Israeli President Isaac Herzog on Wednesday (November 4, 2026) accepted the certified results from last week’s Parliamentary elections as legally binding and said he would begin consultations with party representatives on the formation of a new government.
Israel’s election commission said earlier on Wednesday (November 4, 2026) that after a thorough investigation of all parties’ claims of fraud, it had found “no evidence of irregularities that compromised the integrity of the election or affected its results. Herzog’s acceptance of the results as valid dealt a blow to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s effort to discredit the vote in which his religious-nationalist bloc lost its majority in the Israeli parliament, or Knesset, while Arab-led parties made historic gains. Mr. Mr. The Israeli President is now required to sit down with various party leaders to determine who to name as Prime Minister-designate — a process that could potentially bring Mr. Netanyahu’s opponents to power. Mr. Netanyahu’s Likud party did not respond to a request for comment. A separate investigation by the Shin Bet intelligence service, which is headed by David Zini, a Netanyahu appointee and loyalist, into allegations of foreign interference in the election is still ongoing.
Netanyahu and his supporters have repeatedly made unsubstantiated claims that the Arab-led parties had “stolen” the election, possibly with foreign assistance. In a private meeting on Wednesday (November 4, 2026) of the election committee’s members, its head, Supreme Court Justice Noam Sohlberg, read out an intelligence assessment from the Shin Bet saying the agency believed there had been a “widespread phenomenon involving the influx of substantial funds into Israel from foreign states,” including from countries hostile toward Israel.
