Netanyahu eight seats short, Eisenkot thirteen, and the Arab parties set their price in public
Final results from the October 27 election leave neither bloc able to reach 61 without help. Over the weekend the Joint List began naming terms that are cheaper than Eisenkot can easily refuse.
The Central Elections Committee’s final count for the 26th Knesset gives Likud 26 seats, the largest single party, and Gadi Eisenkot’s Yashar! 21. The Netanyahu bloc holds 53, the Eisenkot bloc 48, and the two Arab parties 19 between them; eleven lists cleared the threshold. The figures are reported identically by Al Jazeera, Ynetnews and JTA. (The Wikipedia infobox showing Likud at 32 is the outgoing 25th Knesset and should be ignored.) President Isaac Herzog opened consultations with party representatives, calling on them, per Ynetnews, to approach the process “with an open mind”; Eisenkot has already declared his intention to form a government. CNBC reported on October 30 that Israel faces “weeks of coalition haggling,” and that Likud “has ramped up the rhetoric that the Arab-led parties have ‘stolen' the election.”
Ahmad Tibi, the Ta’al faction leader within the Joint List, told the Times of Israel his list is ready to support an anti-Netanyahu government from outside the coalition — and went further, saying it would not back a Likud-initiated no-confidence motion against such a government and would not itself move to dissolve the Knesset. That is a commitment across a term, not a single investiture vote. Haaretz’s live blog on November 1 recorded a Joint List MK vowing to back the Eisenkot bloc while saying the party would not demand cabinet seats. The same blog reported that Democrats chairman Yair Golan spoke by telephone with Joint List chairman Yousef Jabareen and with Tibi and that the three agreed to meet; that item is relayed from Radio Nas reporter Mohammad Magadli rather than independently reported by Haaretz.
Assessment: The Joint List has removed, one by one, every technical reason a Jewish-majority coalition gives for refusing its votes: no portfolios, no veto, no threat to bring the government down. What remains is not arithmetic but legitimacy, which is precisely the ground Likud has chosen to fight on. Watch Eisenkot’s language rather than his meetings — a man who intends to govern on outside Arab support does not say so before Herzog hands him the mandate. And treat the recommendation tallies now circulating with care: a count of MKs recommending a candidate is not a count of a coalition, and the two will be conflated all week.