With nearly all ballots counted, Netanyahu's bloc is projected at 53 seats against 48 for Eisenkot's, and a bereaved father told Reuters he will keep pressing for a state inquiry into October 7.
Partial results from Israel's general election show Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party and its far-right and ultra-Orthodox allies on track for 53 of the 120 Knesset seats, ahead of the 48 projected for former military chief Gadi Eisenkot's Yashar party and its three Jewish opposition partners, but short of a majority, according to the BBC. Arab-led parties are on course for an unprecedented 19 seats and could emerge as kingmakers, although nearly all Jewish parties have pledged not to work with them. NPR also reported that no clear winner had emerged after about 90 percent of the vote was counted.
Officials began counting as many as 480,000 absentee ballots on Thursday from soldiers, diplomats and hospital patients, which could still shift the final allocation of seats under Israel's proportional system. President Isaac Herzog said he expects official results next week and will then consult every faction before choosing who should try to form a government, a process the BBC says could take weeks and, if it fails, could end in another election. Turnout was 77.7 percent, the highest in more than two decades.
In a video published by Reuters on Thursday, an Israeli father who lost his daughter in the Hamas-led attack of 7 October 2023 said he was disappointed by the initial results and would keep fighting for a state commission of inquiry into the assault and the events leading up to it. The footage is an interview-based report and does not show the vote count itself. Accountability for the security failures of 7 October was one of the key issues in the campaign, the BBC reports, and the father's concern that the outcome could stall an inquiry is his own view, not an established outcome.
