Israelis voted on Tuesday, and on Wednesday neither of the main camps is close to a majority. With 84.5% of ballot boxes counted as of midday, partial results from the Central Elections Committee gave Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's bloc 54 seats and the bloc led by Gadi Eisenkot of the new Yashar party 49, the Times of Israel reported. The Arab-led Joint List and Ra'am together held 17. A government needs 61 of the Knesset's 120 seats.

Likud remains the largest single party at 27 seats, with Yashar second at 21 or 22 depending on the tally, according to Ynet's running count and Reuters' live results. The numbers can still move. Double-envelope ballots, including soldiers' votes, are counted later, and several smaller lists are hovering below the 3.25% threshold, which shifts seats when a party falls short.

What makes this result hard is less the gap between the blocs than who could fill it. Election-night exit polls had the two camps roughly even, at 51 seats each in two of them, and the Arab-led parties' 16 to 19 seats would decide the outcome if either side were willing to rely on them, Al Jazeera noted. Netanyahu has called a coalition with Arab parties "shameful," and leading figures in the Jewish-led opposition have also ruled out governing with them. That leaves combinations that add up on paper but have no clear political route to a governing majority.

The bloc lines themselves are familiar. Netanyahu's side includes Likud, Shas, United Torah Judaism, Religious Zionism and Otzma Yehudit. Eisenkot's includes Yashar, the Together list associated with Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid, Avigdor Liberman's Yisrael Beytenu, and Yair Golan's Democrats.

The formal timeline is set. Official results are due Nov. 4. The president then gives the mandate to the lawmaker seen as most likely to build a majority, who gets 28 days plus a possible 14-day extension. If that fails, another lawmaker can try, and if no one succeeds Israel could go back to the polls, as it did repeatedly from 2019 to 2022. Netanyahu stays on as caretaker prime minister in the meantime.

Why it matters

Israel is a party to the war with Iran and a central player in regional diplomacy. A long coalition standoff, or a repeat election, would leave a caretaker government in charge while talks to end that conflict continue. This report describes vote counts and stated positions only and takes no side.

Sources

• The Times of Israel, live blog, Oct. 28, 2026 (partial Central Elections Committee results)
• The Times of Israel, "With 84% of ballots counted, pro-Netanyahu bloc at 54 seats, Eisenkot-led bloc at 49, Arab parties at 17"
• Ynet News, "With 2,950,493 Votes Counted: Netanyahu Bloc at 55 Seats, Eisenkot at 49"
• Reuters, "Live 2026 Israel election results"
• Al Jazeera, "Netanyahu or Eisenkot? Can you form Israel's next coalition government?" (Oct. 28, 2026)

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