Israel’s electoral system, with its multiplicity of political parties, means that governments are always coalitions. Elections are invariably followed by days or weeks of negotiations, with alliances forming and sometimes collapsing before a final deal is done, policy guidelines agreed and the key ministerial portfolios are divvied up.

Tuesday night’s exit polls showing near deadlock between the rightwing bloc over the rival centre-left camp in Israel’s tightly-fought general election are only the beginning of what could be a long and nail-biting story.

Horse trading will begin at once to work out which party will join which bloc, each racing to garner the 61 of the Knesset’s 120 seats required to form an absolute majority so that Reuven Rivlin, Israel’s president, calls on its leader to form the next government. Even the final count of votes will not necessarily indicate clearly who that will be.

Still, on the basis of normally accurate exit polls – and the mood in party headquarters – Israeli analysts said it was more likely that the Likud’s Binyamin Netanyahu, the current prime minister, will end up again getting the top job, over the Labour leader, Isaac Herzog, who had run as head of the new Zionist Union list – and campaigned on a slogan of “change and hope”.

An unclear result: Zionist Union party supporters react after hearing exit poll results in Tel Aviv. Photograph: Baz Ratner /Reuters

Beyond that, multiple combinations are possible. The 13-seat showing for the United Arab List of Ayman Odeh suggested it won wide support from the non-Jewish 20% of Israel’s population, but not enough to guarantee a Herzog-led coalition.

Netanyahu’s expression of alarm at Arab voters heading to the polling stations “in droves” – swiftly denounced as racism by his critics – was telling, as were his accusations that unnamed “foreign governments” and leftwing organizations were trying to oust him.

Other medium-sized parties or smaller factions now find themselves in a pivotal position. The new Kulanu (All of Us) movement of the populist ex-Likudnik Moshe Kahlon, with an estimated 10 MPs, could be an indispensable kingmaker for Netanyahu – or, even more dramatically, as some pundits predict – break with him and join a centre-left bloc. Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid will be a vital supporter for Herzog. Two ultra-Orthrodox parties lean to the right and would not easily sit in a coalition that included the militantly secular Lapid.

Supporters of Binyamin Netanyahu celebrate as election results come in at his election campaign headquarters. However, it’s not yet clear whether he has won. Photograph: Lior Mizrahi/Getty Images

Another distinct possiblity is a national unity government – a broad-based coalition that includes the big parties and excludes the extremes of right and left. In the past such governments have seen a “rotation” of top jobs for agreed terms and policies of the lowest common denominator. Several small parties, including the liberal-left Meretz party, had feared they might not win enough votes to pass a raised threshold to enter parliament. Yahad, on the far right, suffered that fate.

“The (Israeli) voter doesn’t know what his or her vote will be used for,” Nahum Barnea, the country’s best-known political commentator, wrote in Yediot Aharonot. “Will it be part of the construction material for a national unity government? Will it contribute to the creation of a narrow government? Will it be invested in the opposition? Or will it be wasted on a party which won’t pass the election threshold?”

Every seat counts: thus the impassioned appeal by Naftali Bennett, leader of the far-right Bayit Yehudi (Jewish Home) party, to his supporters not to defect to the safety of the Likud – arguing that the bigger his own following the greater influence he will be able to have if Netanyahu does form another government.

Bennett remains suspicious that the Likud leader is not a sufficiently zealous supporter of Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank. In 1997, he recalled bitterly, Netanyahu, then in his first term, “handed” Hebron to Yasser Arafat – one of the agreements that followed the Israel-PLO Oslo accords of 1993.

An Israeli Arab stands behind a voting booth before casting. With results so tight, the new government in Israel could take many forms. Photograph: Ammar Awad /Reuters

Overall, the great question of the future of Israeli-Palestinian relations played a relatively minor role in this campaign, with a scaremongering Netanyahu focussing relentlessly on the Iranian nuclear programme and terrorism, and Herzog on social and economic issues.

But the shape of Israel’s next government will clearly make a difference to future prospects for peace in the Holy Land – however slim they appear. Netanyahu’s eve of poll pledge that he no longer believed in a two-state solution to the conflict is not necessarily his last word on the subject – though his previous commitment to it was extremely vague and highly-qualified. “Netanyahu’s promises mean nothing,” commented Barnea. “They were written on ice on a very hot day.”



While there is no doubt that the Palestinians, Arab and western governments – including the US and EU – would be happier with Herzog. It will be some time yet before they can be certain of exactly what the future holds.