LatestHere’s the latest.Israel’s political leaders were poised for weeks of negotiations over the shape of the next government, as initial results on Wednesday showed no clear winner in a tightly fought election that many have described as a make-or-break moment for the country.If neither Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s hard-line alliance nor an opposition bloc led by Gadi Eisenkot win enough seats to form a government, both would need to find support from outside their blocs for backing as prime minister.By Wednesday evening, election officials had counted about 80 percent of ballots. Those votes, alongside exit polls, indicate that neither bloc would reach the 61 seats needed to secure a straightforward majority in the Knesset, Israel’s Parliament.Some of Mr.

Netanyahu’s allies are floating the idea that he could join Mr. Eisenkot and other centrists to form a broad unity government to stay in power.

For Mr. Netanyahu, the long-serving prime minister who remains as a caretaker until a government is formed, that would be a comfortable scenario, as long as he remained on top.His primary rival, Mr.

Eisenkot, faces a dilemma of his own: He has denounced Mr. Netanyahu as unfit to lead Israel, but he has also objected to partnering with Arab parties in a potential coalition.

The two Arab parties are projected to win as many as 17 seats — a remarkable show of strength that could make them Mr. Eisenkot’s only path to toppling Mr.

Netanyahu.On Wednesday, Mr. Eisenkot did not explicitly mention the Arab parties and instead pledged to build “a stable Zionist government.”Most of the votes were expected to be counted by Wednesday, though the final tally could take days.

Lengthy negotiations could follow as political parties try to assemble a governing majority. If those talks fail, the country could head to a second round of elections — a scenario that has played out before.

For Mr. Netanyahu, running down the clock in the hope of securing a stronger showing in a fresh election could be his strongest shot at retaining his role as prime minister.The uncertainty did not stop the leading candidates from making triumphant late-night speeches to their supporters.Mr.

Eisenkot, a former Israeli military chief of staff, struck a defiant tone toward Mr. Netanyahu, saying: “Tonight we got the answer: The public opted for change.”A few hours later, Mr.

Netanyahu told supporters that his party, Likud, had emerged as the largest in Israel. “We must form a strong right-wing government,” he said.Here’s what else we are covering:Herzog’s role: President Isaac Herzog of Israel holds a largely ceremonial position, except after national elections, when it falls to him to select a potential prime minister. In Israel’s 2022 election, those votes tended to favor Mr.

Netanyahu and his allies.Regional implications: Israel’s neighbors in the Middle East had little hope that the election would fundamentally change Israel’s security doctrine, which has hardened since the Hamas-led attacks of Oct. 7, 2023.

Netanyahu’s coalition will receive about 54 seats, Mr. Eisenkot’s bloc will get roughly 49, and the Arab parties will reach 17.

But the numbers could still easily shift.Israel’s opposition may not be able to form a government, but it still could control Parliament.ImageEmpty seats at the Knesset, the Israeli Parliament, following a vote to dissolve the assembly in May ahead of the elections. Credit...Ronen Zvulun/ReutersThe initial results in the Israeli election released on Wednesday showed that there was no outright winner, and it may take weeks for it to become clear who will be able to form the next government.But even if no government is formed, the Israeli Parliament will open on Nov.

10, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s opponents could be well-placed to take control of the legislative process.The Parliament, or Knesset, will open with a swearing in of the 120 lawmakers. Both of the main blocs of Jewish parties likely fell short of winning a majority of seats, and both are reluctant to form a government that relies on a partnership with two predominantly Arab parties.But even if the main anti-Netanyahu bloc, led by Gadi Eisenkot, does not join with Arab parties to form a government, they remain united on some issues.

If they join forces in parliamentary votes, they could stymie some of the Netanyahu government’s most contentious policies.The first requirement would be to choose a new speaker of the house, so that the opposition could take control of the parliamentary agenda, key committees and start enacting laws, experts say.“I’m not saying it’s a good scenario to take the Knesset and not be able to form the government,” said Gayil Talshir, a political scientist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem who is advising the opposition. “It’s a disaster. But this is the hand they are dealt, and they have to play it.”One of the issues on which Mr.

Eisenkot’s bloc and Arab parties agree — beyond wanting to unseat Mr. Netanyahu — is the need for an independent state inquiry into the government’s failure to prevent the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct.

7, 2023.Mr. Netanyahu, who has never taken responsibility for his government’s lapses in failing stop the attack, has refused to allow such an inquiry.

In the new Parliament, the opposition parties could work to establish one.Another point that both sides agree on is a desire to overturn laws to carry out a sweeping overhaul of the judiciary.Supporters of the Netanyahu government’s divisive plan said it was necessary to rein in what they saw as an overactive judiciary, to restore the balance between the branches of government and give more power to elected officials. Critics, however, said the proposed measures would remove checks on government power.“Damaging legislation and damaging practices were introduced, but they can still be reversed,” said Yohanan Plesner, president of the Israel Democracy Institute, a nonpartisan research group.Other contentious laws that could be challenged include one that politicized the process for appointing Supreme Court judges, and others that weakened the authority of the attorney general and expanded the authority of rabbinical courts.Opposition members have also raised the idea of introducing legislation to bar a candidate charged with a crime from forming a government or to limit a prime minister to two terms in office.Both of those efforts would be aimed at Mr.

