Netanyahu's enemies could make unlikely friends in battle to defeat him

The 2026 Israeli election campaign was widely described as a referendum on Benjamin Netanyahu, the country's longest serving prime minister.

It says much for Netanyahu's political aggression that within 24 hours of an inconclusive election result, he had turned the debate from a referendum about him, to a referendum about keeping Palestinian citizens of Israel out of government. 

On election day, Netanyahu repeatedly attacked Palestinian-Israeli voters in posts on social media. He accused them of "stealing the election" because they had turned up to vote in record numbers. He accused the "Arab parties" of "serious criminal offences of bribery, threats, violence, forgeries, and the use of prohibited software to mobilise voters".

In Israel, the parties that predominantly represent Palestinian Israeli citizens are referred to as Arab parties.

Election officials and the police dismissed the claims.

On election day, Shin Bet chief David Zini said "the elections in Israel are secure, conducted properly, and under supervised control". But by Thursday the domestic intelligence agency had been asked to investigate claims that Qatari money was behind a record surge in the vote of Palestinian-Israelis.

The leader of the anti-Netanyahu bloc, Gadi Eisenkot, accused Netanyahu and his Likud party of launching "a coordinated, orchestrated campaign to delegitimise the election results".

An extraordinary 80 per cent of eligible Palestinian-Israelis turned up to vote on Tuesday. That's almost 760,000 votes. Political disillusionment has kept Palestinian turnout low in the past. But anger over the government's refusal to deal with crime in Palestinian towns helped change that this time.

Another leader of the anti-Netanyahu forces, Yair Golan, said Israelis "must no longer accept Netanyahu's racist division between Jewish votes and Arab votes".

"We have no future here if we don't stop being afraid," he said.

Racism with a lethal political purpose

The racism that Golan accuses Netanyahu of using can have a lethal political purpose. The election outcome gave no bloc the capacity to form a government.

The parties that oppose him have 67 seats, comprising the 48 seats won by the Jewish-Israeli anti-Netanyahu bloc led by Gadi Eisenkot, as well as the 19 seats won by Arab Israeli parties, compared to Netanyahu's 53.

The problem for the anti-Netanyahu forces is that its Jewish-Israeli members have insisted that they would not enter a coalition with the Arab parties. Yair Golan, quoted earlier, who leads the Democrats with a bloc of eight seats, is the exception.

In attacking the legitimacy of the Palestinian vote, Benjamin Netanyahu is maximising the pressure on the Eisenkot bloc not to change its position on doing deals with the Palestinians.

In a political system where the disdain for Palestinian-Israelis is such that they are usually just ignored in the reporting of political events, it would be an exceptionally high-risk move for the opposition parties to change their stance. But the anti-Netanyahu bloc is also aware that the majority of Israelis — Jewish and Palestinian — voted against Netanyahu.

If they do not find a way of forming a government, the veteran Likud leader will win by default: yet another election will have to be called with Netanyahu remaining caretaker prime minister until that happens.

Battlelines are drawn

While negotiations continue, the mechanics of the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, in the next few weeks are likely to become the next scene of battle. The political system in Israel allows the new parliament to meet two weeks after an election, even if a government has not been formed.

The opposition parties have signalled they will immediately move to elect a new speaker of the Parliament to replace Likud's Amir Ohana. The speaker can control much of the legislative agenda.

The combined anti-Netanyahu parties, with 67 seats, potentially have enough votes to advance legislation and are pushing for the election of a new speaker to proceed as soon as possible.

Netanyahu's Likud Party says a vote on a new speaker should be suspended while the inquiry into foreign interference in the election take place.

If the opposition parties can nominate a non-Likud speaker, they can move legislation to implement election promises, including for an independent inquiry into security failures leading to October 7, limits on prime ministerial terms, and laws banning someone indicted for crimes from serving as prime minister.

It would be the most pragmatic possible test of numbers if a vote to replace the speaker was successful and could change the dynamics of negotiations over government. It would also confirm the acceptance of Arab votes without those votes being attached to a particular government.

A crack in Netanyahu's forces

One reform that highlights some of the complex chains of support being canvassed here concerns military conscription.

The exemption from the military draft currently given to ultra-Orthodox Jews is highly contentious, given IDF reservists have been forced into long and repeated deployments because of Israel's actions in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon and Syria.

Eisenkot has vowed to legislate for universal military service.

Israel's Channel 12 reported on Thursday that the ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism party — which has seven seats — was proposing supporting a government led by Gadi Eisenkot from "the outside". That is, in exchange for compromises on the military draft, it could absent itself from Knesset votes and wouldn't use its seven seats to vote against an Eisenkot government.

It would also accept Eisenkot relying on seven votes from the smaller of the two Arab parties — Ra'am. The speculation is that if the UTJ moved, the other ultra-Orthodox party, Shas, would also move across with its seven votes.

It's the first sign of a crack in the Netanyahu forces and is based on the UTJ'S pragmatic assessment that the sitting PM can do no more for them.

"Our alliance with him has been exhausted, certainly in a situation where he does not have 61 [seats]", the source told Channel 12.

"Our interest is to return to being a decisive factor in the Knesset," the source said.

The problem with this scenario is two parties in the Eisenkot bloc have flatly refused to be part of a minority government. And there is a fundamental clash about the draft exemptions between the UCJ and Eisenkot's position.

Workarounds have been suggested. For example, the conscription laws being passed before the UCJ joined the government.

Pragmatically, this is a sign of one of the smaller parties making an early pitch to maximise its bargaining power, rather than a proposal which was being taken very seriously when it was first floated.

But the choice the UCJ seems to be making with this proposal is between some power in the Knesset under an Eisenkot government, and possible exclusion from government if the deadlock is eventually broken by Eisenkot joining Netanyahu in a centre-right government that excludes the far right and the Palestinian parties.

The complexity of the election result could make almost anything possible — apparently even the spectre of an ultra-Orthodox Jewish party and an Islamist Arab party propping up the same government.

Netanyahu has shown a mastery of reducing the complexities of Israeli politics back to the most binary of choices. The battle now is whether his opponents can defeat that mastery which has dominated Israeli politics for much of the past 30 years.