Israel election 2026: certified results, Herzog's consultations and the fight to form a government

Certification day: the results become official

Israel's Central Elections Committee certified the results of the general election held on 27 October 2026 on Wednesday, 4 November 2026, and submitted them to President Isaac Herzog, who accepted them as legally binding. The move closed the formal counting phase of the election and opened the political phase: deciding who gets the first chance to form the next government.

The committee said that after a thorough investigation of all parties' claims of fraud, it had found no evidence of irregularities that compromised the integrity of the election or affected its results. Its acting director general, Dean Livne, said every complaint had been examined individually and that the results accurately reflected voters' choices. The committee said a review of 9,069 polling stations found no irregularities that changed the outcome.

The certification was not unanimous. In the committee's five-member presidium, representatives of Yesh Atid and Blue and White voted to ratify the results, while Likud and Shas abstained, and the committee's chairman, Supreme Court Justice Noam Sohlberg, cast the deciding vote. Justice Sohlberg said at the official results ceremony at the president's residence that those casting doubt on the results pose a real danger to Israel's democracy, and that election results, as lawfully determined, are binding on everyone. He also warned that public trust in the electoral process is easy to destroy, yet very difficult to repair.

Herzog, receiving the results, urged the political parties to accept that not every commitment and promise made during the campaign could be fulfilled, and to avoid new elections. He said that with no clear winner, the country needed originality and creativity, courage and goodwill, so that the State of Israel emerges the winner. His acceptance of the results dealt a blow to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's efforts to discredit a vote in which his religious-nationalist bloc lost its parliamentary majority while Arab-led parties made historic gains.

The numbers: 53, 48 and 19 — and the 61-seat line

The certified results leave the 120-seat Knesset divided into three blocs, none of which can govern alone. Netanyahu's bloc won 53 seats, the opposition bloc led by former military chief Gadi Eisenkot won 48 seats, and the Arab-led parties, Ra'am and the Joint List, won a record 19 seats between them. A bloc needs 61 seats, a majority of the 120, to form a government.

The arithmetic is what makes the coming weeks so difficult. Netanyahu's bloc is eight seats short of a majority, and Eisenkot's bloc is 13 seats short. That means both men need support from outside their own blocs, and the 19 seats held by the Arab-led parties are the largest single pool of seats available to either side. The deadlock raises the possibility of a unity government between the two rivals, or an alliance between Eisenkot and some of the Arab-led parties.

This is not a new pattern for Israel. The country held five elections between 2019 and 2022 after repeated deadlocks, and it took Netanyahu, who at the time had a better showing by his Likud party, 58 days to form a government after the last election in November 2022. The current impasse is therefore familiar, but it is unfolding in a more charged atmosphere, because the result has been publicly challenged by the sitting prime minister's own allies.

The October election was already covered in an earlier DailyScope article, which described the no-majority picture on election night. What has changed since then is the formal status of the result: it is now certified, legally binding, and in the president's hands. The argument is no longer about who won the most seats, but about whether the certified result will be accepted as the basis for forming a government.

Herzog's consultations: who he met, and how the choice works

Under Israel's system, the president consults the leaders of the parties elected to the Knesset and then tasks the member of the Knesset he believes is most likely to be able to form a coalition government. The choice is not automatically the leader of the largest party. Herzog began the consultations on Wednesday, 4 November, and they were scheduled to run over two days.

In a break from custom, Herzog met the smaller parties' leaders first, starting with Religious Zionism, followed by Shas and Yisrael Beytenu, according to The Times of Israel, as reported by Al Jazeera. The Indian Express live coverage reported that his first meeting on Wednesday afternoon was with the far-right Religious Zionism party, led by Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, and that he then spoke with Avigdor Liberman's Yisrael Beytenu and the ultra-Orthodox Shas party. The remaining factions were expected to meet the president on Thursday, ending with Eisenkot's Yashar party and, finally, Likud.

Each party is asked to name its choice for prime minister. Herzog said in a post on X that he had received the parties' recommendations regarding the identity of the Knesset member upon whom the task of forming the government should be assigned, and that the talks would continue on Thursday. Once the consultations end, Herzog will choose the candidate he considers best placed to assemble a coalition, almost certainly Netanyahu or Eisenkot. Reports differ on the exact day he will announce his decision: the Indian Express reported that he has until 11 November to finish the talks and name a candidate, while a Haaretz headline said he would decide on Sunday, 8 November.

