Netanyahu and rival face tough battle for power with most votes counted

• No clear winner : With most votes counted, Israel is facing political deadlock , with neither Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu nor his main rival, ex-military chief Gadi Eisenkot, within reach of a governing majority in Israel’s parliament, the Knesset.

• Latest numbers: Recent projections have Netanyahu’s bloc taking 53 seats, a drop from the 68-seat coalition he led in the outgoing Knesset. The opposition bloc is set to take 48 seats, while Arab parties are projected to win a record 19 seats.

• Complicated route: The opposition bloc and Arab parties have a clear majority, but some of Eisenkot’s allies oppose working with Arab parties. Several scenarios are possible, while Israel’s president called on parties to keep an “open mind” to avoid more elections.

Election officials are in the final stretches of the vote count and with more than 85% of the ballots in, Israel seems set for a political deadlock . Complete results are expected on Thursday , but it is now certain that neither Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu nor his main rival, ex-military chief Gadi Eisenkot , will secure the 61 seats needed for a governing majority in the 120-seat parliament, the Knesset.

Netanyahu defiant despite losses: The incumbent prime minister said his bloc had the support of a “decisive majority among the Zionist and Jewish public.” The right-wing grouping is set to take 53 seats , a loss of 15 compared to the last election in 2022. Still, Netanyahu’s Likud party is expected to be the biggest in the parliament.

No clear path for the challenger: Eisenkot’s opposition bloc is now projected to get 48 seats in the Knesset, 13 short of the majority. To govern, he would likely need to rely on the support of Israel’s Arab parties , a long-standing political taboo among most Jewish parties. Still, Eisenkot framed his result as a win, saying “the public has voted for change.”

Arab parties surge: The two parties representing Arab citizens of Israel, Ra’am and the Joint List , are set to secure about 19 seats – the highest ever. Arab voters make up about 20% of the Israeli electorate, but have traditionally voted at lower rates than Jewish Israelis. This time around, they showed up in huge numbers.

Attempt to delegitimize: Netanyahu’s Likud party has tried to delegitimize the Arab vote, and on Wednesday accused the two parties of “stealing” the election. Election integrity monitoring was in place at all polling stations throughout voting hours, officials said. The Central Elections Committee’s systems received approximately 10,000 reports for review concerning suspected election integrity incidents and had said that all cases had been addressed and closed. On Wednesday evening, the committee issued a new statement saying it had received Likud’s inquiry, and was examining it.

Record turnout: Nearly 5.7 million voters cast their ballot out of approximately 7.3 million eligible voters on Election Day – meaning a turnout of 77.7%, the highest percentage since 1999, according to the Central Elections Committee.

What’s next: Once the count is finalized, the political horse trading will begin. The president will talk to the elected parties and then ask the person who has the best chance of building a viable coalition to form a government. They’d have six weeks to cobble together a majority and if they fail, the runner-up will be invited to try. If they can’t do it either, and if the Knesset cannot put forth another candidate, Israel could hold elections all over again.

It’s 5:45 p.m. in Jerusalem and with just over 85% of the ballots counted, these are the latest projections of how the 120 seats in the Knesset might be divided based on the votes tallied so far:

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing bloc is set to take 53 seats, eight short of a majority and 15 fewer than it has in the outgoing parliament. Netanyahu’s party is the biggest one of the group, projected to secure 26 seats.

The opposition bloc, led by Gadi Eisenkot, now has 48 seats. Eisenkot’s party Yashar is set to get 21 seats.

Arab parties – Ra’am and the Joint List – have 19 seats.

The last batch of ballots to be counted will be the 430,000 to 480,000 “double envelopes” which are used by voters who exempt from having to vote in their place of residents. These include votes by soldiers, diplomats, patients in hospitals, prisoners and evacuees.

Ever since polls closed on Tuesday night, Israel’s Central Elections Committee (CEC) has been counting the votes and updating the results. But the process is not instantaneous, and there are still hours of work ahead.

