Israel's inconclusive election week: Arab-led parties win a record 19 seats as the army pulls out of Hebron

A week of political deadlock has followed Israel's inconclusive election. Election night brought a major success for Palestinian citizens of Israel, as Arab-led parties won a record 19 seats.

Nearly 840,000 people voted for Ra'am and the Joint List, a 64 percent increase on 2022. Adding them to opposition leader Gadi Eisenkot's bloc would give an anti-Netanyahu coalition 67 seats; without them, only a unity deal between the main Zionist blocs or another election is possible.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud alleged the election had been 'stolen' by Palestinian parties, with unproven claims of Qatari financing. Qatar denied the accusations, and police sources told The Times of Israel there was no evidence of widespread fraud. By Sunday, election committee chairman Noam Sohlberg declared the election 'conducted properly'.

The rhetoric delegitimising the Palestinian vote is now reflected in the coalition negotiations. Avigdor Lieberman, leader of the right-wing Yisrael Beytenu party, has ruled out Palestinian partners, and Eisenkot has presented four conditions for anyone joining his coalition that would be anathema to the Palestinian parties, including recognising Israel as 'a Jewish, democratic, liberal, and egalitarian state' and mandatory national service for all citizens, including Palestinians.

Palestinian politicians nevertheless continue to express a willingness to back an Eisenkot government from outside, if only to enable the departure of Netanyahu and the far right. Meanwhile, thousands rallied in Tel Aviv for a coalition that includes the parties representing Palestinian citizens of Israel.

While the Israeli electorate was consumed by the unclear results, Palestinians in the occupied West Bank endured a variety of sieges, most prominently in Hebron. By October 29, Al Jazeera's data unit counted 10 entrances sealed and about 5,000 people displaced.

The city saw at least 120 arrests and 13 businesses demolished by Friday, when the army also blew up the homes of two men it blamed for an attack. Palestinian officials accused the government of using the operation to win settler votes; no Israeli official has said so outright.

On November 2, Governor Khaled Dudin announced the army had withdrawn from Hebron and that displaced families could return. The Jerusalem Post reported that the army's chief of staff recommended leaving Hebron before the election, but that Netanyahu refused.

Even with the operation over, the damage remains, following more than 120 arrests and daily economic losses the governor put at 10 million to 12 million shekels ($3.2m to $3.8m) in a city responsible for about 40 percent of Palestinian industrial output.

Hebron was only the largest of many closures that continue across the West Bank. In Masafer Yatta, at least 12 villages were cut off, and the Palestinian news agency Wafa reported that forces detained 10 teachers from the Jinba school on Sunday.

Yousef Shanaran, besieged in his home with his family in Wadi Rakhim for four weeks, told Al Jazeera on Monday that settlers have now poisoned the well outside his family home, which the family already was unable to access for days at a time due to the siege. 'No water, no food, nothing at all I've got,' he said. 'Nobody is allowed to bring anything to us.'

These sieges continue as settlers, and increasingly Israeli forces, disrupt the olive harvest across the West Bank. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) documented 397 settler attacks causing casualties or damage in the first 26 days of October, a monthly high since OCHA began tracking such incidents in 2006.

In Gaza, attacks continued on a daily basis as the UN human rights office warned on October 30 that Palestinians are being pushed into an ever smaller area, calling the 'Yellow Line' a 'kill zone' that is moving westward. By November 2, the Ministry of Health put the death toll since last year's ceasefire at 1,593.

Sunday was the deadliest day of the week, with at least eight killed. Among those reported killed were Diaa Abu al-Rous, killed north of Nuseirat on Saturday, whom Israeli authorities claimed was a member of Hamas's Nukhba Forces but Palestinian reports describe as a teacher, and Mohammed Qudeih, killed the same day in a strike on a tent in Khan Younis. Two infant girls died of burns in a tent fire in al-Mawasi on Friday.

With winter closing in and humanitarian conditions struggling to improve, Gaza's Social Development Ministry says about 200,000 tents are needed, yet only dozens have arrived due to Israeli entry restrictions. With no hospitals in Gaza fully functioning, the Red Crescent warned on Monday that the health system is at risk of collapse after 26 hospitals went out of service, with fuel shortages threatening the remaining facilities.