The Economist (“Israel’s voters deny Binyamin Netanyahu a majority“):

The Israeli electorate seems to have firmly rejected Binyamin Netanyahu and his hard-right coalition. Exit polls on October 27th suggest that the prime minister’s Likud party has lost around a quarter of the 32 seats it won in the 2022 election and that his coalition will fall short of a majority in the Knesset, Israel’s 120-seat parliament, by at least ten seats. Yet Mr Netanyahu, who has been in office for a total of 19 years and hoped to form an unprecedented seventh government, does not appear ready to accept defeat.

The Economist’s average of exit polls give the opposition parties 70 seats in the next Knesset, with 50 for the Netanyahu bloc. Yashar, a newish centre-right party led by Gadi Eisenkot, a former general, won slightly fewer seats than Likud, but Mr Netanyahu had to cannibalise his own coalition partners to secure the largest share of the vote for his party.

Mr Eisenkot will, nonetheless, struggle to form a government. Turnout among Israel’s Arabs was much higher than usual, and they seem to be on track to win as many as 18 seats. That would be a record for Arab representation in the Knesset. The opposition will need at least one of the Arab parties to hold a majority. But Mr Eisenkot has been reluctant to say that he would include them in any coalition. One of his potential partners, Avigdor Lieberman, leader of the nationalist Yisrael Beitenu (Israel our Home) party, has categorically ruled out even relying on their support for a minority government.

Exit polls have been wrong in the past, most famously in 1996, when Mr Netanyahu appeared to have lost, only to emerge victorious the following morning. But the margin this time seems too wide. Most votes should be counted by Wednesday morning, with perhaps 10% not counted until Thursday (mostly votes cast by soldiers and others who did not vote in their usual polling stations). Under Israel’s proportional representation system, small movements in parties’ share of the vote can affect how seats are allocated and determine whether a party crosses the electoral threshold of 3.25%. This could change the overall picture dramatically. At present, though, none of the 11 parties that have won seats seems on the brink.

One conclusion is almost beyond doubt. Mr Netanyahu will not be able to put together a coalition similar to the one that has ruled Israel for the past four years. The prime minister received a drubbing from voters first and foremost because of the attacks by Hamas on October 7th 2023, which happened on his watch. He did everything in his power to delay the election until the last date allowed by law, but nothing has revived his popularity.

AP (“Israelis await final election results as Netanyahu remains far from defeated“):

Anxious Israelis watched as election results took shape on Wednesday after many voters delivered a rebuke to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ’s far-right government, with the highest turnout in over a quarter-century. Exit polls suggested there was no clear winner and that weeks of negotiating could lie ahead.

Arab-led parties appear to have made a historic showing, but it’s not clear if other opponents of Netanyahu’s government would form a coalition with them for a majority in the next parliament. Issues around the Palestinians and their descendants remain incredibly sensitive in Israel.

Netanyahu was defiant early Wednesday as he seeks to remain the country’s longest-serving prime minister. He dismissed the idea of a partnership with Arab parties — whose constituents make up 20% of Israel’s population — as treasonous.

“We must establish a strong, right-wing, nationalist government,” Netanyahu said. “We must not endanger Israel and establish a government that relies on anti-Zionist Arab parties.”

His top challenger, centrist former military chief Gadi Eisenkot, has left the door open to partnering with Arab parties under certain conditions, including their recognition of Israel as a Jewish state and of Hamas as an extremist group. Some likely partners, however, have ruled that out. Whether they will change their minds to force Netanyahu from office remains to be seen.

With 66% of votes counted, Netanyahu’s Likud party has 21% and Eisenkot’s Yashar party has 16.1%. Either would need to form a coalition. The count from Israel’s Central Elections Committee does not indicate how many seats each will have in parliament, the 120-seat Knesset. Likud’s share remained lower than in the previous election in 2022, when it was 23.4%.

NYT (“Israel’s President, Isaac Herzog, Faces a Difficult Choice“):

Isaac Herzog, Israel’s president, has a largely ceremonial role — except after national elections, when it is his responsibility to choose a potential prime minister and then tasks that person with trying to form a government.

Since Israelis vote for a party or parties rather than an individual, the person who might lead the country is selected after the ballots are counted and parliamentary seats are allocated to parties according to their proportion of the vote. The president — who is separately elected by the Knesset, Israel’s single-chamber legislature — then convenes party leaders to hear their recommendations for prime minister before choosing someone to form a government.

While the president can choose the leader of the party that won the most votes, he can also select another leader who seems more likely to assemble a coalition that can secure a vote of confidence in the Knesset.

n 2009, President Shimon Peres chose Benjamin Netanyahu — the current prime minister — even though his right-wing Likud party had won fewer votes than the centrist Kadima party.

Early exit polls on Wednesday suggest a tight race between the far-right coalition led by Mr. Netanyahu and the center-right opposition bloc that has called for change. The opposition bloc includes the Yashar party, led by Gadi Eisenkot. But Mr. Netanyahu’s Likud party appears to have received the most votes, which means he will argue that he should be selected as prime minister.

Mr. Herzog, whose job is to stay above the political fray, is expected to face a difficult decision. He must discern whether the votes show that the majority of Israelis demanded change or if they indicated a preference for another Netanyahu government.

Mr. Netanyahu’s governing coalition, the most right-wing in Israel’s history, has drawn international condemnation, heightened tensions with allies and divided Israelis. Mr. Herzog has repeatedly criticized what he has called “a terrible process of brutalization” creeping into Israeli society, citing violence by Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank against Palestinians and the abuse of detainees in Israeli custody, which some far-right ministers in Mr. Netanyahu’s coalition are accused of encouraging.

The Israeli president, who can grant criminal pardons and commute sentences, has also faced pressure from President Trump, who has called on him to pardon Mr. Netanyahu as he stands trial on corruption charges. Mr. Herzog has respectfully resisted, saying that “Israel is a sovereign state governed by the rule of law.”

Mr. Netanyahu has long resisted calls for an independent commission of inquiry into the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack on Israel that set off a devastating war in Gaza. He has also refused to take responsibility for any failures that led to the attack, angering many Israelis.

But if the president taps Mr. Eisenkot, a former military chief whose son was killed in the war in Gaza and who has vowed to launch a state inquiry into the 2023 attack, there is no guarantee he will succeed in forming a government. The center-right opposition bloc would need to ally with the country’s Arab parties, which appear to have secured more parliamentary seats than ever before. The bloc’s leaders have not agreed to such an alliance, while Mr. Netanyahu has effectively ruled out including Arab parties in a governing coalition.

Both the far-right and far-left blocs face obstacles to assembling a governing majority. They would need agreements with other parties and factions that may be politically unpalatable, or even impossible.

The outcome, as usual in Israeli elections, is hard to assess. It’s hard to see it as anything other than a rebuke for Netanyahu and his policies. And yet his party still received a plurality of the vote. Eisenkot underperformed expectations.

I won’t even hazard a guess as to what Herzog will do. But there will be strong pressure not to allow a government that relies on Arab parties, which would undermine Israel’s identity as a Zionist state.

UPDATE: I neglected to add that it’s rather odd that the reporting is fixated on the fact that neither Netanyahu’s nor Eisenkot’s parties were able to achieve an outright majority. No election in Israel’s history has done so; it’s simply the nature of their system.