JNS editor: Arab turnout reshaped election

The biggest surprise of Israel’s election was the surge in the Arab vote, which pushed the two Arab parties to a record result and raised the electoral threshold enough to knock smaller parties out of the Knesset, Israeli political journalist Ariel Kahana says.

Kahana, managing editor of JNS Israel, told the Australian Jewish Association’s weekly speaker series on Wednesday, with about half the vote counted, that almost nobody had anticipated the result. “Almost no one expected they’re going to have 16, 17, maybe even 18 seats in the Knesset, and that’s breaking all records,” he said.

The consequence was arithmetic. “If in previous elections it used to be, let’s say, 40,000 votes for a mandate, so now it becomes close to 48, even 50,000,” Kahana said, meaning several smaller parties failed to clear the four-seat minimum.

Kahana said the final polls, taken the Friday before the vote, had been inaccurate, with only i24’s pollster getting close. He attributed it to a late shift in the last days and to the declining reliability of polling methods that now rely on text messages and WhatsApp rather than landlines.

He also credited a Netanyahu bloc operation on election afternoon that he described as remarkable, saying he received three calls from right-wing activists at 8pm, 90 minutes before polls closed, asking whether he had voted. “The pressure on potential voters to take people out was really remarkable, and it had an effect.”

On the preliminary count, Likud was the largest party on about 21 per cent, with Gadi Eisenkot’s Yashar on 16 per cent. The Arab Joint List was third, with Ra’am also clearing the threshold. Netanyahu’s bloc stood at about 54 seats and the change bloc at about 47 — both well short of the 61 needed to govern.

That leaves Eisenkot with a theoretical path to 66 with the Arab parties, and a political problem. “To establish a government that is based and dependent with anti-Zionist parties, that’s a problem by many Israelis, including in Gadi Eisenkot’s party,” Kahana said, noting Avigdor Lieberman had repeatedly promised not to include them.

“If they will try to establish a government this way, it will mean breaking an election promise. That would be a serious violation, and I would say crossing kind of Israeli consensus.”

He noted the previous change government under Yair Lapid and Naftali Bennett was supported by Mansour Abbas, but was not dependent on him to the same degree.

Kahana said some in the change bloc were now arguing that the Haredi parties were not Zionist either, and asking why dependency on them was acceptable. He could not predict how that argument would resolve.

He was blunt about the night’s verdict on both camps. The change bloc had expected to approach 60 seats. “For them to get really under 50, that’s definitely not a success, and actually, I would say kind of a failure,” he said. “Considering all that happened in Israel since October 7, potentially they could have and should have had much bigger success.”

For Netanyahu, without 61 it was not a victory, but it was a success. “He’s once again the biggest party, and with a serious gap with all others,” Kahana said. “It means, in my opinion, that a lot of Israelis do support him and do trust him more than any other political leader in Israel. That’s a fact, whether we like it or not.”

Nor, he argued, was the result a vote of no confidence over October 7. “If his party would fall from 32 to 18, you could say that’s a crisis. It means people don’t trust him anymore. When he fell from 30 to 27, 28, I don’t see it as a mistrust.”

Some 600,000 soldiers’ votes were to be counted from Wednesday night and traditionally lean right, Kahana said, possibly lifting Netanyahu to 56 or 57 — but not to 61.

Whoever forms a minority government faces a deadline: a budget must pass by March 31 or the government falls automatically. “If Eisenkot would like the Arab parties to support the budget, he will have to pay,” Kahana said. “And the same with Netanyahu and the ultra-Orthodox.”

Final counting was expected to conclude on Friday, with formal results and seat calculations next week, after which parties recommend a candidate to President Isaac Herzog.