The consultation process has already produced clear signals. Religious Zionism, Otzma Yehudit, Shas and Likud were expected to recommend Netanyahu, while Yashar, the Democrats, B'Yachad and Yisrael Beytenu were expected to recommend Eisenkot, according to the Indian Express. United Torah Judaism had not said whom it would back, and Likud was reportedly pressing it to choose Netanyahu. Before the consultations, the five opposition party heads, Eisenkot of Yashar, Naftali Bennett of B'Yachad, Yair Lapid of Yesh Atid, Yair Golan of the Democrats and Avigdor Liberman of Yisrael Beytenu, agreed at a 70-minute meeting in Herzliya on Tuesday to coordinate efforts to replace the Netanyahu-led government with a national emergency government, according to Al Jazeera as reported by the Indian Express.

The 'stolen election' claims — and Herzog's public rebuke

Netanyahu and his supporters have repeatedly claimed, without evidence, that Arab-led parties stole the election, possibly with foreign help. The election commission's finding directly contradicts that claim, but the allegation has continued to be pressed, including inside the president's own consultation meetings.

The sharpest exchange came on Thursday, 5 November, when the far-right Otzma Yehudit party, led by National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, used its consultation with Herzog to press claims that the election was stolen, despite the president's acceptance of the certified results as legally binding. The party recommended Netanyahu to form the next government, while calling for an investigation into alleged interference in the election. Heritage Minister Amichay Eliyahu said before the meeting that investigating alleged election manipulation would be the party's main demand, adding, in his words, that of course the election was stolen. Negev and Galilee Development Minister Yitzhak Wasserlauf also claimed during the meeting that the election had been bought with money.

Herzog pushed back in the meeting. He told the Otzma Yehudit lawmakers that the allegations remained speculative and that no information had been presented to substantiate the claim, saying that everything at this stage is speculation, and that there is no information detailing any such amount. He urged the lawmakers to avoid generalisations and exercise caution, adding that sometimes very broad claims are made that ultimately end with a whimper.

Herzog also suggested the party's allegations were intended to divert attention from its own role in the historically high turnout among Arab voters. He asked the lawmakers whether their entire campaign on this issue was intended to divert attention from the fact that masses of Arab citizens of Israel went out to vote in response to the conduct of the party and its leader, referring to Ben-Gvir. The president said a special investigative team comprising the Shin Bet, the police and the State Prosecutor's Office had been established to examine the allegations, and that investigators were pursuing the matter with full force and would leave no stone unturned.

Ben-Gvir had earlier called on Shin Bet chief David Zini to arrest all Arab party leaders and question them in Shin Bet cells, even without the attorney general's approval, and demanded a freeze on certification and on forming a government. Writing on X, he said the elections were stolen, the results are fraudulent, and foreign countries interfered, and that his party would therefore vote against approving the results. Likud legislator Amit Halevi resigned from the elections committee, alleging that some lawmakers bought their seats with bribe money and that the vote reflected the choice of the rulers of Qatar, Iran or Turkey. Qatar has rejected claims that it funded Arab-led parties, calling them disinformation. Haaretz reported that Likud had weighed refusing to recognise the results altogether, a move that would be unprecedented in Israel and would likely be swiftly overturned by the courts. Justice Sohlberg rejected a Likud demand to discuss the results before certifying them, writing that no party, however distinguished or senior, could withhold their publication.

The Shin Bet investigation: what is known and what is not

Running alongside the certification is a separate investigation by the Shin Bet, Israel's domestic intelligence service, into allegations of foreign interference in the election. The investigation is still ongoing, and it is important to separate what the agency has said from what has actually been established.

In a private meeting of the election committee on Wednesday, Justice Sohlberg read out an intelligence assessment from the Shin Bet saying the agency believed there had been a widespread phenomenon involving the influx of substantial funds into Israel from foreign states, including from countries hostile toward Israel. The Shin Bet provided no evidence to explain its assertion, according to The Hindu, which reported that the Associated Press obtained a transcript of the assessment from a person who attended the meeting. Al Jazeera reported, citing The Times of Israel, that the Shin Bet told the committee that intelligence pointed to widespread foreign funding and influence operations involving thousands of people and possibly more. Law enforcement sources told Haaretz they were unaware of any operation of that size.

The committee has previously said that while claims about foreign actors seeking to influence the election are serious and under investigation, it does not believe any such interference affected the results, even if it had happened. Justice Sohlberg reiterated that position on Wednesday, saying that at this stage these are merely suspicions, and that even if they are substantiated, the scope of their potential impact is limited. He has also said that even if foreign interference were confirmed, it would not undermine the overall result.

The Shin Bet had requested approval from Israel's attorney general on Tuesday, 3 November, to interrogate several elected officials as part of its separate probe, including the Ra'am party leader Mansour Abbas and other senior Arab lawmakers, according to Israeli media reports cited by The Hindu. The request was sharply rejected. Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara said it is not permissible to interrogate citizens or elected officials without evidence to justify such action. The Joint List condemned the request, calling it a campaign of incitement by Netanyahu and his allies designed to delegitimise the Arab vote. Al Jazeera also reported that the Shin Bet is seeking to question four Arab politicians but has not given prosecutors evidence regarding three of them. Likud accused the attorney general of blocking the interrogations, while she effectively accused Shin Bet chief David Zini, a Netanyahu appointee, of undermining the rule of law, according to The Times of Israel.