Netanyahu, Israel’s longest serving prime minister who is standing trial on corruption charges.But such proposals would be problematic, experts say, because they could be seen as laws t targeting Mr. Netanyahu personally and so would likely be challenged in Israel’s Supreme Court.Such laws would also not apply retroactively, say, to a candidate who had been indicted in the past, Suzie Navot, an Israeli professor of constitutional law, said.“They would not pass easily,” she said.

She said the court could postpone such laws so that they could only come into effect in the next Knesset, or even strike them down.David M. Halbfinger contributed reporting.AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTIsraelis ponder an uncertain future as no clear winner emerges in the voting.ImageA day after polling, Israelis were uncertain about the future, as no party appeared headed for a majority in Parliament.

A campaign ad features Gadi Eisenkot.Credit...David Goldman/Associated PressThe day after Israel’s election, many supporters of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu felt relief that the results tallied so far showed that the opposition’s path to forming a new government was narrow. Others who had hoped for a decisive opposition victory were crushed by results that could well lead to a political stalemate.Almost everyone was asking the same question: What now?“I’m hopeful,” said Merav Katz, 57, a Netanyahu supporter, as she got her hair straightened at a salon in Jaffa.

She said she would like to see an all-Jewish unity government with some opposition parties but not including the Arab parties, which made a strong showing.Ms. Katz expressed a sentiment shared by many right-wing voters: An indecisive result among Israeli Jewish voters would put pressure on the opposition to join a coalition with Mr.

Netanyahu to avoid another round of elections.The preliminary results show that Mr. Netanyahu’s hard-right alliance and the bloc of parties led by Gadi Eisenkot, his main opponent, are both likely to be short of the 61 seats needed to form a majority government.Mr.

Eisenkot could extend his hand to the two main Arab parties to form a minority government. Arab citizens, fearing another far-right government, turned out in historically high numbers.Still, it would be difficult for Mr.

Eisenkot, who ran on a center-right campaign, to form an alliance with the largest Arab party, the Joint List, whose leaders often harshly criticize Israel’s actions in Gaza and the West Bank.At the salon in Jaffa, Ms. Katz’s hairdresser, Saado Zorob, 48, an Arab citizen, said that Jewish Israelis seemed happy to be treated by Arab physicians at hospitals and to eat at Arab restaurants but that many were unwilling to give Arab citizens a role in charting the country’s future.“I feel like garbage,” he said as he was blow drying Ms.

Katz’s hair. He added that he wished Mr.

Eisenkot had the courage to form a government with the Arab caucus. Another election might benefit Mr.

Netanyahu. “I’m worried that if the deadlock yields another round of elections, many Arabs will stay home,” he saidImageA Likud party campaign ad featuring Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Trump.Credit...Ohad Zwigenberg/Associated PressTo many supporters of Mr. Netanyahu, a Jewish-Arab coalition would be a nightmare.Yakov Matzlawi, 51, a Likud member who manages a men’s undergarment stall in a market in Ramla, near Tel Aviv, said the mood among Netanyahu supporters he knew was subdued.

Mr. Netanyahu didn’t lose, he said, but he didn’t win either, and many of on the right were still confused about what the results meant for the country.“What’s important is that we remain in the game,” he said.Five miles south, in the city of Rehovot, Shira Barkan, 49, a therapist who wanted to see Mr.

Netanyahu’s government fall, sat with her teenage daughter at an açai shop, their bowls only half eaten. “I don’t have much of an appetite,” she said.She had gone to bed the night before hopeful, she said, but “woke up in the morning with Bibi again,” using Mr. Netanyahu’s nickname.

In her view, Mr. Netanyahu’s extremist government was leading Israel toward global isolation.“Israelis are amazing people, and they deserve leadership that will not only protect us from external wrongs, but also stop its own wrongdoing,” she said.Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party is persisting with unproven allegations that Israel’s Arab voters have “stolen the elections.” Israel’s official elections committee has said there was no indication of widespread irregularities in the election on Tuesday.

On Wednesday, the Likud again said that Arab parties — which are expected to receive a historically high number of parliamentary seats — had stolen the vote and called for the police and intelligence services to investigate.Analysts say that Netanyahu is trying to de-legitimize votes by Arab citizens of Israel, fearing that his leading Jewish Israeli opponents might try to link up with the newly empowered Arab political bloc in an effort to unseat him.Netanyahu didn’t win the Israeli election. But he’s far from out.ImagePrime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel speaking to supporters in Jerusalem on election night.

