The vote count for the October 2026 Knesset election has been completed. Postal votes and votes from Israelis living overseas still need to be counted, but the projections are clear. Netanyahu’s major governing bloc is expected to win 53 seats, while Eisenkot’s Opposition is on track to win 48. Both Jewish-led blocs will fall short of the 61 seats needed to form government. So, a familiar story of electoral impasse emerges with the wily Netanyahu once again engaged in Machiavellian machinations to return to government. The impasse can be easily broken if either bloc embraces the Arab-led parties. They are on track to win an unprecedented 19 seats. Both major blocs have effectively ruled out giving the Arab-led parties the privileged role of a kingmaker, thus disenfranchising the representation of 21 percent of the Israeli population.
The intransigent attitudes of the major Jewish-led blocs towards their Arab counterparts reveal, once again, a fundamental contradiction of Israeli politics. The ethnonationalist state of Israel can either be Jewish or democratic. It cannot be both.
