Israel’s deadlocked election could force a new vote in 2027

What happened

For several months prior to the 2026 Israeli election, the contest had been characterized as among the most important in the country’s history. It offered the voters their first opportunity to pass judgment on a government that had presided over the Hamas massacre of more than 800 civilians on Oct. 7, 2023, launched a retaliatory campaign that killed nearly 75,000 Palestinians, civilians as well as combatants, and reduced much of Gaza to rubble. Under the leadership of Benjamin Netanyahu, who has served as prime minister for 19 of the past 30 years, Israel reversed its longstanding security doctrine, creating new security perimeters in Lebanon and Syria. In collaboration with the United States, Mr. Netanyahu launched two attacks against Iran to fulfill his long-held aim of overthrowing the clerical regime, which could achieve the capacity to build nuclear weapons and launch a war of extermination against Israel. Led by extreme right-wing nationalists Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, to whom the prime minister had turned to form his majority, Israel authorized increased settlement activity in the West Bank and allowed attacks against Palestinian civilians to go virtually unchecked. In the wake of these developments, Israel lost public support in the United States, Europe, and around the world.

All this and more was on the table as Israelis streamed to the polls on Oct. 27. The turnout of nearly 78%, the highest since 1999, seemed to presage a major shift in the political balance of power. But with nearly all of the vote counted, the contours of the final results have become clear. Although the government’s 68-seat majority was reduced to a minority of around 53, Netanyahu’s Likud remained the single largest party, and the Jewish opposition failed to score significant gains, increasing its seat total from 46 to just 48. By contrast, the Arab parties mobilized their electorates against the extreme right and nearly doubled their representation in the Knesset, moving from 10 to 19 seats.

The failure of the Jewish opposition to gain ground came as a major disappointment to the Israelis (and foreign observers) who had hoped for a solid anti-Netanyahu majority among Israel’s Jewish citizens. In Gadi Eisenkot, the opposition seemed to have found the perfect leader—a former army chief of staff widely respected as steady, blunt, and honest, a father who had lost a son and two nephews in battle after Oct. 7.

Moreover, Eisenkot is the child of Moroccan immigrants, a part of the community of Jews who had been forced to leave their ancestral lands in the Middle East and North Africa after Israel’s founding in 1948. These Jews, having experienced what they regarded as discrimination and disrespect at the hands of the European Jews who dominated the parties of the center and left, moved into the ranks of right-wing parties, fueling Menachem Begin’s rise to power in the 1970s. The opposition hoped that Eisenkot would be able to attract a larger share of these pivotal voters, which he did to some extent. Shas, a religious party that represents much of the Mizrahi community, fell from 11 seats to just six.

But the gain was not nearly enough. Although Eisenkot’s Yashar party ended up as, by far, the largest in the opposition, several other center-left parties lost ground. At the same time, the small parties of the left, which failed to unite in 2022, did so this year and doubled their representation in the Knesset. Overall, the 2026 election did more to rearrange the opposition than to expand it.

What comes next

In the United States, the party in power either wins or loses. But under Israeli law, a third outcome is possible—the political equivalent of a hung jury—which may well be the outcome this time. At the least, Israel now faces an extended period of uncertainty. 

Once the final vote totals are officially announced on Nov. 4, President Isaac Herzog will consult the leaders of the parties elected to serve in the new Knesset. He will then give the lawmaker of his choice—who will not necessarily be a member of the party receiving the most votes—the first chance to form a winning coalition. The first designee will have 28 days to form a government, which the president may extend by up to 14 days. If that effort fails, a second designee would have up to 28 days. If that effort also falls short, the Knesset will have 21 days during which a majority of 61 members of the Knesset (MKs) can ask the president to designate a lawmaker of their choice, who would then have 14 days to form a government. While a new government typically receives the support of at least 61 MKs, the law does not require an absolute majority, allowing a minority government to take office with plurality support.

