Netanyahu bloc leads with 53 seats, Eisenkot 48 in Israel vote

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's right-wing bloc was projected to secure 53 seats in the 120-member Knesset on Wednesday, falling eight short of the parliamentary majority required to form a government, while former military chief Gadi Eisenkot's opposition alliance captured 48 seats and Arab parties combined for 19, Channel 12 television reported.

Party standings

Netanyahu's Likud remained the largest single party with 26 seats — a decline from the 32 it held following the 2022 elections — while Eisenkot's Yashar, contesting its first parliamentary race, secured 21 seats, according to the Israeli news website Ynet. Former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett's Together alliance was projected to win 12 seats in its electoral debut, and the predominantly Arab Joint List captured 12 seats alongside Ra'am's seven, bringing Arab representation to 19 seats, up from 10 in the previous parliament.

The center-left Democrats were projected to win eight seats, doubling the combined showing of their predecessor parties, Labor and Meretz, in 2022. Avigdor Lieberman's Yisrael Beiteinu was expected to secure seven seats, up from six, while the ultra-Orthodox Shas party dropped to seven from 11. United Torah Judaism held steady at seven seats, as did National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir's Otzma Yehudit, while Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich's Religious Zionism-Zehut alliance was projected to win six — marking a combined decline of one seat for the far-right partners who ran jointly in 2022.

Record turnout and special ballots

Voter turnout reached 77.7 percent, the highest level since 1999, though the final distribution of seats could shift once officials process more than 500,000 special double-envelope ballots cast by soldiers, diplomats, police officers and displaced residents away from their registered polling stations. Elad Naveh, director of the Central Elections Committee's control center, said the counting began Wednesday evening and was expected to conclude Thursday evening, though the process could extend until Friday.

Fraud allegations

Netanyahu's Likud party issued a statement claiming that "the elections in Israel were stolen by Arab parties that support terrorism and the elimination of the Jewish state," accusing Arab factions of widespread irregularities including bribery, intimidation and fraud at polling stations in Arab communities. The party specifically alleged that thousands of envelopes containing cash and ballot slips for Mansour Abbas's Ra'am had been distributed to influence the vote.

Tuesday's contest marked the first Israeli parliamentary election since the October 2023 onset of the war in the Gaza Strip, with more than 7.3 million citizens eligible to cast ballots.