Netanyahu's Bloc Falls Short of Majority in Israel Election as Coalition Talks Begin

Final results of Israel's election showed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's bloc winning 53 seats in the 120-seat Knesset, short of the 61 needed for a majority, election officials said Thursday after Tuesday's vote. His main opposition bloc won 48 seats and Arab-led parties won a historic 19, giving the anti-Netanyahu side 67 in total. Netanyahu's bloc had held 68 seats at its peak in the previous parliament. The count is complete, but results must still be certified and submitted to President Isaac Herzog next week. Herzog will then choose the candidate he thinks has the best chance of forming a government, and coalition building could take weeks. Opposition leader Yair Lapid said his bloc had won and urged patience during talks. Likud has pushed unsubstantiated claims that Arab-led parties stole the election, possibly with foreign help; the opposition accused Netanyahu of demonizing Arab citizens. Turnout was reportedly the highest in 45 years, in the first national election since the October 2023 Hamas attack.

Right-leaning outlets Newsmax and Just the News focus on the arithmetic and the road ahead. Newsmax stresses weeks of hard negotiations among very different parties. Just the News leads with Netanyahu's bloc holding the most seats but no majority, and adds Herzog's role, high turnout, a reading of the result as a rebuke of Netanyahu, and former military chief Gadi Eisenkot as his main challenger, citing NBC News. The excerpts provided do not mention Likud's fraud claims. Alternative outlets The Times of India and The Hindu take a different angle: The Times of India leads with Lapid's reaction, and The Hindu with Likud's allegations and the opposition's response. Left-leaning outlets had not reported this story at the time of writing, while right-leaning and alternative outlets had.