Israel is now in an even more confused place than it was prior to the election

Over the last couple of days, an ongoing procession has been taking place in the Talbiya neighbourhood of Jerusalem. Number Three HaNassi Boulevard is the site of Beit HaNassi – the official residence of the President of the State of Israel. Representatives of each of the political parties which won seats in last week’s election have been visiting Isaac Herzog, and, in between the requisite small talk, they are telling him who, in their opinion, should be the first person given the chance to try and form a government. If you have the time, the Ivrit knowledge and the self-discipline required not to repeatedly pound your head against your desk, you can even watch it for yourself – the meetings are livestreamed. 

This may seem strange to British onlookers. In the United Kingdom, except in very rare situations, our voting system allows the election process to run like clockwork. There is polling day, the ballots are counted through the night and – depending on the results – the removal vans speed away the previous Prime Minister’s belongings from Number 10, with a new UK leader in situ less than 24 hours after the polls close.

Israel is rather different. No party has ever won an outright majority of Knesset seats. Every election is followed by extended bouts of wheeling and dealing. An average British person trying to comprehend this might feel slightly like the eponymous hero of The Life of Brian when faced by the demand that instead of simply paying for something, he must haggle for it.

Now to specifics. As the entire world now knows, neither the parties which had previously formed a governing coalition under Benjamin Netanyahu, nor the Israeli Jewish parties which were in Opposition, have gained enough seats to reach the magic number of sixty one, which is what is needed for a Knesset Majority. In the simplest terms, there’s an anti-Netanyahu bloc of Jewish-Israeli parties (48 seats) a pro-Netanyahu bloc of Jewish Israeli parties (53 seats) and Arab Israeli parties (19 seats).

An immediate gambit tried by Benjamin Netanyahu and the Likud party, in common with right-wing parties from the US to Brazil over the last six years, was to claim that the elections had been rigged. Rather than accept that perhaps the behaviour of the government over the last four years, in particular the statements and actions of politicians such as Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir, but also from a wide variety of Likudniks, might possibly have driven Arab citizens of Israel to exercise their right to vote, Netanyahu preferred to go with “Qatar” having done it – a brave accusation, given the allegations about the Gulf State having sought to purchase influence within his own Prime Ministerial office.

However, Likud’s claims to delay certifying the results of the election have failed, and the attempts to hammer out a coalition (which have been under way for months, but have obviously been impacted by the actual results) are heating up. Which leads to a conundrum, if we have a look at how many seats each party won:

Likud (Benjamin Netanyahu) – 27

Yashar (Gadi Eisenkot) 21

Together (Naftali Bennet) – 12

Joint List (Yousef Jabareen) – 11

Democrats (Yair Golan) – 8

Yisrael Beiteinu (Avigdor Liberman) – 7

Ra’am (Mansour Abbas) – 7

Otzma Yehudit (Itamar Ben-Gvir) – 7

UTJ (Ya’akov Asher) – 7

Shas (Aryeh Deri) – 6

Religious Zionist Party/Zehut (Bezalel Smotrich) – 6

None of this is simple. In regular circumstances one might expect the centre right and the right to unite, giving them a working majority of 67, but the baleful shadow of Benjamin Netanyahu makes that almost impossible – too many parties have put their opposition to him front and centre. In return for their support, the strictly Orthodox parties will want a reversal of policies designed to cancel their traditional draft exemptions. When it comes to the Arab parties, while Ra’am has joined a government before, there are those within the wider Joint List whose political views on the existence of Israel itself are anathema to many of the right wing politicians whose support would be vital to the establishment of a viable coalition.

There is little doubt that this election was not a vote of confidence in the 2022-2026 government. Likud may have won more seats than any other party, but it simultaneously lost more than a quarter of the seats it had previously held.

The most likely result of this election, frustratingly, is that another one will be held next year. Between early 2019 and late 2022, Israel held five elections. In the meantime, a country which urgently needs stability and normality seems likely to experience neither in the short term.