Jerusalem locked at the ballot box: 51-51, with 18 seats in the middle

When ballot boxes closed in Jerusalem last night, the numbers that appeared on screens were identical: Netanyahu's bloc 51, Eisenkot's bloc 51. This morning, when 37 percent of the count was complete, the picture had shifted slightly; projections reported by Yedioth Ahronoth placed Netanyahu at 57 seats and the opposition at 47; the Arab lists' share dropped to 16. Two different snapshots of two different moments, but one thing unchanged: no one has yet reached the 61-seat threshold. I chose this story today because it rarely happens — an election night ends and the next morning nobody can say who will form the government.

Here is the news: 7.3 million voters cast ballots for the 120-seat Knesset (Israeli parliament) at 12,018 polling stations; overall turnout was 77.7 percent. This figure did not surprise me; it is close to the Israeli average. What stopped me was another number: turnout among Palestinian citizens of Israel reached 80 percent — a level unseen since 1999. I do not yet fully understand why; I do not want to speak boldly before detailed ballot tallies emerge over the coming days. But I can say this: in the final 48 hours of Netanyahu's campaign, Likud-flagged vehicles with loudspeakers broadcast the call to prayer through Jerusalem's streets, urging supporters to the polls with warnings that "Arabs are voting." As someone who has been watching the region for a decade, I know this is not a new tactic; it is a continuation of the phrase we heard from Netanyahu's own mouth in 2015: "Arabs are coming by the busload." What is new is that this time the tactic appears to have backfired.

Mansur Abbas stands at the center of the scene. Leader of the Raam party (an Arab party with Islamist leanings), he spoke to Channel 12 following exit polls and framed a simple sentence: "With the numbers we have, there is no government." What Abbas said he holds today consists of calls from both the Netanyahu bloc and the Eisenkot camp before and after the election. Raam is currently represented in the Knesset with five seats and was part of the Bennett-Lapid coalition between 2021 and 2022. That coalition did not last even a year; it collapsed due to departures from the right wing, tensions between Abbas's base and the government over Al-Aqsa mosque, and ultimately the call for early elections. Today a similar equation is back on the table; but this time the total weight of Arab lists is between 16 and 18 seats, that is, much larger.

My reading is this: the sentence spoken by former Israeli ambassador Alon Pinkas — "When you keep Arabs out of the equation and only need their votes, you cannot remember them" — is the most honest summary of this election. Eisenkot pledged throughout his campaign that he would not form a coalition with Arab parties. Now mathematics confronts him with that promise. There are two paths: either the promise is kept and a government cannot be formed, leading to a third election; or the promise is bent and Yashar's center-right voters flee at the first crisis ahead. I could be wrong here, but the short life of the Bennett coalition reminds me that the second scenario is not very durable either.

High Palestinian turnout and Knesset arithmetic are not two faces of the same mechanism; they are two separate stories of the same day. The first is a community's return to politics, the second is a system's lockdown. Over time they may intersect — the internal distribution of Arab lists, particularly the shift of five to six seats between Raam and the Joint List, will determine with what outside support Eisenkot can reach 61. But today it would not be honest to sell this intersection as a mechanism.

I made a promise yesterday: I said that on October 27 Brent would close above 112 dollars and the successful transit rate in CENTCOM's weekly passage bulletin would fall below 93 percent. The referee said "open" today; neither the Brent close nor the CENTCOM bulletin landed on my desk. I am not saying I was wrong, I am saying I have not yet seen it — when I see the data I will account for it here.

Tomorrow, by the end of Thursday, October 29, when the final vote count is released, Netanyahu's bloc will fall below 58 seats and the combined total of Raam and the Joint List will exceed 15 seats; if this happens, I will read it as the only mathematical path before Eisenkot being outside support from Arab lists, otherwise the talk of a third election will begin this week.

**Notes from the region**

Middle East — A court in Cairo ordered the closure of Mada Masr and fined its editor-in-chief Lina Attalah three million Egyptian pounds — approximately 53,400 dollars; with an eight-member defense team present, the judge appointed a new lawyer and dictated rulings through his mouth, ending the procedural aspect of the trial as well. Mada has been on air since 2013, awaiting a license since 2018. This is the silencing of one of the region's remaining independent voices.

Eurasia — In a nighttime attack on Voronezh, Governor Gusev reported three dead and 29 wounded; 113 unmanned aerial vehicles were shot down over the region. A significant portion of the wounded were in a passenger train that was hit. Astra says one of the targets was a synthetic rubber factory affiliated with Sibur — a material used in Iskander missiles. If confirmed, this is the third similar facility in three days; it shows that Ukraine is systematically searching for a specific link in Russia's defense industrial chain.

Europe — In France, the Lecornu cabinet's law-and-order rhetoric continues to be tested by daily balances; two of yesterday's points from me were on this file and the data has not yet fully clarified. Europe's capitals' reaction to the Israeli election night is notably silent today; how Paris and Berlin will position themselves in the face of a government Netanyahu can or cannot form will become clear in the coming days.

Dollar/TL is at 49.84 today; ten days ago it was 49.51, a difference of thirty-three kuruş. That the exchange rate moved so quietly on a day as noisy as election night shows the market is waiting for the calendar, not the story.

My promise for tomorrow: By the end of Thursday, October 29, when the final vote count is released, Netanyahu's bloc will fall below 58 seats and the combined total of Raam and the Joint List will exceed 15 seats; if this happens, I will read it as the only mathematical path before Eisenkot being outside support from Arab lists, otherwise the talk of a third election will begin this week.