By Wednesday evening, the committee is expected to finish counting all of the election day ballots that were submitted at polling places. When that process wraps up, the focus turns to the double envelope ballots. A group of voters — soldiers, prisoners, hospital patients and staff, diplomats abroad and voters with disabilities — cast their ballot inside a double envelope.

These voters place their anonymous vote in an inner envelope sealed inside an outer envelope with their personal details. The double envelopes are transported to the CEC, where staff check each outer envelope against the registered polling stations to verify that a voter didn’t vote twice. Only then are the inner envelopes separated and counted.

The CEC estimated that there could be between 430,000 and 480,000 double envelopes to count, a process that will take time. Only when that process concludes — potentially sometime Thursday morning or afternoon — will we know the final results of Israel’s election. But even that only tells us the size of the parties. Whether there is an outright winner will still depend on coalition building and political negotiations.

With most votes counted, Israel’s election has produced no clear winner, setting up weeks - and possibly months - of political uncertainty. Several outcomes and scenarios may come into play.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing bloc has lost the majority it held in the outgoing parliament. With about 53 seats projected, it falls short of the 61-seat threshold needed to form a government in the 120-seat Knesset.

Netanyahu could try to recruit one of the opposition parties to join his government, but they all ruled out cooperation with him during campaigning. Politicians who have joined him in recent years have often found themselves significantly weakened with little substantive influence over policy. Netanyahu could also try to seek individual opposition defectors, but that would require several defections to close the gap.

The opposition, on the other hand, has won a majority in the parliament, but their path to power is crossed by ideological, national and personal divisions.

Netanyahu’s main rival Gadi Eisenkot is projected to win 21 seats, but he cannot reach the 61-seat majority without the two Arab parties, Ra’am and the Joint list, who are projected to win a record 19 seats. On Wednesday, Yair Golan, the leader of the left-wing Democrats party, called on his partners to count the Arab parties as part of the bloc, rejecting what he called Netanyahu’s “racist division between Jewish and Arab votes.”

But two of Eisenkot’s right-wing allies oppose forming a government that includes the Arab parties or a minority government that relies on their outside support.

Given the apparent deadlock, another scenario is a national unity government pairing Netanyahu’s Likud and one or more parties from the opposition, an option that would replace his current hardliner government. Both Netanyahu and the opposition leaders have ruled this out during the campaign, but it may be one of the only ways to avoid another election.

In his first public statement since polls closed, Israeli President Isaac Herzog called for political parties to have “an open mind” in order to avoid another round of elections.

After the results are certified, Herzog begins meeting with all of the political parties in order to determine which candidate has the best chance of forming a government. But if no one can succeed in forming a government, Israel automatically goes back to another round of elections, a scenario Herzog has made clear he wants to prevent.

“So I expect everyone who comes here to come with an open mind,” he said.

Herzog also hailed the high voter turnout as a sign of Israel’s democracy. “Yesterday’s election day was truly impressive, with the highest turnout in decades. It is a badge of honor for Israeli society, and it was remarkable to see how deep the desire for democracy is in Israel,” he said.

With counting well underway in Israel, elsewhere the country’s embassy in Belgrade found itself under what the Serbian authorities called a “terrorist attack.”

Serbia’s interior ministry said an attacker wielding two knives wounded a policeman guarding the embassy shortly after midnight local time. Despite suffering injuries to the face, the officer managed to shoot the assailant, killing him in what the ministry said was self-defense.

The ministry raised the country’s terror alert level following the incident.

Serbia’s outgoing Minister of Interior Ivica Dacic said in a statement that the attacker was as of yet unknown minor from western Serbia who “shouted ‘Allahu Akbar’ and attacked the member of gendarmerie with two ​knives.”

Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said “no embassy personnel were injured, and the mission was closed at the time of the incident.”

