Netanyahu spent polling day warning about Arab voters. They turned out anyway.

A five-byline Haaretz team — Bar Peleg, Omer Benjakob, Josh Breiner, Jonathan Lis and Avi Scharf — reported that in more than two dozen election-day posts Netanyahu and his allies urged supporters to mitigate the influence of Arab voters and circulated unverified images purporting to show crowded polling stations in Arab cities, with Netanyahu accusing Arab voters and left-wing parties of trying to “steal the election.” The posts themselves were quoted by three outlets. The Jerusalem Post carried: “This is an emergency call! The future of our Jewish state is at stake… Get out and vote Likud now!” Newsweek carried: “My brothers and sisters, right-wing voters, if we don’t go out to vote, we’ll get a government of the Muslim Brotherhood.” Reuters carried: “If we don’t wake up now, we’ll find ourselves with a government of Mansour Abbas and Ahmed Tibi.”

Ministers amplified it. Bezalel Smotrich told NBC News that Arab-sector turnout had reached “a 53-year high” and called it an “emergency situation” for his electoral coalition; Reuters reported his party said he suspended campaigning to concentrate on turnout. Itamar Ben Gvir called the level of Arab turnout “crazy” and urged supporters to vote for Otzma Yehudit if they wanted the country to be Jewish and Zionist. Reuters notes both men have been sanctioned by Western countries over accusations of inciting violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, and reports — on unnamed witness accounts, a single wire’s sourcing — that cars flying Likud flags drove through Jerusalem blaring the Islamic call to prayer and telling supporters to vote “because ‘Arabs are voting'.”

The Jerusalem Post’s 6 p.m. snapshot of four Arab-majority cities found Rahat at 72.2 percent against a 59.54 percent final in 2022, and Nazareth at 58.4 percent against 55.75 percent, while reporting predominantly haredi cities running below their 2022 totals. Balad’s Sami Abu Shehadeh wrote on X that the queues should bring “pride and joy to anyone who believed in democracy,” adding: “We are receiving all these inciting messages from the petty racists, Ben-Gvir, Netanyahu, and their partners.” Ahmad Tibi of Ta’al told Reuters strong turnout would “pave the way for an alternative government and change the grave reality.” Haaretz’s Jack Khoury, filing at 1:11 a.m., argued the scare campaign drove Arab voters to the polls rather than deterring them.

Assessment: Two things were being attempted at once, and only one of them is measurable yet. The mobilisation play — frighten the right-wing base with the spectre of an Arab-backed coalition — is a 2015 tactic reused, and the broadcasters' late drift toward Netanyahu suggests it moved some votes. The delegitimation play is the one with a longer tail: unverified polling-station images and talk of a stolen election build a pre-made grievance for a narrow loss, and the double-envelope ballots give it weeks to work in. Note also what Eisenkot did on the same night, claiming victory for a “responsible Zionist majority” — accepting the frame that the Arab parties are outside the count even while needing them inside it.