“Strong elders” .. Netanyahu loses the majority and accuses the Arab parties of “stealing the elections”

Report by Tal Shalev, Ofek News correspondent in Jerusalem - On Election Day in March 2015, Benjamin Netanyahu recorded a controversial 28-second video in which he warned right-wing voters that Arab citizens were heading to the polls “in large numbers.” A week later, following his victory, which contradicted prevailing expectations, Netanyahu apologized, saying that he did not intend to offend the entire Arab community.

Today, 11 years and 6 elections later, Netanyahu is doing it again, but on a much larger scale. Since losing the majority in the October 27 elections, Netanyahu and his allies have been making a serious accusation: It is that the Arab parties “stole” the elections through bribery, foreign financing, and fraud.

They also demand investigations and arrests, and even reach their extreme demands to cancel the voting results and go to another electoral round. Netanyahu and his allies have not provided any evidence yet, but the political goal is clear: to make the Joint List and the United Arab List (Ra’am) illegitimate. They are the two Arab parties that recorded record voter turnout, and are likely to play a decisive role in any effort to oust Netanyahu, who has held office for the longest period in Israel's history.

In a video statement on Thursday, Gadi Eisenkot, Netanyahu's main rival, said: "They are doing this because they lost." Netanyahu did not lose the election outright, but he did not win it either; The same applies to Eisenkot.

Both failed to reach the required majority (61 seats) in the 120-seat parliament, which is needed to achieve a decisive victory. Israel now faces a period that could extend for weeks - or perhaps months - of political uncertainty.

Netanyahu understands the calculations well; His coalition's balance has declined to 53 seats, and there is no clear way in sight that will enable him to secure a majority. As for the bloc led by Eisenkot, it has 48 seats alone, but - adding the 19 seats held by the Arab parties - it reaches a clear majority of 67 seats.

The only government that succeeded in ousting Netanyahu, the Bennett-Lapid government in 2021, included the United Arab List (Ra'am), and that government collapsed about a year later. Now, according to a source close to Netanyahu, his main goal after the elections is to delegitimize any political cooperation between Jews and Arabs, and prevent it from occurring, for fear that this will weaken his grip on power.

These efforts began weeks before Election Day. In mid-October, Netanyahu and the head of the Religious Zionism Party, Bezalel Smotrich, announced plans to deploy about two thousand observers in polling stations within Arab towns, portraying these centers as potential hotbeds of fraud.

On the morning of election day, police arrested three activists from the United Arab List (Raam) for allegedly being involved in a vote-buying scheme for money, an incident that received widespread media coverage. Israeli Channel 12 later reported that the initial information that led to these arrests came from Netanyahu's office manager, who bypassed the usual official channels to communicate directly with the police commissioner.

The courts rejected most police requests to impose strict restrictions, and some suspects were released. However, Netanyahu's electoral machine seized on this story and amplified the news of the arrests, claiming that it was an attempt to "steal the election."

As the votes continued to be counted, the election campaign continued and intensified. On Wednesday, the Likud Party, led by Netanyahu, announced that it had submitted hundreds of testimonies alleging bribery, threats, violence, and fraud by the United Arab List and the Joint List. Meanwhile, Channel 14 - loyal to Netanyahu - reported suspicions of receiving money from a foreign source.

The Chairman of the Central Elections Commission, Deputy President of the Supreme Court, Judge Noam Solberg, sent a letter to the Director of the General Security Service (Shin Bet), David Zinni, requesting an investigation into “serious suspicions” related to foreign funding. Israeli media later reported that it was Zinni himself who requested this letter, after his meeting - according to reports - with Netanyahu earlier.

Solberg noted in his letter that he could not verify the seriousness of the evidence; But to Likud and other right-wing politicians, that did not matter, as they treated the speech as conclusive evidence. Netanyahu's far-right allies, Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir, called for the arrest of Arab party leaders.

Ben Gvir claimed that there were efforts funded by Qatar to increase Arab voter turnout, which Qatar categorically denied, describing it as a “ridiculous and dangerous” claim. On Israeli Channel 14, this case was called “ballot box terrorism.”

The representative of the Likud Party, Boaz Bismuth, wrote on the “X” platform that the results of “terrorist parties” should not be recognized unless every detail is examined very carefully. On Sunday, Netanyahu himself shared a video clip of a right-wing activist alleging widespread fraud and calling for the elections to be “simply cancelled.”

These events sparked sharp criticism of both the Israeli Police Commissioner and the head of the Shin Bet, both of whom were appointed to their positions by Netanyahu. “There is a common denominator between the two issues,” wrote Amos Harel, senior military analyst at Haaretz.

In both cases, the Prime Minister's Office is working behind the scenes with the Shin Bet and the police, while the Likud Party is quick to exploit these reports in a large-scale propaganda campaign aimed at delegitimizing the Arab parties and reducing the scope of action available to the opposition. However, the bodies responsible for the elections rejected Netanyahu's account, as the Central Elections Commission officially refuted the allegations of widespread fraud, describing them as baseless and stressing that there is no evidence to support the claim of fraud. Systematic approach to the electoral process.

The head of the committee appeared on Sunday, along with the head of the Shin Bet and the Attorney General, in a statement in which they confirmed that the elections were held properly. They stated that, even if suspicions related to external financing were proven true, this would not lead to canceling the results or undermining the integrity of the electoral process.

“The decision you made at the ballot box will be respected,” Solberg said. For its part, the Likud Party did not change its position, stressing in a statement that a "black cloud" hung over the results.

The opposition generally supported the investigation, but considered Netanyahu's allegations an attempt to challenge the results. Eisenkot described the matter as a "despicable and malicious influence operation" aimed at delaying the announcement of the results and delegitimizing the 26th Knesset.

The leader of the left-wing Democrats, Yair Golan, said that this is the behavior of "a dictator who refuses to accept defeat at the ballot box." On the other hand, the Joint List - which is targeted by the delegitimization campaign - responded with a statement, saying last week: “No smear campaign will be able to erase the achievement achieved by the Arab public, and no attempt to question the legitimacy of our votes will change the will of the voters.”

You wanted us to be small and weak, so we became big and strong.”