No matter who eventually emerges victorious from Israel’s deadlocked general election result, the likelihood that the next prime minister will make any material difference to Israel’s approach to the wider Middle East appears exceedingly remote.
While Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has undoubtedly suffered a serious setback after this week’s general election, which saw his right-wing bloc fail to secure enough seats to form a majority in the 120-seat Knesset, history has shown his ability to cling to power.
With more than 90% of the votes counted, Netanyahu’s Likud party remains the largest group in the Israeli parliament with 26 seats, a six seat drop from the 32 it won in 2022. The opposition Yashar Party headed by Netanyahu’s main rival for the leadership, Gadi Eisenkot, has so far won 21 seats.
As negotiations begin over forming the next Israeli government, the key calculation will be which of these parties can form a coalition with enough seats to achieve a working majority in the next Knesset. Both leaders have said they will try to form a governing coalition.
The election result has undoubtedly proved a setback for the right-wing bloc that supported Netanyahu’s previous administration. Apart from Likud, the coalition included two ultra-Orthodox parties and two far-right parties aligned with the West Bank settler movement. The election left the coalition without the majority it had won in the 2022 election. Compared with the 64 seats it won four years ago, the group won only 53 in this week’s election, a dramatic turnaround in the coalition’s fortunes.
As a result, opposition parties now collectively command a majority of parliament seats, rising from 56 in the last election to 67 in the current one, thereby giving them—on paper, at least—a working majority in the Knesset. But unlike the right-wing bloc, they have yet to agree on an overall strategy for forming a coalition government.