Credit...Chris Mcgrath/Getty ImagesPrime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel fell short of outright victory on Tuesday night. But he has still emerged with a good chance of clinging to power.Mr.

Netanyahu, 77, has plenty of political blessings to count after the vote. His Likud party is set to remain the largest in the Israeli Parliament, defying the pre-election polls.

His rivals, led by the former general Gadi Eisenkot, secured far less support and have been left more divided than expected.Analysts say the result, with neither bloc securing enough votes to form a clear majority, could easily lead to weeks or months of political gridlock — a scenario that suits Mr. Netanyahu just fine.

He will remain in charge as caretaker prime minister until a new government is formed or new elections have to be held.It is a remarkable turnaround for Mr. Netanyahu, whose critics blamed him for failing to prevent the Hamas-led attack on Oct.

7, 2023, the deadliest day in Israeli history. A consummate political survivor of more than three decades in Israeli politics, Mr.

Netanyahu is famous for out-negotiating and manipulating almost every opponent who has tried to end his rule.“Netanyahu is still in the driver’s seat,” said Natan Sachs, an expert on Israeli politics at the Middle East Institute, a Washington-based research group. “He’s still in control of most events, and that’s where he likes to be.”Mr. Netanyahu, the longest serving prime minister in Israeli history, still has some headaches.

The hard-line coalition he formed in 2022 — the most far-right in Israeli history — is set to lose its majority in Israel’s 120-member Parliament.Mr. Netanyahu could also end up losing if Mr.

Eisenkot, whose bloc trails the prime minister’s coalition by several seats, chooses to work with the Arab parties that performed better than ever to oust him.But Mr. Eisenkot is likely to struggle to form such an alliance, given how Israeli public opinion has shifted since the Oct.

7 attacks. Even though Arab leaders in Israel generally condemned the attacks, many Jewish Israelis still regard partnering with them as unacceptable.“Netanyahu knew he was going to have a weaker bloc.

But he knew that his goal, even if he couldn’t get a 61-seat majority, would be to prevent his rivals from forming a government,” said Mazal Mualem, who has written a biography of Mr. Netanyahu. “And it seems he’s succeeded.”All this was hard to imagine just three years ago.

Mr. Netanyahu’s public standing plunged after the Oct.

7 attacks, when 1,200 in Israel were killed and 250 were taken hostage, igniting the war in Gaza. Even fervent supporters of the prime minister feared his time in office would end because of his failure to prevent the catastrophe.Mr.

Netanyahu, however, has tenaciously clambered his way back without accepting any responsibility for the devastating security lapse. Instead, he blamed the assault on Israeli security chiefs, launched a series of military campaigns in Lebanon and Iran that killed some of Israel’s most significant foes, and ran his electoral campaign focused on amplifying fears of Israel’s Arab parties.On Tuesday, a swath of Jewish Israelis threw their support behind him, defying Mr.

Netanyahu’s critics at home and abroad. The prime minister gave a fiery speech overnight on Wednesday as initial exit polls showed he had outperformed expectations vowing to establish “a patriotic, strong, right-wing government.”While a slight shift in the results could upend the electoral map, Mr.

Netanyahu has several options for how he might stay in power.One path would be to try to block any new government from being formed, forcing Israel to hold new elections. Mr.

Netanyahu’s opponents — who threw years of energy and planning into the recent vote only to fall short — would struggle to do better in a new vote, analysts say.“There’s a general sense that this was the opposition’s big chance,” Mr. Sachs said. “From Netanyahu’s perspective, he can throw the dice again and again.”Another option would be to form a unity government with one of his opponents.

But that will be difficult as long as Mr. Netanyahu insists on staying in the prime minister’s office.Mr.

Eisenkot has vowed not to serve under Mr. Netanyahu, although a national emergency — such as renewed fighting with Iran — could change that calculation.Mr.

Netanyahu could also try to pick off potential right-wing defectors from Mr. Eisenkot’s bloc.

These include opposition leaders who served in previous Netanyahu governments, such as Naftali Bennett, who leads the center-right Together party, and Avigdor Liberman, who leads the right-wing Yisrael Beitenu.Both men are right-wing supporters of Jewish settlements in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Both refrained from explicitly endorsing Mr.

Eisenkot, Mr. Netanyahu’s main challenger, as the opposition bloc’s candidate for prime minister.But rekindling their old partnerships with Mr.

Netanyahu would be difficult. Both Mr.

Bennett and Mr. Liberman have considerable bad blood with the prime minister.

They have also been strident in demanding an independent commission of inquiry into the failures surrounding the Oct. 7 disaster, which Mr.

Netanyahu has resisted.Isabel Kershner contributed reporting.AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTGadi Eisenkot, Netanyahu’s main rival, has no easy options.ImageGadi Eisenkot addresses voters on Wednesday after exit polls from Israel’s election were released.Credit...Amir Levy/Getty ImagesGadi Eisenkot, the leading figure in Israel’s political opposition, had hoped voters would deliver him a clear mandate to form a government, and begin a new era without Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the helm.The initial results show, however, that Mr. Eisenkot and his allies have no easy path to power.