Israeli election officials are still counting the votes cast in yesterday’s parliamentary election. With almost 80% counted, Israel seems set for a political deadlock . Neither Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu nor his main rival, ex-military chief Gadi Eisenkot , have the 61 seats needed for a governing majority in the 120-seat parliament, the Knesset.

Netanyahu defiant despite losses: The incumbent prime minister said his bloc had the support of a “decisive majority among the Zionist and Jewish public.” The right-wing grouping is set to take 54 seats , a loss of 10 compared to the last election in 2022. Still, Netanyahu’s Likud party is expected to be the biggest in the parliament.

No clear path for the challenger: Eisenkot’s opposition bloc is now projected to get 47 seats in the Knesset, 14 short of the majority. To govern, he would likely need to rely on the support of Israel’s Arab parties , a long-standing political taboo among most Jewish parties. Still, Eisenkot framed his result as a win, saying “the public has voted for change.”

Arab parties surge: The two parties representing Arab citizens of Israel, Ra’am and the Joint List , are set to secure about 17 seats – the highest ever. Arab voters make up about 20% of the Israeli electorate, but have traditionally voted at lower rates than Jewish Israelis. This time around, they showed up in huge numbers.

What’s next: Once the count it finalized, the political horse trading will begin. The president will talk to the elected parties and then ask the person who has the best chance of building a viable coalition to form a government. They’d have six weeks to cobble together a majority and if they fail, the runner-up will be invited to try. If they can’t do it either, and if the Knesset cannot put forth another candidate, Israel could hold elections all over again.

For a country the size of New Jersey, Israel draws an outsized share of international attention and headlines. US President Donald Trump’s relationship with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – and the Iran war they launched together – is part of the reason.

Amichai Cohen, the Vice President of Research at the Israel Democracy Institute, lays out three more reasons the world is watching these elections so closely.

First, is the hope that a different government in Israel would be willing to engage more on diplomacy in the Middle East and the potential of ending conflicts in Iran, Lebanon, Syria, and Gaza. “Perhaps there are also routes for possibly reopening negotiations with the Saudis (toward normalization),” he said.

The world is also watching closely to see what will happen in the occupied West Bank . Netanyahu’s government drove a massive expansion in Israeli settlements while downplaying a surge in settler violence toward Palestinians. The UK and a dozen other countries are preparing sanctions against Israeli settlements, and that list may well expand if another Netanyahu government drives the same policy of entrenching Israel’s grip on the territory.

Finally, Cohen told CNN that Israel has been perceived internationally as a country in democratic decline. Netanyahu’s government pushed a judicial overhaul that would’ve seen a weakening of checks and balances, as well as attacks on the press.

“ The question of whether anti-populist forces will be able to reclaim democracy is an important question universally and Israel is, to a certain extent, an important part of this discussion,” Cohen said.

The father of an American-Israeli soldier killed on October 7, 2023 said he fears another Benjamin Netanyahu term as prime minister will deny families still grieving the deadliest attack in Israel’s history answers.

“It’s about how did this happen.” Ruby Chen, father of deceased soldier Itay Chen, told CNN’s Salma Abdelaziz Wednesday.

“As long as Prime Minister Netanyahu is in power, he will never create an investigation committee.”

Chen has long advocated for an investigation into how the coordinated assaults by the terrorist group were able to occur, something he believes will prevent another fatal attack.

The father emphasized that accountability for October 7 should be prioritized as he believes this will assist in navigating other regional conflicts.

Some context: Chen’s son, Itay, had been serving with the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) on the Gaza border when he was killed. Initially, Itay was believed to have been abducted and held hostage by Hamas, but in March 2024, the IDF confirmed he had been killed on October 7. He was 19 years old.

Israelis woke up Wednesday to a familiar political deadlock, with neither Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition nor the opposition winning a clear majority to form a government.

These results build on the unprecedented streak of political paralysis that has produced six elections in seven years. Between 2019 and 2022, the country voted in five rounds of elections as no side could secure a clear 61-seat majority in the 120-seat parliament and sustain a viable coalition, reflecting a country deeply divided over leadership and direction.