Although President Herzog has vowed to exert maximum pressure on the contending forces to generate the compromises needed to form a new government, his efforts are time-limited. If the government formation process fails, the Knesset would be dissolved, and new elections would be held within 90 days. Crucially, Prime Minister Netanyahu would remain in office as the head of a caretaker government until these elections take place.

It will be very difficult for either the prime minister or the opposition to achieve even a plurality victory. Netanyahu reportedly is pressing for a grand coalition with Eisenkot that would allow him to govern without the far-right parties. But it is hard to imagine that Eisenkot would enter into such an arrangement without an explicit agreement ruling out the possibility that Netanyahu would serve as prime minister again during the life of the new government. It is just as hard to imagine the prime minister acceding to such an agreement, and there is no evidence that enough members of Likud would break ranks to allow it to go forward. As for the Arab parties: They will not support Netanyahu, even tacitly.

The opposition’s prospects of forming a government are not much brighter. During the campaign, Eisenkot stated that he would accept only “Zionist” parties—ones that recognize Israel as a Jewish and democratic state—as coalition partners, and he made it clear that no Arab party meets this test. It is barely possible that he could form a government representing a minority of the Jewish vote with the tacit support of the Arab parties, although recent reports suggest that support for this course within at least one of the Arab parties is limited. Even if a minority government did form, its inherent fragility would probably doom it to a short life.

The Democrats, Israel’s only remaining party of the left, strongly favor a coalition with the Arab parties. So do left-leaning American Jewish organizations. A principled case can be made that the exclusion of Arab parties from any share of government power violates the letter and spirit of Israel’s Declaration of Independence. And there is a practical argument as well: Excluding parties that now command one-sixth of the Knesset seats is a formula for permanent instability.

Still, Eisenkot would pay a huge price for going back on his word, just as Naftali Bennett did in 2021 by including Ra’am in the governing coalition, which he said during the election that he would not do. And Eisenkot’s declaration that neither Arab party meets his “Zionist” criteria is well-founded. If the Arab parties seized the moment to accept Israel as a Jewish and democratic state, they would remove the principal obstacle to their inclusion in a majority coalition. It would be interesting to see what would happen if Eisenkot publicly asked them to take this step. If they agreed, Israeli politics could be transformed. But until they do, the dysfunctional status quo will persist.

This is not to say that no changes are in the offing. When the new Knesset is seated in November, the anti-Netanyahu majority will have the power to elect a new speaker and pass legislation calling for a nonpartisan commission of inquiry into the events of Oct. 7, as Israel has done in the past after major policy failures. Still, the most likely outcome of the 2026 election is another election in early 2027.

Why this matters

This is a fraught moment for Israel to experience an extended period of uncertainty and instability. Multiple reports suggest that Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Trump are planning to resume an all-out war with Iran in the near future. It remains to be seen whether this is a venture that an Israeli leader who has lost his majority can undertake without triggering a profound internal crisis.

Even without such a war, Israel faces a sea of difficulties. The government’s failure to restrain settler violence has generated an international agreement on financial and travel sanctions, and the British government is placing new restrictions on arms exports to Israel. In the United States, the potential Democratic takeover of the House of Representatives (and possibly the Senate as well) will likely change the tone and substance of U.S.-Israeli relations. A phaseout of U.S. financial aid is all but certain, and frustrated Democrats will probably push for much tougher restraints on the export of key weapons systems to Israel. Beyond this, congressional pressure on Israel to change course in the West Bank could intensify, and a weakened Trump administration may not resist this shift as strongly as Israel’s right-wing U.S. supporters would want. Remarks from key figures such as U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Thomas Barrack, who also serves as a special envoy to several Middle Eastern countries, suggest that the administration may be reevaluating its security arrangements throughout the region.

In short, this is the worst possible time for Israel to experience an extended period without a strong, stable government. But the results of the election make it hard to see how Israeli leaders can form such a government anytime soon—unless all sides are willing to retreat from long-held demands and heavily defended red lines.