They face a dilemma: To secure enough seats in parliament to form a government, they either need to cooperate with Arab-led parties — anathema to many Israelis — or join with Mr. Netanyahu or members of his right-wing alliance.“He’s in a Catch-22,” said Shira Efron, chair of Israel policy at the RAND Corporation. “He doesn’t have a lot of great options.”If Mr.

Eisenkot and the opposition were to join forces with the Arab parties, the results so far suggest that they would need the support of both the major ones: the socially conservative Raam party and the Joint List, a coalition of three factions. “After Oct. 7, Israeli society will not accept that,” said Shalom Yerushalmi, a veteran political writer at the news site Zman Yisrael, referring to the 2023 Hamas-led attack on southern Israel. “There’s no chance.”Many Israelis are opposed to any government that would rely on parties that are not Zionist, and would not want those parties to influence security policies or foreign affairs.

On the campaign trail, a number of opposition members pledged never to agree to such an arrangement.Although Raam’s leader, Mansour Abbas, has taken positions more amenable to Zionist members of the opposition, including putting less emphasis on the Palestinian cause, the Joint List has refused to make similar compromises. In the aftermath of Oct.

7, the leaders of the parties in the Joint List reacted in different ways. Ayman Odeh, who was the head of Hadash, referred to “Hamas’s murderous attack” in an opinion essay for The New York Times.

Ahmad Tibi, the leader of Taal, said Arab citizens were against targeting civilians. Sami Abou Shahadeh, the chairman of Balad, said the attack was “an important, historic event in the military sense,” though he later condemned the attack after the Israeli Supreme Court discussed disqualifying him from running for parliament.

The prospect of Mr. Eisenkot setting up a unity government with Mr.

Netanyahu or members of his bloc appears to be just as challenging. He made Mr.

Netanyahu’s record a central theme of his campaign, saying the Israeli prime minister should “go home” and suggesting that he was unfit to lead the country.Mr. Eisenkot may be able to come to an agreement with Mr.

Netanyahu that excludes some of the most extreme elements of the current Israeli coalition from government — such as the far-right cabinet members Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich. But to do so would be to go back on a theme of his campaign.“If he goes for a unity government, he would be destroying the whole narrative he has built,” Mr.

Yerushalmi said.Mr. Eisenkot could attempt to convince members of Mr.

Netanyahu’s party, Likud, to defect to his side, but that seems unlikely because the long-serving Israeli leader has in the past been highly effective at holding his coalition together. Mr.

Netanyahu’s coalition also includes some ultra-Orthodox parties, which Mr. Eisenkot could try to bring into his bloc.

Yet many opposition members are at odds with lawmakers from those parties over the exemptions from military service that many ultra-Orthodox Israelis enjoy.Another option for Mr. Eisenkot and his partners is to hold out for a new round of elections in the hope of achieving a more favorable result.

But that scenario, analysts said, was fraught with pitfalls — Mr. Eisenkot’s supporters, including those living abroad, may be feel less motivated to show up to vote again.More than 80 percent of votes have been counted.

The initial results continue to suggest that neither Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s alliance nor a bloc of opposition parties led by Gadi Eisenkot is likely to have gained enough seats to form the next government. Mr.

Netanyahu’s bloc: Likud, Jewish Power, United Torah Judaism, Shas, Religious Zionism. 53 seats.Jewish opposition bloc: Yashar, Together, Democrats, Yisrael Beiteinu.

48 seats.Arab parties: Joint List, Raam. 19 seats. news analysisHere are 4 takeaways from the election.Gadi Eisenkot, a former Israeli military chief of staff, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.Amir Cohen/Reuters; Alexi J.

Rosenfeld/Getty ImagesThe results of Israel’s pivotal parliamentary election will not be finalized at least until Thursday and it could be weeks until it is clear what kind of government will be formed and who will lead it. But some conclusions are already inescapable.Arab citizens of Israel turned out to vote in record numbers.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party gobbled up many votes that his right-wing and Orthodox Jewish coalition partners had expected would be theirs. And the pre-election polls failed to anticipate both phenomena.Much could still change.

But with most of the votes counted by Wednesday afternoon, here are some initial takeaways.Netanyahu didn’t win, but Eisenkot lost.Mr. Netanyahu’s coalition appears to have shrunk considerably from the 64 parliamentary seats that it won in 2022: The latest results show it with around 54, well short of a majority in the 120-member Knesset, or Parliament.

But he could wind up in better position to form a government than his chief rival, Gadi Eisenkot.Mr. Eisenkot, a former Israeli military chief of staff, had two goals in the election: to lead the Jewish opposition parties to an outright majority or at least get very close to one, and to make sure his own party, Yashar, got more votes than any other.

