t's less an election result than a philosophical puzzle: what happens when a win contains a loss, a loss contains a win and the two collide? That's the question posed by the confused and confusing outcome of this week's Israeli election, one that, despite its murky uncertainty, offers clear, sharp lessons – both for that country and for those locked in combat with nationalist populists across the globe.
Start with the result that has simultaneously handed Benjamin Netanyahu a devastating defeat and a strong chance of staying on as prime minister, extending a run that has seen him lead Israel, on and off, for more than 19 of the past 30 years. The defeat is clear enough. At a stroke, his parliamentary majority was wiped out. Before Tuesday, the parties that together comprised his ruling coalition controlled 68 of the Knesset's 120 seats: that tally has now shrunk to just 53, far short of the 61 seats needed for power. That's a loss in anybody's language.
And yet, Netanyahu does not look or sound like a man defeated. That's because he knows that while the parties arrayed against him won many more seats than he did – 67 to his 53 – their chances of forming a government are slim. If they fail, one or two of them might peel away and enter a so-called national-unity government – under Netanyahu as PM – or there will have to be fresh elections, ones from which, most analysts agree, Netanyahu would emerge stronger.
The opposition's problem is not arithmetical. It goes much deeper. Put simply, a big chunk of the anti-Netanyahu seats were won by parties that chiefly represent the one in five Israeli citizens who are Palestinian. This was the big twist of Tuesday's election, a huge surge in turnout for what Israelis refer to as the Arab parties. Usually, far more Jewish than Arab Israelis participate in the country's elections, but this year that pattern was flipped: turnout in Palestinian communities inside Israel hit 80%. The result is a record total of 19 seats for Arab-led parties. The anti-Netanyahu bloc cannot form a government without them. In today's Israel, Palestinian politicians are the kingmakers.
On paper, the next step might look straightforward enough. All Netanyahu's Jewish opponents need do is team up with their Arab colleagues and they can send the PM packing. But such an alliance would mark a watershed in Israeli history. It would mean breaking a taboo that has endured, with only fleeting exceptions, since the founding of the state, a taboo rooted in mutual suspicion.
On the one hand, Israel's Jewish-led parties have long shunned the mainly Arab parties because the latter identify as anti- or non-Zionist, meaning they reject Israel's self-definition as a Jewish state. For that same reason, Arab-led parties have maintained a boycott, refusing to legitimate the Israeli state by participating in its government.
In 2021, a short-lived "government of change" broke the taboo by including in its ranks Ra'am, an Islamist party regarded, improbably enough, as the most moderate of the Arab groupings. But after the Hamas massacres of 7 October 2023, the taboo was restored – and hardened. Netanyahu cast Palestinian-Israeli politicians as an enemy within, as tacit allies of the Hamas killers, a framing buttressed by a crude anti-Arab racism voiced most explicitly by his coalition allies – the likes of Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich – and which sought to delegitimise Israel's entire Arab minority.
This was Netanyahu's core message throughout the campaign: you can't trust my opponents because, when the moment comes, they will sit with "the Arabs". In recent days, he and his allies have doubled down on that message, claiming high Palestinian turnout means that "the Arabs are stealing the election" – rather than merely exercising their democratic rights – and, on Thursday, alleging that Qatar paid Palestinian-Israeli citizens to vote, thereby rendering the entire result void.
Instead of challenging Netanyahu's framing, and insisting that the vote of every citizen, Arab or Jewish, is of equal worth, most of the main opposition parties – Yair Golan's Democrats were the exception – bowed to it, pledging that they would not forge a coalition with the largely Arab parties, and certainly not with any group more radical than Ra'am. Now they find themselves in a bind. On their own, the Jewish-led opposition cannot form a government. Unless they somehow manage to lure defectors from Netanyahu's bloc – perhaps one or both of the ultra-Orthodox parties – even Ra'am's support won't be enough to reach the magic number of 61. They need Arab partners – and probably several of them.
This, then, is the big lesson for Israel. That group that has long opposed Netanyahu – Jewish-Israelis who despise a PM on trial for corruption, who has mounted serial assaults on Israel's institutions, including the supreme court, and brought isolation, if not pariah status, upon the country – are now confronted with a fact that has long been true but which they have preferred not to see: that they are a minority in the land they once dominated. As Aluf Benn, editor of the liberal daily Haaretz, told me: "The Jewish vote is predominantly rightwing in Israel and has been for decades."
That means the Jewish Israeli opposition cannot win alone. This week stands as proof, because this was their perfect opportunity. Netanyahu was at his lowest ebb, the leader on whose watch the most calamitous day in Israeli history took place, the leader who promised to destroy Hamas in Gaza, but who succeeded only in turning that place into a ruin, killing tens of thousands and, in the process, destroying Israel's standing in the world. He faced in Gadi Eisenkot, his lead challenger, a decorated former general rooted in the Mizrahi working class, a man universally regarded as honest and decent, a bereaved father whose own son fell in the Gaza war – a man, in other words, who might have been designed to appeal to the very voters who for so long have been beyond the opposition's reach. And yet none of that was enough to win.
The only way the opposition can succeed is by making common cause with their Palestinian fellow citizens, just as Democrats in the US – who have not won a majority of the white vote since 1964 – could never win the presidency without the support of Black Americans. No one should underestimate the scale of the task, which requires a deep cultural shift as much as a political one. It should have been the work of decades, rather than a panicked scramble in a few rushed weeks of coalition horse-trading. It demands a reshaping of Israeli society, breaking a pattern of systemic discrimination and inequality within the country that has existed since the founding of the state (to say nothing of the post-1967 occupied territories where, of course, millions of Palestinians have no vote at all in Israeli elections). That task was always essential, but this week has confirmed that, if the right's lock on power is ever to be broken, it can be delayed no longer.
Much of this is peculiar to the unique political terrain of Israel. But there are broader lessons for all those fighting nationalist populism, whether that be Donald Trump in next week's US midterms, Marine Le Pen in France or Nigel Farage in Britain. First, don't accept the terms laid down by the other side: that was the cardinal error made by Netanyahu's challengers. Second, mere opposition and criticism is not enough. The nationalist populists will always tell a compelling story; you have to tell an equally compelling one of your own. And, last, you need to be every bit as determined as they are. Too often you play by gentlemen's rules, when those you are fighting are anything but gentlemen. Netanyahu is without shame and will do anything – cross every line, cut any deal – to keep power. The opponents of such a man will prevail only if they show an equal resolve in seizing it.