Netanyahu’s party calls record Arab turnout the ‘Islamization of Israel’

RAHAT, Israel — Israel certified its election results Friday, confirming that the Jewish state’s minority Arab population will control a record 19 seats in the Knesset — enough, at least on paper, to break the stalemate between incumbent Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and challenger Gadi Eisenkot.

In reality, though, adding the Arabs to a ruling coalition in Israel would likely mean subtracting support elsewhere. Both Jewish blocs say they will not deal with them.

Mr. Netanyahu’s Likud party said the record turnout that produced those 19 seats — a net gain of nine — was driven by foreign actors seeking the “Islamization of Israel” and the overthrow of right-wing rule.

“They stole the elections in Israel,” the party said in a statement posted on Mr. Netanyahu’s account on X. It urged other Jewish parties not to work with the Arab parties to replace the Knesset speaker or form a government.

The 19 representatives of the Arab parties will wield power whether they are invited into a coalition or not. When the new Knesset is sworn in Nov. 10, the opposition and the Arab parties have discussed combining their votes to take the speaker’s chair from Likud and to force an independent inquiry into the security failures before the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack that precipitated the war on Gaza.

Mr. Netanyahu has resisted that inquiry for two years.

Israel will be navigating a complicated political landscape as the U.S. is poised for its own watershed election in Tuesday’s American midterms. Israeli Justice Noam Sohlberg, who chairs his country’s elections committee, asked the domestic security service Wednesday to look into the Arab turnout.

“Serious suspicions have been brought to my attention regarding improper influence on the elections,” he wrote to Shin Bet chief David Zini, adding that he could not attest to their nature. He asked for findings within a week. The letter names no country and no party. Israeli media have reported the suspicions concern Qatar and Turkey.

Arab-Israelis constitute about 21% of Israel’s 9.8 million citizens, or about 2.1 million people.

Mr. Netanyahu picked Mr. Zini for the job last year. Watchdog groups have asked the High Court to void the appointment because the Shin Bet was investigating the prime minister’s own aides over Qatari money.

National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir demanded Thursday that the Shin Bet arrest the Arab party leaders. He called the vote “a political October 27.”

Dean Livne, the acting director general of the elections committee, wrote Thursday that the elections “were conducted lawfully” and that there was “no basis for claims of systematic harm” to their integrity. The Shin Bet said its inquiry was narrow, was not complete, and that its intelligence “did not come from any political party or political entity.”

President Isaac Herzog called for a thorough investigation but warned against tarnishing “an entire community that sought to exercise its right to vote.”

Seven men have been arrested in Negev Bedouin towns, three on the eve of the election and four on Thursday. Police said they seized tens of thousands of shekels in cash and ballot slips bearing Ra’am’s logo, and a police source said the arrests have nothing to do with the suspected foreign money.

A Bedouin resident said activists have for years handed poor households 200 to 300 shekels before elections, about $65 to $95. The money comes as help, he said, and the voter is expected to return the favor at the ballot box.

The Arab parties did not invent it, he said. “We learned it from Shas,” he said of the ultra-Orthodox party in Mr. Netanyahu’s coalition. “I don’t understand what all the fuss is about.”

Qatar categorically denied interfering, calling the claims an “excessive obsession.” Qatar and Turkey are both American allies. About 8,000 American troops serve at Al Udeid Air Base outside Doha, the hub for U.S. Central Command. Turkey belongs to NATO.

Rahat has surpassed Nazareth as Israel’s largest Arab city, with about 78,000 residents. Turnout here hit 82%. Turnout across Arab towns reached about 80%, running above the national rate of 77.9% for the first time and some 27 points higher than in 2022. More than 800,000 people voted for the two Arab parties, a 60% increase on the last election. Bedouin citizens make up almost 40% of the Negev’s people, and roughly 60% of them are under 18.

Voting on Election Day, Mr. Netanyahu said turnout in the Arab sector in the south was “incomparably higher than in the Jewish sector.”