He failed on both counts, the initial results indicate.Reuven Hazan, a political science professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, said that it had been hard to imagine better conditions for Mr. Eisenkot’s alliance ahead of the election.

Mr. Netanyahu and his coalition were weighed down by anger over the Hamas-led Oct.

7, 2023 attacks and their failure to do more to free Israeli hostages; by anger over ultra-Orthodox Jewish draft-dodging in wartime; and by outrage over the government’s efforts to neuter the judiciary and allow growing settler violence against Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, he said.“The anti-Netanyahu camp had an election handed to them on a silver platter, and they still lost,” Mr. Hazan said. “Israelis have sent an ambiguous message: ‘We don’t really like the current government, but we don’t see a viable alternative.’”Netanyahu’s coalition shrank, but he has options.As votes were being counted on Wednesday afternoon, Likud was poised to be the largest party in the larger of the two blocs of Jewish-led parties, meaning Mr.

Netanyahu could well be given the chance to form a government, Mr. Hazan said.The long-serving Israeli premier may try to peel away some of Mr.

Eisenkot’s putative partners in order to achieve a majority of 61 seats in Parliament. A number of them are as right-wing as he is, though all have more or less ruled out entering a Netanyahu-led government.He could also try to form a national unity government with Mr.

Eisenkot — perhaps with the assistance of President Trump, who has praised Mr. Netanyahu as a “warrior prime minister” and has made clear he wants Israel to join the United States in another round of war against Iran.Perhaps the most mind-bending option available to Mr.

Netanyahu, given that he ran a scaremongering campaign that demonized Arab lawmakers and stoked fears of Arab voter turnout, would be to recruit an Arab party to join him in a government. He nearly did so once before, in 2022.“It could very well be that they become indispensable,” said Dahlia Scheindlin, a pollster and political analyst, said of Arab lawmakers. “And Netanyahu has certainly demonstrated his willingness to do anything to stay in power.”The liberal camp still has a shot.Speaking of Jewish opposition parties in isolation ignores the fact that, when Arab parties are included, Mr.

Netanyahu’s rivals appeared headed toward a significant majority in Parliament, with about 66 seats to roughly 54 for the prime minister’s bloc.“There is no need to go with the racist assumption that you need not count the Arabs,” said Gayil Talshir, a political scientist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem who is advising the opposition.That means the Knesset in effect will be controlled by the anti-Netanyahu opposition, regardless of who ends up being prime minister. If the vote breakdown roughly holds, Ms.

Talshir said she expected Mr. Eisenkot and his Jewish and Arab allies to elect a new parliamentary speaker, begin repealing unpopular laws and at least try to form a government — perhaps including some combination of Arab and ultra-Orthodox lawmakers.“I’m not saying it’s a good scenario to take the Knesset and not be able to form the government,” Ms.

Talshir said. “It’s a disaster. But this is the hand they’re dealt, and they have to play it.”Arab voters broke records but could face rejection.Tuesday’s election appears to have had many losers.

Mr. Netanyahu’s support shrank and Mr.

Eisenkot came up short of his goal. The ultra-Orthodox parties were projected to lose seats, according to the latest returns, and two right-wing nationalist parties failed to make gains, despite four years in which they drove the Netanyahu government’s extreme policies in the West Bank.The biggest ostensible winners were the Arab voters who voted in record numbers.

But they could well wind up the most disappointed citizens of all, if the Jewish opposition leaders prove unwilling or unable to form a majority in an alliance with the Arab parties.“They’re saying, ‘We believe in Israeli democracy, we believe in the system, we want to be part of the system, and we want to be treated better,’” Mr. Hazan said. “And if Netanyahu forms a government, they’ll get none of that.”AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTIsrael’s president, Isaac Herzog, said he would not begin consulting party leaders about forming a government before next week, when he expects to receive the full official vote count.

As head of state, Herzog will pick whoever he thinks has the best shot at assembling a majority in Parliament. If the first effort fails, he can ask up to two other candidates.

If they also fail, new elections will be held. “We must do everything we can, certainly after yesterday, to avoid another round of elections,” Herzog said.Yakov Matzlawi, 51, who manages a men’s undergarment stall in the market in Ramla, a city near Tel Aviv, is an activist for Likud, Benjamin Netanyahu’s party. He said the right-wing voters he knows, including some critical of the prime minister and his government, were mobilized out of anxiety that the Israeli left and Arab parties would take power.“People voted against the Muslims and the secular Jews,” he said.Accountability for the Hamas-led Oct.

