Likud asks to delay certification of Israel’s vote; the election committee’s chairman refuses

Israel voted on 27 October for the 120 seats of the 26th Knesset. The Times of Israel put the final count at 53 seats for Netanyahu’s bloc, 48 for Gadi Eisenkot’s, and 19 for the Arab parties, on official turnout of 77.9 percent and 5,716,665 votes cast. The Central Elections Committee is due to deliver certified results to President Isaac Herzog on Wednesday 4 November. On Sunday, committee chairman Supreme Court Justice Noam Sohlberg appeared in a video message alongside Shin Bet director David Zini to say the vote had been “conducted properly” and that most reported allegations of interference are false; according to the Times of Israel liveblog, he said the results would stand even if the suspicions were substantiated. Ynet reported the committee saying the foreign-interference investigation “will not affect results submitted to President Herzog on November 4”, and that no community is under suspicion.

The investigation Sohlberg himself ordered concerns suspicions that foreign entities, potentially including Qatar and Turkey, funnelled money into Israel to influence voting in Arab communities, the Jerusalem Post reported, after Sohlberg directed the Shin Bet to examine suspected foreign funding and election bribery. Haaretz reported on 30 October that the Mossad would assist at the Shin Bet’s request — while the committee’s own acting director general said he knew of no evidence supporting the claims. Likud’s formulation, per the Times of Israel, is that “a dark cloud hangs over Israel’s election results”; Netanyahu said on Monday, “We demand a swift and thorough investigation to safeguard the integrity of the Knesset elections and the sovereignty of the people.” The Times of Israel reported Likud sought to delay Wednesday’s certification and that Sohlberg refused. Al Jazeera reported on 2 November that one suspect was released under conditions and another placed under house arrest, with police linking them to Ra’am, which won eight seats.

Assessment: The load-bearing fact is the split inside one institution: the man who ordered the probe and the man who administers his committee disagree in public about whether there is anything to find. That makes the probe usable by both camps and dispositive for neither. Read the Sohlberg–Zini joint video as the point: the election chair borrowed the security service’s credibility to pre-empt the argument that the security service’s own inquiry invalidates the count. Distrust the slide from “two suspects connected to a party that won eight seats” to “the election was stolen” — no official has said the outcome was altered. i24NEWS’s exclusive that Netanyahu was advised at a Sunday meeting to vote against certification rests on one outlet’s account of a closed room and is uncorroborated.