Netanyahu has wrestled his opponents to a draw. For now, that’s a victory

October 28, 2026 — 10:36am

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Tel Aviv: Israelis have voted in huge numbers to reject Benjamin Netanyahu and the far-right extremists who have kept him in power for the past four years. Yet, despite overseeing the greatest security failure in Israeli history, the career of the nation’s longest serving prime minister is not over yet.

F. Scott Fitzgerald, one of America’s greatest authors, argued: “The test of first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.” Never has that been more true than assessing the results of an election many Israelis believed to be the most important in their history.

First, the rejection. According to exit polls conducted by Israeli television networks, Netanyahu’s coalition has crashed from 64 seats at the last election in 2022 to about 50 now. That is nowhere near the 61 seats required to form a majority in the Knesset, the Israeli parliament.

The other 70 odd seats have been won by parties who, while spanning an eclectic........

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