7, 2023, attacks has been a major election issue. Many residents of the communities hit hardest by the assault said they are disappointed that many Israelis had voted to return to office Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was in power at the time.Nili Bar Sinai, 76, a retired social worker whose husband was killed by militants in Be’eri, a kibbutz near the Gaza border, said that she hoped opposition leaders would have the “courage to join hands with the Arab parties,” a move that could unseat Netanyahu.For Israel’s neighbors, the election offers little hope of a reset.ImageParts of Lebanon have been greatly damaged in fighting between Israel and Hezbollah since March, including the Dahiya neighborhood, a Hezbollah stronghold in the capital, Beirut.Credit...David Guttenfelder/The New York TimesFor many Israelis, Tuesday’s election represents a pivotal moment for the future of their country.

For Israel’s neighbors in the Middle East, the stakes look decidedly different.Few expect the election — whoever ultimately emerges as the winner — to be a turning point for the region, or to fundamentally change Israel’s security doctrine, analysts say. That doctrine, which has hardened since the Hamas-led attacks on Israel on Oct.

7, 2023, includes crippling the Iranian government, occupying areas of Lebanon and Syria, and often favoring military force over diplomacy.While the outcome of the election is unlikely to prompt Israel to change course, it may decide how far the country is prepared to take its regional ambitions.Re-election for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, backed by his far-right coalition partners, could embolden him to again escalate the war with Iran and push diplomacy with Israel’s neighbors farther out of reach, analysts said.And in both Lebanon and Syria, where Israeli forces have established and expanded military-controlled buffer zones over the past two years, a win for Mr. Netanyahu could see Israel further entrench or expand its occupation.ImageLebanese soldiers at the site of an Israeli missile attack near Beirut in May.Credit...David Guttenfelder/The New York TimesEven if Mr.

Netanyahu’s coalition doesn’t win, many in the region do not see “any major visible strategic difference among the candidates,” said Paul Salem, a nonresident senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.“They don’t see much difference in Israel’s forward defense that it insists on having — the occupied zones in Syria, in Lebanon, in Gaza and the West Bank that is just adding instability regionally,” he added.The same is true of Palestinian statehood, which remains a distant prospect regardless of the election’s outcome. It has been a central issue for Israel’s neighbors and for American-led efforts to seek normalized relations between Israel and Gulf countries.Saudi Arabia and others have said any agreement with Israel would require the creation of a Palestinian state.

But with Israeli proponents of a two-state solution now relegated to the political fringes, such a deal appears more distant than ever.ImageA family living in what remains of their home in Jabiliya, Gaza. The Palestinian enclave still largely lies in ruin, despite a cease-fire between Hamas and Israel agreed to last year.

Credit...Saher Alghorra for The New York TimesIn Iran, the outcome of the Israeli election could have more immediate consequence. While Israel’s animosity toward Tehran is unlikely to change regardless of who is in power, a change in leadership could alter the course of the war.Ahead of the election, Mr.

Netanyahu sought to energize his voter base by saying that he was the person President Trump wanted by his side to “finish the job once and for all.” Iranian officials believe a victory for Mr. Netanyahu could prolong the American-Israeli military campaign against Iran, leading to an even more protracted conflict, analysts say.

And there is no clear sign among the opposition that they would seek to curtail Israel’s confrontation with Iran.Israel’s current approach to Iran “poses a major threat to Iran’s security and very existence,” said Hadi Borhani, a professor of Israeli studies at the University of Tehran. “From this perspective, Netanyahu’s re-election poses a threat to Iran’s territorial integrity as a whole.”Leily Nikounazar contributed reporting.AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTIt’s nearly 8 a.m. in Israel and the outcome of Tuesday’s election is still unclear. More than 40 percent of the votes have been counted, according to the authorities, and most of the remaining ballots will be tallied within the next several hours.

Then, officials will begin counting hundreds of thousands of ballots from Israeli soldiers, diplomats abroad and a few other categories of voters. That could take until Thursday.Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, faces a difficult choice.ImageIsraeli President Isaac Herzog casting his ballot Tuesday in Jerusalem during Israel’s general election.Credit...Ohad Zwigenberg/Associated PressIsaac Herzog, Israel’s president, has a largely ceremonial role — except after national elections, when it is his responsibility to choose a potential prime minister and then tasks that person with trying to form a government.Since Israelis vote for a party or parties rather than an individual, the person who might lead the country is selected after the ballots are counted and parliamentary seats are allocated to parties according to their proportion of the vote.

The president — who is separately elected by the Knesset, Israel’s single-chamber legislature — then convenes party leaders to hear their recommendations for prime minister before choosing someone to form a government.While the president can choose the leader of the party that won the most votes, he can also select another leader who seems more likely to assemble a coalition that can secure a vote of confidence in the Knesset.In 2009, President Shimon Peres chose Benjamin Netanyahu — the current prime minister — even though his right-wing Likud party had won fewer votes than the centrist Kadima party.Early exit polls on Wednesday suggest a tight race between the far-right coalition led by Mr. Netanyahu and the center-right opposition bloc that has called for change.

The opposition bloc includes the Yashar party, led by Gadi Eisenkot. But Mr.

