Israel’s exit polls leave both blocs short as oil trades the result and Hormuz reaches Day 240

Israel voted on Tuesday 27 October in its first election since the October 7 attack, and the exit polls produced no winner. Axios reported Netanyahu’s bloc at 51–52 seats against 49–51 for Eisenkot’s, with Likud projected at 27 and Eisenkot’s Yashar party at 21; CNN carried the same 27–21 split and noted Netanyahu remains well short of the 61 seats needed. Haaretz’s live file reported a second projection showing a bloc tie, with the opposition able to form a coalition only with Arab party support, and Arab parties rising to 19 seats. Eisenkot claimed victory after midnight, saying a “decent leader” would leave the stage after the public voted for change; Netanyahu took the stage after 3am and claimed victory too. These are projections. Results are pending, and a close count points to Netanyahu continuing as caretaker.

The market read it as the war’s main variable. Bloomberg’s Wednesday oil file reported crude steadying after a two-day drop as traders tracked the Israeli vote, with Brent above $114 after retreating more than 2 percent over two sessions — though Bloomberg’s text refers to three exit polls showing Netanyahu trailing Eisenkot, which does not reconcile with the Axios and CNN seat counts and may reflect an earlier polling round. The official EIA Brent Europe spot series shows $119.33 on 16 October, $118.82 on 19 October and $115.22 on 20 October. The straits.live tracker, a specialist count rather than a wire, puts the Strait of Hormuz at Day 240 of closure to commercial shipping, with four transits recorded on 18 October against roughly 85 a day normally.

The shooting continued around the diplomacy. The Saudi-led coalition said early Tuesday it destroyed three ballistic missiles fired by the Houthis toward the Eastern Province, and again on Tuesday evening that it intercepted two aimed at Riyadh, announced by spokesman Maj. Gen. Turki al-Maliki on X without casualty or damage detail; AP adds witness testimony of at least four explosions heard over the capital after warnings that were later lifted. Interceptions are claimed by the intercepting party. In Moscow, on the margins of the Gas Exporting Countries Forum summit hosted by Vladimir Putin, Masoud Pezeshkian met Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani to discuss the war, Hormuz and the state of negotiations — according to the Emir’s office. The Russian readout does not mention the war at all.

Assessment: Two things to hold apart. A caretaker Netanyahu is not a weakened Netanyahu in the near term — he keeps the security cabinet while the Knesset arithmetic is litigated for weeks, which is the configuration least likely to produce a change of policy on Iran and most likely to produce one on the margins of American pressure. And the asymmetry in the Moscow readouts matters more than the meeting: Doha wants it known it raised the war, Moscow wants it known it convened a gas summit. Mediation that only one party advertises is mediation that has not yet been agreed to.