Israel has voted, but the coalition deadlock is just beginning - analysis

An engaged nation went to the polls in unprecedented numbers on Tuesday and spoke. It will now take weeks, if not months, to figure out exactly what it said.

The exit polls released at 10 p.m. by Channels 11, 12, and 13 all showed the so-called change bloc ahead of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s bloc, but Likud emerging as the largest party.

Neither camp, however, appeared to have the partners needed to form the government it promised.

The distinction matters. Taken together, the parties opposed to the outgoing government won a clear majority of the projected seats. But those parties do not constitute a single bloc willing to govern together.

The Arab parties are central to that gap.

According to the exit polls, they won a combined 17 to 18 seats, making them one of the election’s biggest stories. Their apparent strength helped deny Netanyahu a majority. Yet the change bloc’s commitments against relying on them also complicate its ability to replace him.

The Arab parties’ seats count just as much as anyone else’s. The obstacle is other parties’ willingness to enter a governing arrangement with them.

The result, if it holds, is a clear parliamentary majority against the outgoing government – 1,116 days after October 7 – without a clear agreement on what should replace it.

Expect Netanyahu, Eisenkot both to claim victory

Both camps asked the public for a decisive outcome. Neither got everything it wanted.

Netanyahu apparently emerged at the head of the largest party, but without a clear path to a coalition. Yashar leader Gadi Eisenkot emerged at the head of the larger change bloc, but with a gap between the seats opposing Netanyahu and the partners available to form a government.

Expect both to claim victory.

Netanyahu will point to Likud’s lead over Yashar, which trailed it by two or three seats in the exit polls. Eisenkot will point to the balance between the blocs.

Netanyahu knows better than most that the largest party does not necessarily form the government. In 2009, Tzipi Livni’s Kadima won one more seat than Likud. Netanyahu became prime minister because he could assemble a coalition and she could not.

The question now is whether Eisenkot can do what Netanyahu did then.

That will require finding a way around commitments that, during the campaign, sounded unequivocal.

Eisenkot set four conditions for prospective coalition partners that the Arab parties would be unlikely to meet. His camp will now have to confront the consequences of those conditions: a majority for replacing Netanyahu may exist on paper without being available around the cabinet table.

Even a willingness to rely on Mansour Abbas’s Ra’am party would not, on the figures emerging Tuesday night, necessarily close the gap. Support from the Joint List would raise a further set of political obstacles.

The Arab parties, meanwhile, have voters and demands of their own. They cannot simply be penciled into someone else’s coalition arithmetic as though their only function were to provide the missing seats.

Their projected gains came as a result of a strong determination to ensure that another right-wing government does not emerge.

But helping to deny the outgoing coalition a majority and helping to install its replacement are two different achievements. The first appears within reach. The second will depend on negotiations and decisions still to come.

Another route for Eisenkot would be to bring in the two haredi (ultra-Orthodox) parties, projected together to win 12 seats.

That could provide a majority. It would also give those parties considerable leverage over a government whose prospective partners have promised meaningful changes to haredi conscription.

The difficulty is obvious. Bringing the haredi parties into the government might solve the coalition arithmetic while making one of its central policy commitments considerably harder to fulfill.

There is also an option that jumps off the page: a government comprising Likud, Yashar, Naftali Bennett’s B’Yachad, and Yisrael Beytenu.

On the projected figures, those parties would together have 67 seats, without the haredi parties, the Arab parties, or the parties on the hard-right (Otzma Yehudit and the Religious Zionist Party) or the hard-left (the Democrats).
Numerically straightforward. Politically, anything but.

If Netanyahu remains at Likud’s helm, such a government would require his opponents to abandon their promises not to serve under him. It would also require agreement on who leads and on what terms.

A coalition that looks doable on paper is anything in real life. That is the central problem emerging from Tuesday’s exit polls.

There are combinations that produce a majority. There are fewer combinations that the parties have said they are prepared to join.

Weeks following election will test final or negotiating positions

The coming weeks will test whether those positions are final or negotiating positions.

First, however, the votes must be counted. Exit polls provide the opening frame for coalition negotiations, not the final count on which they will rest.

But if the broad picture holds, the question will shift quickly from how Israelis voted to what their elected representatives are prepared to do with those votes.

More specifically: which campaign promises will survive contact with the results?

Throughout the campaign, parties told voters whom they would sit with, whom they would never sit with, and what conditions they would insist upon before joining a government.

Those promises matter. A voter is entitled to know whether a ballot cast for one party might help put someone else in the prime minister’s chair.

But when enough parties rule out enough other parties, the result can be a Knesset with no workable majority.

Someone will now have to decide whether the greater obligation is to honor a campaign commitment or to compromise sufficiently to allow a government to be formed.

Those arguing for compromise can be expected to call it national responsibility. Those opposing it will call it a betrayal.

Netanyahu cannot in any way point to these projections and claim that the country gave him a vote of confidence.

His opponents can point to a majority that emerged against his government, but still have to demonstrate that they can turn it into a government of their own.

The politicians now have to decide what they are prepared to change: their conditions, their partners, or their promises.

Failing that, they may eventually ask the voters to try again.