Netanyahu’s Likud party appears to have received the most votes, which means he will argue that he should be selected as prime minister.Mr. Herzog, whose job is to stay above the political fray, is expected to face a difficult decision.

He must discern whether the votes show that the majority of Israelis demanded change or if they indicated a preference for another Netanyahu government.Mr. Netanyahu’s governing coalition, the most right-wing in Israel’s history, has drawn international condemnation, heightened tensions with allies and divided Israelis.

Mr. Herzog has repeatedly criticized what he has called “a terrible process of brutalization” creeping into Israeli society, citing violence by Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank against Palestinians and the abuse of detainees in Israeli custody, which some far-right ministers in Mr.

Netanyahu’s coalition are accused of encouraging.The Israeli president, who can grant criminal pardons and commute sentences, has also faced pressure from President Trump, who has called on him to pardon Mr. Netanyahu as he stands trial on corruption charges.

Mr. Herzog has respectfully resisted, saying that “Israel is a sovereign state governed by the rule of law.”Mr.

Netanyahu has long resisted calls for an independent commission of inquiry into the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack on Israel that set off a devastating war in Gaza.

He has also refused to take responsibility for any failures that led to the attack, angering many Israelis.But if the president taps Mr. Eisenkot, a former military chief whose son was killed in the war in Gaza and who has vowed to launch a state inquiry into the 2023 attack, there is no guarantee he will succeed in forming a government.

The center-right opposition bloc would need to ally with the country’s Arab parties, which appear to have secured more parliamentary seats than ever before. The bloc’s leaders have not agreed to such an alliance, while Mr.

Netanyahu has effectively ruled out including Arab parties in a governing coalition.Both the far-right and far-left blocs face obstacles to assembling a governing majority. They would need agreements with other parties and factions that may be politically unpalatable, or even impossible.Arab parties could play a role in forming the next government.ImageSupporters of Israel’s Arab-led Joint List political alliance cheering as the first exit polls were announced on Tuesday.Credit...Ahmad Gharabli/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesOne of the most striking results from the election in Israel on Tuesday was the unusually strong showing by two leading Arab parties, whose voters turned out in record numbers to express their opposition to the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.The final results have not been announced, but a range of exit polls conducted by Israeli broadcasters suggest that two of the parties — the socially conservative United Arab List, or Raam, and the left-wing Joint List — may have won a historically large number of seats in parliament and an important role in the formation of the country’s next government.Mansour Abbas, the leader of Raam, told a television interviewer that the turnout showed that Arab voters, who make up about 20 percent of Israel’s population, had channeled their “frustration and despair” into “hope.”He said he wanted to replace Mr.

Netanyahu’s government “in every possible way” and that his first priority was to “ensure that there is a chance of forming a government” that achieved that goal.The Arab parties’ strong showing may make them kingmakers. But building a governing coalition with Arab participation remains a fraught exercise in Israel.

Many Israeli Jews believe that a parliamentary majority should not rely on the support of Arab lawmakers.ImagePeople waiting to cast ballots in Umm al-Fahm, one of the largest Arab towns in Israel, on Tuesday.Credit...Ahmad Gharabli/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMost Arab citizens are the descendants of Palestinians who remained in their homes during the 1948 Arab-Israel war at the time of Israel’s independence.Today, they mostly live in separate towns from Jewish Israelis and face violence and discriminatory housing policies.Over the decades, disagreements, including over Israel’s nature as a Jewish state, have led many Arab voters to avoid the ballot box. This week, many Arab voters said they were furious at Mr.

Netanyahu for his treatment of the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza and for policies that they feel treat Palestinians in Israel as second-class citizens. Indeed, throughout the campaign, Mr.

Netanyahu made overt appeals to anti-Arab prejudice.“I’m very optimistic because people understand that this isn’t like ordinary elections — we want change,” said Kholoud Al-Zeinati, 39, an Arab Israeli voter who cast her ballot on Tuesday in the mixed Jewish-Arab city of Lod, where long lines formed at polling places. “Because we, as the Arab community, are the community that pays the biggest price across so many aspects of life, it’s important to come out and take part.”“I expect our votes to be truly decisive in shaping the next government and making things better for all of us,” she added.Of the two Arab parties that did well on Tuesday, only Raam has joined a coalition government in the past. That happened in 2021, when it joined the short-lived anti-Netanyahu coalition of Prime Minister Naftali Bennett.Raam’s participation in that government outraged many right-wing Jewish voters, and when it collapsed after roughly one year, they backed Mr.

Netanyahu, who went on to form the most hard-line government in Israel’s history.That government now faces the possibility that it may be brought down by an election result that has been deeply shaped by robust Arab turnout.Heedo Abu Laban contributed reporting from Lod, Israel.AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTBefore the election, Netanyahu offered a grim economic forecast for Israel.ImagePrime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has argued that Israel’s economy is healthy, but warned that its financial isolation could deepen.Credit...Ammar Awad/ReutersDays before Tuesday’s pivotal Israeli election, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shocked his country by offering a bleak economic forecast that critics said could make Israel more like Iran, Russia and North Korea.Mr. Netanyahu told an Israeli financial journalist on Friday that he was preparing for international sanctions against Israeli banks by drawing up plans for a “bypass economy” based on cryptocurrency.