“For the first time I am seeing this kind of turnout in a Knesset election,” said Talal al-Krinawi, the mayor of Rahat. “The elections are clean and real. They are mounting an onslaught on Bedouin society.”

He supports looking into every claim but said residents lined up from early morning without being paid.

In Kuseife, where cars backed up along the road to the polling station Tuesday, Aatef Abu Ajaj watched the line. He teaches Middle East studies at Ben-Gurion University and grew up there. Bedouin towns usually reach 90% turnout in local elections but 40% or less in national ones, he told The Washington Times.

“This traffic jam is a statement by the people, who come out and shout that we want a good life, we want crime dealt with, we want recognition for our villages, and we want to be part of this country.”

Mansour Nasasra, who teaches politics at Ben-Gurion University, said voting became a tool to defend villages and stop house demolitions. “It’s also another way of political protest, if you want,” he told The Washington Times.

Young activists in the unrecognized villages said before the vote that they would turn out to change the government and “tell Ben-Gvir and others that we will stop you politically, because you have been demolishing our houses for the last four years,” Mr. Nasasra said.

Beersheba recorded 65.8%, well below the national figure. Otzma Yehudit, Mr. Ben-Gvir’s far-right party, took 21% in Netivot, where it finished second, and won seven seats nationally after campaigning in the Negev on a crackdown. His ministry reported more than 5,700 demolition and enforcement orders in 2025, up 81% in three years.

“If it’s illegal, we’ll demolish your home,” he told a Knesset committee in July. “I’m doing what hadn’t been done for 40 years.”

Two weeks before the vote, bulldozers leveled about 80 structures at al-Dahiya, displacing some 400 people. Mr. al-Krinawi said a mosque came down with them and about 250 of the displaced were children. The government does not recognize the village, or about three dozen others in the Negev, none of which have electricity, running water or bomb shelters. Engineers who live in them work on Starlink, the satellite service owned by Elon Musk’s SpaceX.

Al-Dahiya is part of Rahat socially and economically, Mr. Nasasra said. “They have families in Rahat. They do their shopping in Rahat. They send their kids to study in Rahat. But the government didn’t sign the document that they are part of Rahat’s borders.”

“We are holding our ground and setting up tents like back in the day,” said Hisham Abu Wadi, 30, a resident.

Gaza is 15 miles to the west. Twenty-one Bedouin citizens were killed in the Oct. 7 attack and the rocket fire that followed, and six were taken hostage. Four were from one Rahat family, seized while working on a kibbutz at the border. Mr. al-Krinawi says many houses in his city still have no shelter.

Residents of Tarabin, a Bedouin town, said days before the vote that they would not back Mr. Netanyahu. “Abu Yair will not get our votes,” one said, blaming Mr. Ben-Gvir’s appointment.

Mr. Netanyahu has promised to keep him. “We are together and we are staying together,” he told Mr. Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich on Wednesday.

Mr. Netanyahu’s bloc holds 53 seats, and the bloc behind former military chief Mr. Eisenkot holds 48. Neither reaches the 61 needed to govern. Mr. Netanyahu’s bloc won 64 seats in 2022. The Jewish opposition has picked up two seats since then. The Arab parties picked up nine.

Mr. Eisenkot’s 48 plus the Arab parties’ 19 come to 67. Protesters demanding a Jewish-Arab government blocked roads in Tel Aviv on Thursday. Yair Golan of The Democrats said he hoped to meet every opposition leader by Sunday.

Mr. Eisenkot accused Likud of an “orchestrated and organized campaign to delegitimize the election results.” He has said the Arab parties will not join his government, and has not said whether he would govern with their votes from outside it.

President Herzog must name someone to form a government by Nov. 11, the day after the Knesset convenes. The Shin Bet’s findings on the Bedouin turnout are due in the same stretch. Whoever is picked gets 28 days. If no one succeeds, Israelis vote again.

“The rise in voting is because of one thing: the failed minister who did damage in the Negev, Ben-Gvir,” said a relative of one of the men arrested over the cash. “So of course the Bedouin went out to vote. There was fear for their lives.”