The head of Israel’s Central Elections Committee, Noam Sohlberg, said in a video statement on Sunday that the results of last Tuesday’s general election would stand even if claims of foreign interference were substantiated. Appearing alongside the head of the Shin Bet security service and the attorney general, he said the committee’s position was that substantiated suspicions would not undermine the integrity of the electoral process or the election results as a whole.
The statement answered a direct challenge from the prime minister’s own party. Likud has questioned the outcome, saying without providing evidence that Arab-led parties, which made significant gains in the election, stole the vote and accepted funding from Qatar. Qatar has rejected the allegations and called them a disinformation campaign. Opposition leader Gadi Eisenkot accused Netanyahu on Sunday of running an orchestrated and organised campaign to delegitimise the results. Police said two of three activists arrested before polls opened, alleged to have been carrying envelopes of cash to bribe voters and linked by police to the Ra’am party, were released on Sunday; the allegation is a police claim at this stage, not a finding.
The underlying count leaves no governing majority. Netanyahu’s bloc won 53 seats in the 120-seat Knesset and the opposition bloc led by Eisenkot won 48. Israel’s three Arab-led parties, including Ra’am with eight seats, won a record 19 between them, which puts them in a potential kingmaker position: together with the opposition bloc they would hold 67 seats.
The results are due to be officially certified this week. President Isaac Herzog must then nominate a candidate to form a government, and the dispute Sohlberg addressed on Sunday is therefore not academic: it is an argument about whether the counted result is the legitimate starting point for that nomination while Israel is also a party to the war diplomacy running through Doha.