Herzog said the Shin Bet investigation into possible foreign interference should play out, but cautioned that Arab Israeli voters must not be smeared. He said he had great respect for the country's Palestinian minority, which makes up about 20 percent of the population, and added that he condemned the coarseness and racist expressions heard recently. The distinction matters: an investigation into suspected interference is under way, but no evidence has been publicly presented showing that the result was changed, and the body legally responsible for the election has certified the result as valid.

The Arab parties hold the balance

The most consequential development of the consultation phase has come from the Arab-led parties themselves. On Thursday, 5 November, the Joint List alliance of Arab-led parties said it would back Eisenkot to form a new government. In a statement, the alliance said it would inform President Herzog that evening of its decision to recommend that Eisenkot be tasked with forming the government. Earlier, Ra'am, an Arab-led party with eight seats, said it would also recommend Eisenkot.

If the Joint List's 11 lawmakers formally submit their recommendation, Eisenkot is expected to have the backing of 67 lawmakers, exceeding the 61-seat majority threshold in the Knesset, according to Al Jazeera. That figure is an expectation based on the recommendations, not a vote in the Knesset itself, and the exact endorsement totals for Netanyahu remain uncertain: his bloc holds 53 seats, but Degel HaTorah, which holds four of United Torah Judaism's seven seats, said it would recommend neither candidate, after breaking with Netanyahu over his coalition's failure to pass legislation exempting Haredi men from military service, according to The Times of Israel as reported by Al Jazeera.

Whether that backing turns into a government is a different question. Al Jazeera's correspondent in Ramallah, Nour Odeh, noted that Eisenkot needs the votes of the Palestinian-Israeli parties, parties he does not want to partner with, and that he will most likely have to reach some sort of deal, for them to abstain at the very least, to make sure his government is sworn in. The Indian Express reported that the opposition leaders remain split over cooperation with the Arab parties, even as they agreed to back Eisenkot.

The political sensitivity of any such arrangement is clear from the language used on both sides. Netanyahu has called a deal with the Arab parties a shame and disgrace, according to the Indian Express. Likud warned after the vote that Zionist parties cooperating with the Arab bloc would be dangerous to Israel. Eisenkot, for his part, has accused Netanyahu of mounting a pogrom against democracy by casting doubt on legitimate ballots and turning the security services on parties led by Palestinian citizens of Israel, according to The Guardian as reported by the Indian Express. Meanwhile, Ahmad Tibi, a senior member of the Arab Joint List, told the Associated Press that his bloc is willing to break with decades of precedent, saying they want to do things they did not do in the past to remove what he called a criminal government. For the Joint List, any partnership would mean backing a government unlikely to end Israel's wars or curb settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank, while for Netanyahu's opponents it would mean aligning with parties that not only criticise Israeli policies but reject its identity as a Jewish state, according to the Indian Express.

What happens next: the mandate, the deadline and the risk of another election

Once the consultations end, Herzog will give a contender 28 days to form a government, with a potential 14-day extension. That means the nominee will have up to six weeks to turn recommendations into a coalition that can win a confidence vote in the Knesset. Netanyahu stays on as caretaker leader until a new government wins that vote.

Three broad outcomes are possible. The first is a government led by Eisenkot, built on opposition parties plus some form of support, inside or outside the coalition, from the Arab-led parties. The second is a government led by Netanyahu, which would require him to hold his own bloc together and find additional support despite falling eight seats short. The third is a unity government between the two rivals, an option the deadlock has raised, though neither side has publicly committed to it. Herzog has urged both sides to show creativity and goodwill, and to accept that not every campaign promise can be fulfilled.

If no one is able to form a governing coalition, Israel would hold another election early next year, according to Al Jazeera and The Hindu. That would be the sixth election since 2019, and it is the outcome Herzog has explicitly urged the parties to avoid. The timetable under Israel's Basic Laws means the formation of a government could take several months, and if no one succeeds, a fresh election follows.

For now, the certified result has settled one question and left the harder one open. The election is legally over, the numbers are fixed at 53, 48 and 19, and the fraud claims have been examined and rejected by the body responsible for the vote. But no one has yet been given the mandate, no coalition agreement exists, and the endorsements counted so far are recommendations to the president, not votes in the Knesset. The next step is Herzog's decision on who gets the first chance, and then the hard bargaining over a government that can command 61 votes.

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