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JERUSALEM — Israel's election officials and its internal intelligence service, Shin Bet, are investigating this week's vote after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party set off a firestorm with allegations that the vote was "stolen by Arab parties."
Likud officials have argued that Qatar funneled money into Israel to drive record high turnout among Palestinian citizens of Israel, which led to the two predominantly Arab parties, the Joint List and Ra'am, winning a record 19 seats in the 120-seat Knesset, Israeli media outlets reported.
As the furor over the allegations gained momentum Thursday, the election commission's acting general manager, Dean Livneh, wrote in a letter to the Knesset: "to the best of our knowledge, there is no basis for claims of systematic violation of the purity of the elections." Livneh added that on election day and immediately afterward, election and security officials did not report any problems that compromised the vote's integrity.
The Qatari government has strenuously denied Likud's allegations. The Israeli opposition camp, led by retired general Gadi Eisenkot, has criticized the claims, as have the Arab parties, as a ploy by Netanyahu in his all-out fight for political survival to delegitimize the election results and delay the incoming Knesset's swearing-in.
Netanyahu did not publish any evidence of Qatar's involvement. Rather, he posted a screenshot of a Joint List political leader giving a TV interview from Al Jazeera's Doha headquarters and raised the question: "Why was Ahmad Tibi in Qatar four days before the election?"
Shin Bet announced separately that it would investigate reports of foreign funding and bribery around the election.
Regardless of the investigation's outcome, the allegations cast a shadow over a vote that had been touted by many in Israel - including David Zini, Netanyahu's handpicked Shin Bet chief - just days earlier as a testament to the vibrancy and durability of the country's democracy. They could have a galvanizing effect on Netanyahu's base and a chilling effect on the Arab turnout in the event of another round of voting, should there be one, political analysts say.
In statements shared by Netanyahu on his X account, Likud said it possessed thousands of pieces of evidence showing that the Ra'am party bribed voters with cash, stuffed ballot boxes with fake votes and deployed illegal voter mobilization software.
"This is an attack on democracy whose purpose is to lead to a foreign takeover of the Knesset, the Islamization of Israel, and the overthrow of right-wing rule in order to lead to retreat and defeat of the Israel Defense Forces in all arenas - primarily Iran," Likud said.
The final vote tally, which is not yet officially certified, showed Netanyahu's bloc winning 53 seats, Eisenkot winning 48 and the Arab parties claiming 19, the election commission said late Thursday. For Eisenkot, political analysts say, any path to form a majority government with at least 61 seats would likely include bringing Ra'am onboard in some capacity, a prospect that some of Eisenkot's allies have rejected, at least for now.
For months, Netanyahu has pressured the Eisenkot bloc to distance itself from Arab parties by painting them as radical Islamists and Hamas supporters. On election day, the prime minister used the high Palestinian Israeli turnout and photos of hijab-clad women queuing at the polls to rally his own supporters to come out and "fight for our home."
Unusually high late turnout among Likud voters, even among high overall turnout, was key to their unexpectedly strong performance, Likud officials said after the election. On Tuesday night, the party tried - and failed - to persuade the election commission to extend voting hours, but an hour before polls closed at 10 p.m., Netanyahu was still seen at a mall in the Negev desert mobilizing voters while his party workers phone banked and organized carpools.
Citing unnamed security officials, several Israeli news outlets reported that at least four Palestinian Israelis were arrested on suspicion of involvement in election bribery and there were recorded attempts to influence the vote, but concerns about its overall integrity were "not significant."
A Shin Bet spokesperson said the agency was acting on information it had collected about foreign influence efforts and was not motivated by any political party to investigate. The investigation is "focused and limited in scope," the agency said. "It does not cast aspersions on, or accuse, an entire community that went out to vote democratically and lawfully. Only those who acted in violation of the law will be dealt with."
In a statement, Ra'am chairman Mansour Abbas said he welcomed the investigation and denied any connection between his party and the alleged offenses. "Upholding the integrity of the electoral process and the rule of law is a civic and democratic duty that we have adopted as our guiding principle," Abbas said. "There will be nothing, because there is nothing."
Israel could be headed for another election if Netanyahu and Eisenkot both fail in the coming weeks to form a majority government with 61 or more seats. A repeat vote would benefit Netanyahu because Palestinian Israelis and overseas Israelis, who generally lean center-left, are not expected to return to the ballot box at such historic rates, analysts say.
Israeli law allows courts to throw out election results and order a new vote over proven election irregularities, but election officials have given no indication that such an outcome is under consideration.
Nearly 80 percent of Arab voters and 78 percent of Israelis overall voted on Tuesday.
Youssef Makladeh, the founder of the StatNet polling institute who serves as Israeli TV Channel 13's pollster for Arab society, said his polling models predicted Arab turnout would soar even before the campaign season kicked into gear because voters wanted to repudiate the outgoing Netanyahu government that included the far-right politicians Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich.
"People simply wanted to vote. There was anger, frustration and fear, and above all, there was a very clear address for that anger," Makladeh said. He added that many Palestinian Israelis hoped they would be welcomed into a Eisenkot-led "change" coalition and would feel disillusioned if another election took place instead.
"If, after Arab citizens came out to vote in such large numbers, and the Change Bloc is not prepared to accept that vote as legitimate, and if it creates the impression that the Arab vote itself is invalid, then the reaction next time could be extreme," Makladeh said. "In such a scenario, Arab turnout could fall even below 45 percent."
So far, most leaders in Eisenkot's bloc, including Eisenkot himself, have been tight-lipped about whether they would try to partner with the Arab parties. But they were unequivocal in their criticism of Netanyahu's vote-rigging claims.
On Thursday, after he was briefed on the investigation by Zini, the Shin Bet chief, and election commissioner Noam Sohlberg, Eisenkot said Netanyahu was attempting "an orchestrated, organized campaign to delegitimize the election results."
Another leader in Eisenkot's bloc who received a briefing, the current parliamentary opposition leader Yair Lapid, said the materials from the probe and investigators' assessments suggested that "there is no risk to the election results or anything undermining them."
(COMMENT, BELOW)