Israel's election produced only one result - so why is everyone claiming victory? - analysis

ByHERB KEINONOCTOBER 28, 2026 18:02Updated: OCTOBER 28, 2026 18:37

The Israeli public went out on Tuesday and voted en masse. But its message was garbled, so garbled that both sides, and the various parties within them, found a way to claim victory.

How? Sometimes by changing the yardstick. Each party claimed to have won among those who, by its own political reckoning, count.

For Benjamin Netanyahu, that meant those who support Israel as a Jewish state. For Naftali Bennett and Gadi Eisenkot, the emphasis was on those who serve and support conscription. Yair Golan widened the circle, counting the Arab parties alongside the Jewish opposition parties to declare that the Israeli democratic majority had prevailed.

The electorate had delivered one result. The leaders supplied different definitions of victory.

All this emerged as the party leaders confronted results that gave them reasons both to celebrate and to worry. With neither bloc commanding a clear parliamentary majority, each found a constituency within which the outcome could be presented as a victory of sorts.

What does victory look like for Netanyahu?

For Netanyahu, it was a victory among those who support Israel as a Jewish state, a definition that encompasses his haredi and far-right partners.

“Likud is the biggest party in Israel,” he told supporters in his election-night speech. “The right-wing bloc has a clear, decisive majority among the Zionist public, among the Jewish public and all those who support the Jewish state. That is what has become clear. A decisive majority.”

The denominator matters. By this reckoning, the Jewish parties in the change bloc count, as do all his own partners, including Shas and United Torah Judaism. The Arab parties fall outside the circle.

Whatever the final parliamentary arithmetic, Netanyahu was claiming a majority among the public he considered the relevant measure of victory.

The haredi parties belong in that calculation. They resist conscription, but support Israel’s Jewish character. Their votes count toward the majority Netanyahu was claiming.

Bennett measured the result differently.

“The alliance of those who serve defeated the alliance of draft evaders,” he declared.

Here was a different explanation of who had won and who had lost. Netanyahu’s emphasis was on support for the Jewish state. Bennett’s was on sharing the burden of defending it.

The haredi parties could fit comfortably inside Netanyahu’s definition while standing on the losing side of Bennett’s. Their resistance to conscription was precisely what made them the target of his victory claim.

Bennett went on to pledge a “Zionist government of the alliance of those who serve.” But before describing the government he wanted, he had already supplied his reading of the election: the public carrying the burden had prevailed over the political forces perpetuating its unequal distribution.

Eisenkot offered a closely related interpretation.

He said Netanyahu faced a larger, stronger Zionist majority and pledged to establish a Zionist government committed to conscription.

Eisenkot calls for universal military service

Like Bennett, Eisenkot presented the result as a victory for the public demanding that the burden of military service be shared. The haredi parties counted toward Netanyahu’s claimed mandate. In Bennett and Eisenkot’s reckoning, they stood on the losing side.

Liberman’s speech fit the pattern less neatly. He did not offer the same clear declaration of victory among a particular public. Instead, he appealed to a political tradition he argued Netanyahu had betrayed.

“Those loyal to the path of Trumpeldor, Jabotinsky and Herzl,” he said, should “raise the banner of revolt within Likud.”

His reference point was the Zionist national camp. Likud voters and members still belonged to it; Netanyahu, in Liberman’s telling, had led it astray. His appeal was to people whose political loyalties he wanted to separate from their loyalty to the prime minister.

Golan took the broadest view of the electorate.

In his election-night speech, he invoked “the Israeli, democratic majority.” By Wednesday morning, he had made the arithmetic behind that description explicit, counting the Arab parties alongside the Jewish opposition parties.

Arab votes, he argued, carry the same weight as Jewish votes. If the parties opposing the outgoing coalition together held a majority, then that was the majority against which the result, and victory, should be measured.

Here was the clearest contrast with Netanyahu. Netanyahu claimed victory among those who support Israel as a Jewish state, leaving the Arab parties outside his calculation. Golan included them and reached the opposite conclusion.

He also challenged the framing of his prospective partners. Where Bennett and Eisenkot emphasized service and Zionism, Golan emphasized equal citizenship. Arab voters did not need to pass an additional test for their votes to count toward the majority he said had demanded a change of government.

Israelis voted in the same election. Their leaders emerged claiming victory among different electorates. Now the question is how, and whether, those differing definitions of victory can produce a government.

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