Netanyahu, Israel’s longest serving prime minister, is also the first sitting prime minister to be indicted for corruption charges. That has broadly shaped the country’s political map during his tenure, as most of the opposition parties have refused to work with him, pushing him deeper into a reliance on far-right and ultra-orthodox parties. Only in the 2022 election did he and his allies win a majority.

Relying on the support of nationalistic and religious parties, Netanyahu held his government together for its full four-years, the first time since 1988 a government had lasted its complete term.

Shortly after the government’s inauguration, it pushed for a sweeping judicial overhaul that was met with widespread liberal protests, that continued up until the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel, the greatest security failure in the country’s history, and a multi-front war that followed.

Once again, this vote was a referendum on Netanyahu’s leadership, but also about the country’s direction and identity. The results reinforce the deep divide and polarization between Israelis over democratic values, religion and state, military service and accountability.

The left-wing Democrats Party – part of the opposition bloc – is saying what no other opposition party has been willing to say so far: to form a government, you must work with the Arab parties.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing bloc is projected to take 54 seats; the opposition bloc – led by his main rival Gadi Eisenkot— now is expected to take 47 seats. But neither have enough seats to form a majority in the 120-member Israeli Knesset.

That’s where the Arab parties – who are set to hold a record 17 seats – come in.

Democrats leader Yair Golan on Wednesday urged the opposition bloc to work with them – not as a gesture, but because that is the simple political math required to form a government and oust Netanyahu.

“Netanyahu lost. I know how to count to 120,” he said.

Golan is urging other opposition leaders – who have expressed ideological opposition to working with the Arab parties – to overcome their divisions to secure a coalition.

“We have no future here if we don’t stop being afraid. And if we don’t stop with the racism. We must no longer accept Netanyahu’s racist division between Jewish votes and Arab votes,” he said.

Netanyahu has long disparaged the idea of a political partnership with Arab parties, despite reaching out to Mansour Abbas’ Raam party after the 2021 vote. The Arab population makes up 20% of Israel’s population, but Netanyahu has framed any such alliance as a threat.

Speaking on Israeli Army radio on Wednesday, Arab lawmaker Ahmad Tibi said that that “the change bloc can form a government – we are willing to help.”

“Netanyahu won’t be able to form a government,” Tibi said. “The other side can, if they want, if they have courage.”

The exit polls that flashed on Israeli televisions mark the beginning of a long counting process in which results can shift hours and sometimes days after the polls close. This is because of a voting system known as the double envelopes.

The vast majority of Israeli voters are assigned to specific polling stations - and their ballots are opened and counted the moment polls close. But a group of voters - soldiers, prisoners, hospital patients and staff, diplomats abroad and voters with disabilities - cast their ballot inside a double envelope.

These voters place their anonymous vote in an inner envelope, which is sealed inside an outer envelope with their personal details. The double envelopes are transported to the Central Elections Committee, where staff check each outer envelope against the registered polling stations to verify the voter didn’t vote twice. Only then are the inner envelopes separated and counted.

That verification process takes time. The Central Elections Committee said there are more double envelopes than ever this year. The committee is expecting as many as 650,000 Israelis to vote this way, up from 460,000 in the 2022 elections. The surge is attributed mainly to the large number of military reservists currently deployed and voting away from home. Together they could amount to a game-changing 15 seats that remain uncounted on election night.

The double envelopes historically change the map by 1-2 seats. Because of who votes like this, they tend to impact the ultra-Orthodox and Arab parties. For parties hovering around the 3.25% electoral threshold, they can be decisive.

Election night in Israel ends when all the votes are counted, but that is just the first step. Forming a government runs through the president of the state, who plays a pivotal role in post-election politics.

After the results are finalized, President Isaac Herzog will begin consultations with all the elected parties, asking each of them who they recommend to be prime minister. He then assigns the task of forming a government to the candidate he believes is most likely to secure a 61-seat majority. This is not necessarily the leader of the largest party, but the one he deems has a better path to a coalition.