He also told Israelis to prepare for the end of billions of dollars of annual American assistance. “It’s over,” he said. “It’s only a matter of time.”The comments were a reflection of Israel’s deepening global isolation, with even once-staunch allies imposing or threatening economic sanctions and embargoes after years of war in Gaza and rampant violence by Jewish settlers against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.With settlers advancing into areas that were previously off limits, Britain last month decried what it called “ethnic cleansing” and announced trade sanctions on settlements that it said would also apply to entities that financed their construction. Though Israel’s banking system has not been directly targeted by sanctions, a dozen countries, including Canada, France and Spain, have said they support restrictions on trade with settlements, raising the prospect of further penalties that could affect Israeli financial institutions.Opponents of Mr.

Netanyahu’s government decried his pronouncements, which also drew a rebuke from the generally reserved central bank.“Crypto currencies cannot serve as a route to bypass sanctions against Israel,” the Bank of Israel said in a statement. The bank added that the government would do better “to focus on preventing sanctions” and preserving Israel’s economic ties with its main trading partners.Commentators said that Mr.

Netanyahu’s outlook sounded apocalyptic, and some said it was part of a scare campaign to improve his election prospects. Last year, amid growing global condemnation of the Israeli military’s conduct of the war against Hamas in Gaza, where it has been accused of war crimes, and the imposition of some arms embargoes, he warned that Israel would have to become a more self-sufficient “super-Sparta.” That reference to the ancient, insular Greek city-state that practiced militaristic self-reliance was, to critics, a frightening scenario for a small country whose economy is largely driven by a tech sector that is reliant on foreign investment.Gadi Eisenkot, Mr.

Netanyahu’s main rival in Tuesday’s election, said in a social media post that the prime minister’s “Bibi-coin vision,” a nod to cryptocurrency, would “dismantle the Israeli economy for generations.”“No internet purchases, no high-tech investments, no national security,” he added.Yair Lapid, the opposition leader who has served as prime minister and finance minister, wrote on social media that a vote for Mr. Netanyahu was a vote for “a ruined economy, sanctions that will lead to insane price hikes, and no military alliance with the United States.” And a former governor of the Bank of Israel, Jacob Frenkel, told Israel’s Channel 12 on Sunday that moving away from the international financial system would turn Israel into “a leper.” Mr.

Netanyahu later walked back his remarks slightly, saying that he had heard the criticism and that cryptocurrency was only one option to deal with potential financial sanctions.In a somewhat jarring contrast, Mr. Netanyahu’s campaign has argued that Israel’s economy overall is healthy despite years of war, helped by record export revenues, relatively low inflation and unemployment, and a strong shekel.But many Israelis are not feeling it.

The State Comptroller, a government watchdog, warned last year that the cost of living was “skyrocketing” in part because of structural challenges in Israel’s consumer market and low competition levels.While foreign affairs and national security have dominated the political conversation ahead of the election, a recent survey by the Israel Democracy Institute, a nonpartisan research group, found that the economy was the top issue for many voters heading into Tuesday.Israeli elections have great consequences for Palestinians, but they don’t get to vote.ImageElection fliers in Beit Kahil in the West Bank on Tuesday.Credit...Erik Marmor/Getty ImagesThe stakes of the Israeli elections are high for Palestinians in the West Bank, but they do not have the right to vote in them.In interviews, some Palestinians voiced objections to not being allowed to vote, especially as they felt Israel’s occupation of the West Bank was becoming more permanent.“The Israeli government has enormous influence over our lives,” said Montaser Amro, 32, a supermarket owner in Majd, a village near the southern city of Hebron. “It chooses when roadblocks open and close, it controls the borders, and it decides on how much of our economy functions.”He added, “Why can’t we vote when settlers living hundreds of meters away can?”Israel captured the West Bank in 1967 and reached an agreement with the Palestine Liberation Organization to establish the Palestinian Authority in the 1990s. The Palestinian Authority administers parts of the West Bank and has not held parliamentary or presidential elections for roughly 20 years.Many Palestinians have long hoped the Palestinian Authority would transform into an independent Palestinian state.

In recent years, those hopes have dwindled. The Israeli government promotes the expansion of settlements in the West Bank that are widely considered illegal under international law and rejects Palestinian self-determination there and in Gaza.

Palestinian officials have also failed to unify their ranks and renew their leadership.Alaa al-Khabass, 40, a resident of Hebron, said it was unjust that Palestinians could not cast ballots. “Israel controls just about everything related to us, and I don’t see that changing any time soon,” he said. “We should be able to vote, but we live in painful reality where we lack rights and sovereignty.”