Difficult negotiations lie ahead in Israel after Netanyahu's bloc lost its parliamentary majority

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel's final election results confirmed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s bloc lost its majority of parliamentary seats and that weeks of difficult negotiations among very different parties, from ultra-Orthodox Jewish to secular to Arab-led, lie ahead.

The results released early Friday showed Netanyahu’s bloc won 53 seats in Tuesday's elections. The main opposition bloc won 48. Arab-led parties secured the other 19, a historic showing . Now parties must meet, bargain and seek a way to team up for at least 61 seats in the 120-seat Knesset.

Netanyahu, Israel’s longest serving prime minister, remains in charge.

“Now comes the truly hard part,” centrist politician Yair Lapid said on X, asking Israelis for patience.

Difficult decisions lie ahead. Will the main opposition parties that campaigned hard to unseat the divisive Netanyahu make the politically sensitive choice to partner with Arab-led ones? Or will they toss their vows aside to team up with Netanyahu in a potentially fractious unity government?

Friday is when much of Israel starts winding down for Shabbat, and it was not clear who might be meeting with whom.

The election results still need to be certified and submitted to the president next Wednesday. Then President Isaac Herzog will task someone to form the new government. That could be the leader of the party that received the most votes — Netanyahu — or whoever leaders of the various parties believe is best suited.

If multiple attempts to form a government fail, Israel faces a new election early next year. Herzog this week said he will do everything in his power to avoid that scenario.

In the hours before final results were announced, Netanyahu and his Likud party amplified unsubstantiated allegations that Arab-led parties had “stolen” the election, potentially with foreign assistance.

The opposition quickly accused Netanyahu of demonizing the Arab population, which makes up 20% of the population and showed up at the polls like never before in outrage over Netanyahu’s far-right allies like national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir. His party lost seats.

In Netanyahu's first public comment Friday, he posted on X asserting it is forbidden to form a coalition with Arabs parties.

The head of Israel’s election committee, Supreme Court Justice Noam Sohlberg, had said “serious suspicions” of foreign interference had been brought before him. In a letter to the Shin Bet security agency, Sohlberg said he could not verify the claims but asked the agency to investigate.

Israeli media reported that members of Netanyahu’s party were accusing Qatar — a country that many Israelis view as a patron of Hamas, the Gaza-based militant group. Qatar issued a denial, calling the allegations “ridiculous and dangerous.”

As it announced results, the election commission said the investigation was based on classified intelligence. Acting director general, Dean Livne, did not elaborate but warned that reports about the investigation had been “entirely unfounded.”

“It does not affect the final results that will be submitted to the president, nor does it concern any particular sector of the population,” he said.

By casting doubt on the vote, Netanyahu appeared to be trying to block any potential alliance between his opponents and the Arab-led parties. Netanyahu has suggested that it would be treasonous for chief rival Gadi Eisenkot or others to join with them.

The Shin Bet, seeking to calm tensions, said its investigation was not meant to “cast aspersions” on an entire section of the population that “exercised its right to vote in a democratic and lawful manner.”

The elections committee also sounded a note of caution in a letter written to a concerned member of parliament, saying that “allegations of systematic violations of electoral integrity are baseless.”

The committee wants findings from the Shin Bet within a week.

Even as coalition negotiations begin, the new Knesset is expected to be sworn in Nov. 10. Once it convenes, Eisenkot’s bloc could join forces with the Arab parties to elect a new Knesset speaker, giving them control over the parliamentary agenda and potentially allowing them to advance and pass legislation before a new government is formed.

Already, hundreds of Israelis have been holding rallies urging Eisenkot and others to join forces with the Arab-led parties, a step that has happened only once before, briefly, in 2021.

If Netanyahu loses office, that would set off a cascade of events that critics say he has desperately sought to avoid. He would be taken to account over yearslong corruption allegations, and an inquiry almost certainly would begin into security failures before the devastating Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, attack.