If you’ve been following Israel’s election and your head is spinning, welcome to the club. This is the first Israeli election I’ve followed with such obsessive attention, partly because I can now relentlessly pester ChatGPT with questions about every bewildering twist in Israel’s labyrinthine parliamentary system. And the more I learn, the more I realize what an absolute shitshow this all is.

This election has produced an agonizing political stalemate. Netanyahu’s Likud won 27 seats — the most of any party — but his bloc secured just 53 of the Knesset’s 120 seats, short of the 61 needed to govern. In other words, he doesn’t have the votes.

Gadi Eisenkot’s change bloc won 48 seats, while Arab parties captured a record 19, giving parties opposed to Netanyahu a combined 67 seats.

The irony is that Netanyahu’s opponents have enough seats to replace him but their ideological divisions make forming a government nearly impossible. So despite losing his governing majority, Netanyahu has most of the leverage to hold on to power.

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There are essentially three ways out of this mess.

1. Opposition government: Eisenkot could form a coalition or minority government with Arab-party support.

2. Unity government: Netanyahu could somehow seduce his political enemies into a unity arrangement

3. Another election: Nobody compromises and Israelis return to the polls at a later date.

Every option requires somebody to abandon a promise they made during the campaign. Democracy is so beautiful that way.

Another election would be destabilizing to the country. Not to mention 67,000 Israelis living abroad returned to vote this time, and there’s no guarantee anywhere near that many would make the trip again. For Netanyahu’s opponents, this was their best shot at removing him.

On its face, surrendering to a unity government without Ben Gvir and Smotrich might be the most practical option left. It's a little awkward, since Eisenkot spent the campaign promising to replace Netanyahu, plus Bennett and Lieberman have their own longstanding grievances with him. Joining forces could amount to political suicide, alienating their voters and destroying their credibility. But refusing to compromise could leave Netanyahu in power anyway.

It’s like a Choose Your Own Adventure book, except every adventure ends in a fucking disaster.

Arab voters just became impossible to ignore.

The major story of this election is the historic turnout of Arab voters. Arab parties won a record 19 seats, potentially giving them enormous leverage over Israel’s next government. Arab voter turnout surged to 80% compared to 53% in 2022.

But there’s a catch: those 19 seats belong to two very different political camps.

Mansour Abbas’s Islamist Ra’am is open to coalition-building and has even placed Yoav Segalovitz, a Jewish former senior police official and secular Zionist, second on Ra’am’s electoral list.

The more nationalist Joint List, however, is far less willing to cooperate with Zionist parties.

Here’s the pickle: Ra’am alone cannot deliver Eisenkot a majority. He needs support from both parties.

WE’VE SEEN THIS MOVIE BEFORE

Israel tried Jewish-Arab coalition-building in 2021 and it failed.

Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid formed a historic government that included Ra’am, the first independent Arab party to join an Israeli governing coalition.

A year later it collapsed and Bibi was back in office again.

It’s hard to imagine what would make this time different.

THE VANISHING ISRAELI LEFT

Israel’s secular Zionist left no longer commands anything close to the electoral strength it once enjoyed since its founding.

Yair Golan’s Democrats, the last major standard-bearers of Israel’s Zionist left, won a measly eight seats. For a country founded largely by secular, socialist Zionists, the diminished power of this movement is pretty depressing.

This election has made clear that any governing alternative to the religious right will need Arab political partners.

And Israel’s future demographics aren’t doing them any favors. Israel’s ultra-Orthodox population is booming and religious conservatives are gaining political clout.

Anyway, that’s all I’ve got. Your guess is as good as mine as to which way this shit show will go.

Gadi Eisenkot’s Election Pickle