‘Messy and complicated’: Scholars expect long standoff in deadlocked Israel election

Israel’s Tuesday election, which drew the highest turnout since 1999, left both Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition and its challengers without a governing majority. Stanford’s Israel scholars say negotiations to form a government could take weeks. Netanyahu’s bloc of far-right and ultra-Orthodox parties won 53 of 120 seats in the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. The opposition “Change Bloc,” led by former military chief Gadi Eisenkot, won 48. Two majority-Arab parties, the Joint List and Ra’am, took the remaining 19. Neither bloc reached the 61 seats needed to govern. The Central Elections Committee published final tallies early Thursday and will deliver them to President Isaac Herzog on Wednesday, Nov. 4, after any checks for errors or inquiries. One side must now build a majority from outside its own ranks, form a minority government or send voters back to the polls. Amichai Magen, director of Stanford’s Jan Koum Israel Studies Program, said the seat count is only the start.

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