No clear winner in Israel election with nearly 90 percent of votes counted

No clear winner has emerged from Israel's election, with nearly 90 percent of ballots counted and both major political blocs falling short of the 61 seats needed to form a government.

The Israeli Central Elections Committee said on Wednesday that it had counted more than five million votes as of 9pm local time.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's right-wing bloc is on course to win 53 seats in the 120-member Knesset, while the opposition bloc led by Gadi Eisenkot is expected to secure 48 seats.

Projections from Tuesday's voting also showed that the Arab parties — the Joint List and Ra'am — could hold a record combined 19 seats, amid record turnout among Arab voters.

More than 500,000 special double-envelope ballots remain to be counted, potentially changing the seat distribution. These include votes cast by soldiers, diplomats and others voting away from their registered polling stations.

Final election results could come as early as Thursday evening, though no clear winner is expected to emerge.

The vote — the first since the October 7, 2023 attacks and the war in Gaza — was widely seen as a referendum on Netanyahu's premiership. The 77-year-old appears far from defeated, despite lacking a clear majority.

Netanyahu will remain caretaker prime minister until a new government is formed.

President Isaac Herzog will begin consulting party leaders about forming a new administration next week, once the official election results are released. Herzog has urged all parties to avoid another vote that would stall the formation of a government.

Coalition building is the norm in Israel, and no party has ever won an outright majority in the country's history.

Ahead of the vote, Eisenkot ruled out forming a minority government with Arab-led parties. Netanyahu has also rejected such a prospect.

As Netanyahu's bloc is set to be the largest, analysts predict he will form a unity government that could include Eisenkot. However, such an outcome is far from certain.

Eisenkot said in a post on X on Wednesday that his opposition alliance was now focused on the 'heavy task entrusted to us — bringing change to Israel and establishing a Zionist mobilisation government'. He said the people had expressed no confidence in the government of October 7th.

Amid the record Arab turnout, Netanyahu's Likud party accused Arab parties of stealing the election. In its statement the party alleged serious criminal offences of bribery, threats, violence, forgeries and the use of prohibited software to mobilise voters, and said it was transferring hundreds of testimonies and pieces of evidence regarding election theft in many Arab polling stations to the police, the Shin Bet and the Central Elections Committee.

Israel's predominantly Arab Joint List alliance said in a statement published late on Wednesday by Turkish news agency Anadolu that preliminary figures showed Arab voter turnout played a decisive role in keeping Netanyahu and his coalition short of a parliamentary majority, while cautioning that the final results were yet to be announced. Voters answered incitement and intimidation at the ballot box, it said.

The Joint List said its electoral support reflected demands for political unity and for a force capable of defending Arab citizens' rights without concessions. It pledged to work to remove Netanyahu's government and prevent its return, saying it was ready to cooperate towards an alternative government.

Joint List leader Yousef Jabareen said the alliance could back an anti-Netanyahu government from outside, but would not join it.