he would not sit in coalition with Arab parties unless they voice support for Israel as both a Jewish and democratic state and acknowledge Hamas as a terror organization. Abbas has unequivocally denounced the October 7 onslaught as both immoral and un-Islamic, but has refused to label Hamas a terror group, insisting that demands for such a condemnation stemmed from extreme-right elements seeking to delegitimize his party and Arab citizens generally. Among the Eisenkot-led bloc, only one faction—the Democrats, a progressive party led by reserve general Yair Golan—has expressed support for inviting Abbas’ Ra’am party into a coalition.
Q. If Gadi Eisenkot successfully forms a coalition and is chosen as the next Israeli prime minister, what sets him apart from Netanyahu in terms of objectives and policy, domestically and internationally?
A. Eisenkot’s sensibilities are very different from Netanyahu’s. Whereas Netanyahu hails from a relatively privileged family of Ashkenazi (European-origin) academics, Eisenkot’s roots are working class and Mizrahi (Middle Eastern). Politically, he is more centrist. He has condemned the current government’s more controversial examples of West Bank settlement building and its failure or unwillingness to curb violence by extreme settlers against Palestinians. And unlike Netanyahu, who for at least a decade has relied heavily on ultra-Orthodox coalition partners, Eisenkot has insisted that this community help carry the national military burden and enlist.
On the other hand, Eisenkot is also a former Israel Defense Forces chief, and anyone expecting a political dove will be disappointed. Security credentials, along with straight talk and incorruptibility, remain his primary selling point. And while just a few years ago he signaled support for a two-state solution, warning of the dangers of a binational Israel and endorsing “separation” from Palestinians, since October 7 his rhetoric has hardened. In recent months, he has referred to any notion of a Palestinian state in the near future as “irrelevant” or even “delusional.”
Q. What do you expect to see in the coming weeks as negotiations for a governing coalition take place? What potential implications do you foresee for Israel, the region and the United States?
A. I believe the likeliest scenario is several months of negotiations, leading eventually to a second round of elections, possibly as early as March. A depressing prospect, I know.
There are, however, other scenarios. Theoretically, Netanyahu’s Likud could join some opposition parties, excluding the far right and ultra-Orthodox. The obstacle there is that Eisenkot and the other leaders of the opposition bloc have sworn they would not serve in a Netanyahu-led government. It’s true that politicians in Israel as elsewhere have been known to occasionally go back on their word, but that particular refusal has been core to their campaign message and to violate it could be a bitter pill for voters.
Another scenario is an Eisenkot-led “minority government” in which the Arab parties would support from the outside, voting with the coalition on key issues but not formally joining. This would require the opposition bloc’s parties to go back on their pledge not to join with Arab-led parties for their own stated security and political reasons.
For now, in any case, Netanyahu isn’t going anywhere. He will be a caretaker prime minister who most likely will get the first stab at forming a government. And as to regional implications, there are already credible reports that he and President Trump are planning a third round of strikes on their shared foe, the Iranian regime, after the U.S. midterm elections next week.
And yet, if the past three years have taught us Mideast watchers anything, it’s the power of three simple words:
Wait and see.