Palestinian Parties Near 19 Knesset Seats as Both Blocs Miss Majority
Israel’s election has produced a result its political establishment spent decades trying to avoid: Palestinian citizens may now determine who governs.
With 92 percent of ballots counted on Wednesday, October 28, the bloc led by Benjamin Netanyahu stood at 53 seats, Gadi Eisenkot’s Jewish opposition bloc held 48, and the Joint List and Ra’am together were projected to take 19. Neither Jewish bloc reached the 61 seats required to control the Knesset.
The count remains preliminary and special ballots can still shift individual seats. But the central fact is already clear. Palestinian parties nearly doubled their combined representation from 10 seats in the outgoing parliament, propelled by turnout that surged in Palestinian communities after years of exclusion, racist incitement and war.
Reuters reported that the two parties were on course for an unprecedented 19 seats as almost 86 percent of votes were tallied. The Guardian’s later live count showed the same 53–48–19 split after all polling-station votes had been counted and 92 percent of ballots processed. The Associated Press likewise found both main camps short of a governing majority.
The arithmetic breaks the political taboo
Netanyahu called for “a strong, right-wing national government” after the polls closed. The numbers do not give him one. His Likud-led coalition performed better than the earliest exit polls, but it still lacks eight seats and has ruled out cooperation with Palestinian parties.
Eisenkot faces an equally stark choice. He campaigned against Netanyahu while refusing to treat Palestinian representatives as legitimate coalition partners. Now his path to power runs through them—or through a unity arrangement that could preserve Netanyahu’s grip.
Ahmad Tibi, a leading Joint List lawmaker, made the challenge explicit: “We are extending a hand and are ready to help.” His bloc could support an Eisenkot-led minority government from outside the cabinet, abstain in a confidence vote or negotiate a formal agreement. Any route would force Jewish opposition leaders to abandon the fiction that Palestinian votes count only when they are politically harmless.
The election’s highest overall turnout in more than two decades, 77.7 percent, intensified that pressure. Palestinian participation rose sharply after a campaign shaped by Gaza, discriminatory state policy and the open anti-Arab politics of Netanyahu’s far-right allies. Joint List candidate Faten Gattas answered the result with a direct declaration: “We refuse the occupation and racism.”
A larger caucus is not liberation
Nineteen seats do not erase the unequal structure Palestinian citizens confront inside Israel, and they do nothing by themselves for Palestinians living under occupation in the West Bank or enduring the destruction of Gaza. Coalition bargaining can produce budgets, repeal discriminatory measures or block another far-right cabinet. It cannot substitute for equal rights and an end to occupation.
The result nevertheless disrupts a political order built on treating Palestinian citizens as a permanent minority whose participation could be ignored. Netanyahu won the largest Jewish bloc, but not a governing majority. Eisenkot’s opposition cannot claim a democratic mandate while excluding nearly one-sixth of the new Knesset from legitimate power.
President Isaac Herzog will consult party leaders once the count is complete and give the candidate he believes most likely to form a government up to six weeks. Failure would leave Netanyahu in office as caretaker and could send Israel back to another election.
That is the choice produced by Tuesday’s vote: recognize Palestinian political power, preserve Netanyahu through a unity deal, or repeat the election until the result becomes more comfortable. The electorate has already made Palestinian representation impossible to dismiss. Israel’s Jewish parties must now decide whether democracy includes the citizens whose ballots created the balance of power.
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