Netanyahu Bloc Wins 53 Seats, Short of Majority as Coalition Talks Begin Final results show Netanyahu's right-wing bloc won 53 Knesset seats, eight short of a majority, with Arab-led parties securing 19 seats and protracted coalition negotiations ahead. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's right-wing bloc won Tuesday's national election with 53 Knesset seats, eight short of the 61 needed for a governing majority in the 120-member Knesset, according to final results published Friday by Israel's Central Elections Committee. Gadi Eisenkot's opposition bloc won 48 seats, while the mostly Arab Joint List and Ra'am together won 19 seats, a historic showing that left neither Zionist bloc with a majority. Likud emerged as the largest party with 27 seats, followed by Eisenkot's Yashar with 21 and Together with 12. The Joint List won 11 seats, The Democrats and Ra'am eight each, Yisrael Beiteinu, United Torah Judaism and Otzma Yehudit seven each, and Shas and Religious Zionism six each.The Central Elections Committee said 5,716,665 ballots were cast, for a final turnout of 77.9%. Of those, 5,690,778 were valid and 25,887 invalid. The electoral threshold of 3.25% was 184,947 votes, and all other parties failed to cross it. Netanyahu hailed Likud's performance after the vote.The first thing that has become unequivocally clear is that Likud is the largest party in Israel, he told supporters. He called for the establishment of a strong national right-wing government. Eisenkot has also vowed to do all he can to forge a ruling coalition. Centrist politician Yair Lapid said on X that now comes the truly hard part, asking Israelis for patience.Parties Seek Coalition PartnersParties must now meet, bargain and seek a way to team up for at least 61 seats. Difficult decisions lie ahead. Will the main opposition parties that campaigned hard to unseat the divisive Netanyahu make the politically sensitive choice to partner with Arab-led ones? Or will they toss their vows aside to team up with Netanyahu in a potentially fractious unity government?Friday is when much of Israel starts winding down for Shabbat, and it was not clear who might be meeting with whom. The election results still need to be certified and submitted to the president next Wednesday, November 4. President Isaac Herzog will then hold consultations with representatives of the elected parties before deciding which lawmaker to task with attempting to form the next government.That could be the leader of the party that received the most votes, Netanyahu, or whoever leaders of the various parties believe is best suited. If multiple attempts to form a government fail, Israel faces a new election early next year. Herzog this week said he will do everything in his power to avoid that scenario.Netanyahu Alleges Foreign InterferenceIn the hours before final results were announced, Netanyahu and his Likud party amplified unsubstantiated allegations that Arab-led parties had stolen the election, potentially with foreign assistance. The opposition quickly accused Netanyahu of demonizing the Arab population, which makes up 20% of the population and showed up at the polls like never before in outrage over Netanyahu's far-right allies like national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir. His party lost seats.In Netanyahu's first public comment Friday, he posted on X asserting it is forbidden to form a coalition with Arab parties. The head of Israel's election committee, Supreme Court Justice Noam Sohlberg, had said serious suspicions of foreign interference had been brought before him. In a letter to the Shin Bet security agency, Sohlberg said he could not verify the claims but asked the agency to investigate.Israeli media reported that members of Netanyahu's party were accusing Qatar, a country that many Israelis view as a patron of Hamas, the Gaza-based militant group. Qatar issued a denial, calling the allegations ridiculous and dangerous. As it announced results, the election commission said the investigation was based on classified intelligence. Acting director general Dean Livne did not elaborate but warned that reports about the investigation had been entirely unfounded.It does not affect the final results that will be submitted to the president, nor does it concern any particular sector of the population, he said. The Shin Bet said the inquiry was focused and limited and did not cast suspicion on any entire community that had exercised its legal right to vote. The election committee said the results remain subject to minor corrections during its routine verification process, including checks of polling stations, possible data-entry errors and complaints.Subject to minor corrections, as in every election, these are the results that will be submitted to the president of the State of Israel on Wednesday, November 4, the committee said. By casting doubt on the vote, Netanyahu appeared to be trying to block any potential alliance between his opponents and the Arab-led parties. Netanyahu has suggested that it would be treasonous for chief rival Gadi Eisenkot or others to join with them.The Shin Bet, seeking to calm tensions, said its investigation was not meant to cast aspersions on an entire section of the population that exercised its right to vote in a democratic and lawful manner. The elections committee also sounded a note of caution in a letter written to a concerned member of parliament, saying that allegations of systematic violations of electoral integrity are baseless. The committee wants findings from the Shin Bet within a week.Arab Parties May Form Knesset SpeakerEven as coalition negotiations begin, the new Knesset is expected to be sworn in November 10. Once it convenes, Eisenkot's bloc could join forces with the Arab parties to elect a new Knesset speaker, giving them control over the parliamentary agenda and potentially allowing them to advance and pass legislation before a new government is formed.Already, hundreds of Israelis have been holding rallies urging Eisenkot and others to join forces with the Arab-led parties, a step that has happened only once before, briefly, in 2021. If Netanyahu loses office, that would set off a cascade of events that critics say he has desperately sought to avoid. He would be taken to account over yearslong corruption allegations, and an inquiry almost certainly would begin into security failures before the devastating Hamas-led October 7, 2023, attack.