When election results are clear, the choice can be obvious. If there is no clear winner or a deadlock, the president’s decision can be decisive for coalition negotiations.

After Herzog decides who gets the mandate, the assigned candidate will have 28 days - with a possible 14-day extension - to negotiate with other parties over cabinet posts, budget priorities and policy commitments.

The goal is simple: try to form a government. If that candidate fails, the mandate is passed to another candidate for another four weeks. If he fails as well, the Knesset gets a short window to put forward another candidate, and if it cannot then the country goes to another round of elections.

The current vote count shows neither Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu nor his primary rival Gadi Eisenkot with a clear path to a majority, enhancing Herzog’s role in the process even more. With neither side holding a clear majority, he may try to steer the two largest parties to form a unity government. Two weeks before the election, Herzog said he will do everything he can “to establish a stable government” and avoid another election.

It’s 11 a.m. in Jerusalem and more than 70% of the vote has been counted. Here’s the current projections based on the ballots tallied so far:

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing bloc is set to take 54 seats.

The opposition bloc, led by Gadi Eisenkot, now has 47 seats.

Arab parties – Ra’am and the Joint List have 19 seats.

Despite there currently being no clear winner in the Israeli election, several players are claiming that preliminary results indicate success for both their parties and the country.

Here’s a look at what some of the key players are saying:

In a speech, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu touted a “decisive majority among the Zionist and Jewish public.” He thanked US President Donald Trump and God for making him Israel’s leader. “We made it against our enemies and we will form the future,” he said.

Gadi Eisenkot, Netanyahu’s main opponent, said that “the public has voted for change,” adding that Netanyahu’s “coalition of failure has lost the people’s trust.” Eisenkot said he would act with “all our power to establish a government,” and his party intends to represent all Israelis.

The Arab Joint List party , one of two major Arab parties, said in a statement: “We can say with confidence: we sent the fascist right-wing government to the dustbin of history.” Party leader Yousef Jabareen commended a strong turnout among the community, saying it was “unprecedented and historic in our Arab society.”

Mansour Abbas, the head of the other major Arab party Raam, said: “We will turn the seats we won into a new reality in the country.” He said that the “record-breaking electoral achievement” is because the current Israeli government “neglected the Israeli Arab community.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s principal opponent in the elections is a relative newcomer to politics. Instead, one of his key electoral advantages boils down to a simple truth: He is not Netanyahu.

Gadi Eisenkot, 66, has spent most of his life in the Israeli military, enlisting in the Golani Brigade in 1978 and rising over a 40-year career to become chief of staff from 2015 to 2019, serving under Netanyahu.

He entered politics in 2022 alongside another former chief of staff, Benny Gantz. After the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack on Israel, the two joined Netanyahu’s emergency war cabinet. But they left in June 2024, pointing to the absence of a clear post-war strategy.

Eisenkot is the second of nine children and a father of five. His youngest son, Gal, 25, was killed fighting in Gaza two months into the war.

He has placed that singular promise at the heart of his political mission.

US President Donald Trump said early Wednesday he hadn’t yet spoken to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, but seemed optimistic about his performance in the election as the vote count is underway.

Just over a week before the polls opened in Israel, Trump called Netanyahu a “Great Warrior Prime Minister” in a Truth Social post, offering his “Complete and Total Endorsement.”

Exit polls so far suggest Netanyahu’s bloc lost its majority in the Knesset — though it is narrowly in the lead over the opposition. Trump suggested that the exit polls might be wrong, however.

“He might be winning, or tied,” he said. “It’s a little bit early, but I’m hearing that in Israel, top people are saying, ‘Wow,’ he did a lot better than people thought.”

The final result could be “a stalemate or a win – but we’ll find out,” he added.

Supporters of Israel’s Arab Joint List party celebrated at its election headquarters in Nazareth, with Arab parties projected to gain a record number of seats from Tuesday’s election.

Party leader Yousef Jabareen commended a strong turnout among the community, saying it was “unprecedented and historic in our Arab society.” Arab voters make up about 20% of the Israeli electorate, but have traditionally voted at lower rates than Jewish Israelis.

That voter surge was driven by an urgent desire to dismantle Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition, which includes hardline ministers such as Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich.

That sentiment was underscored by chants of “Ben-Gvir, go home” at the Joint List election headquarters.

Jabareen said exit polls showed Arab-led parties can “make a difference.”

He vowed to be a “safety net in the face of crime in our society, a safety net in the face of dangerous racism, a safety net in the face of the demolition of homes and entire villages.”

Some context: Entering government could still be tricky for Arab parties. Between them, the Joint List and Raam are projected to secure 17-19 seats in the 120-seat Knessett, their strongest showing in history.

Gadi Eisenkot’s Yashar party is projected to win 21-23 seats.

However, Eisenkot has set conditions for any partner to join his government, including recognizing Israel as a Jewish state and recognizing Hamas as a terrorist organization that must be dismantled, terms most Arab lawmakers are unlikely to accept.

Moreover, two of his opposition allies – Avigdor Lieberman and Naftali Bennett – have ruled out forming a government with the Arab parties altogether.

CNN’s Abeer Salman and Kara Fox contributed reporting.

It’s now Wednesday morning in Israel, and the election – one of the most consequential in years – is over. Next begins the real work of counting votes and forming a government.

It’ll take several days to finalize the vote count, but exit polls indicate Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s party has taken a blow – though there’s not yet a clear winner with an outright majority.

Israel’s elections produced no clear winner Tuesday night, exit polls showed, with neither Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu nor his main rival Gadi Eisenkot within reach of the 61 seats needed for a governing majority in the 120-seat parliament, the Knesset. CNN's Jeremy Diamond reports.

Netanyahu stumbles: Netanyahu’s bloc of ultra-Orthodox and far-right allies has lost its majority. Projections from the Central Election Committee see Netanyahu’s party collapsing from 68 seats in the Knesset to 56. His Likud party will likely still be the largest single party, but the results represent a crash in public support.

‘Decisive majority’: Speaking in Jerusalem early Wednesday, Netanyahu said the results still showed his bloc had the support of a “decisive majority among the Zionist and Jewish public,” despite the loss in seats. He slammed Arab parties as “anti-Zionist” and rejected the idea of working with them to form a government. He also thanked US President Donald Trump for his support in the war with Iran.

Opposition bloc: Netanyahu’s biggest rival, former military chief Gadi Eisenkot, is narrowly behind, with his bloc projected to secure 48 seats. “The public has voted for change,” he said. But he doesn’t have a clear path to a governing majority yet, either.

Arab parties surge: Arab parties Joint List and Raam are projected to win a record 19 seats – the largest Arab representation ever. They could play a key role in building a coalition to form a new government. But what that could look like remains unclear.

Record turnout: Nearly 5.7 million voters cast their ballot out of approximately 7.3 million eligible voters – meaning a turnout of 77.7%, the highest percentage since 1999, according to the Central Elections Committee.

What’s next: Once the votes are finalized, each elected party will recommend their choice for prime minister to the president, who will select one person to try to form a government – based on who has the best chance of building a viable coalition. The way things look now, that will likely be Eisenkot, who will have four to six weeks to negotiate with other parties and try to cobble together a majority in the Knesset. But he could also fail, and Netanyahu could be given a chance to try. If he fails too, and if the Knesset cannot put forth another candidate, Israel could hold elections all over again.

Why this matters: This election has been widely viewed as a referendum on Netanyahu, and whether Israel keeps moving in the nationalistic, conservative and religious direction – or changes course. For many voters, this is the first chance to pass judgment on the leadership that presided over October 7 failures, and to decide who should lead the country in conflict.