Israelis went to the polls Tuesday in the first election since Hamas' October 7, 2023 attack, and by Wednesday no clear winner had emerged. Turnout exceeded 77%, the highest in more than two decades, according to NPR reporting on OPB, with tens of thousands of expatriates flying in to vote.

Neither Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's right-wing bloc nor the opposition alliance led by former military chief Gadi Eisenkot appeared on track to reach the 61 seats needed for a majority in the 120-seat Knesset, and both leaders delivered victory-toned speeches overnight.

Netanyahu's religious and ultranationalist coalition fell short of a majority, shrinking from a peak of 68 seats in the previous parliament, while Likud appears cut from 32 seats to around 27, PBS reports.

Yet Likud still looks set to be the largest party, giving Netanyahu the best position to be tasked first with forming a government. He could seek defectors or concessions from opposition parties, or argue for a broad unity government.

Tamar Hermann of the Israel Democracy Institute told PBS: "Politically, he is a magician."

Partial counts reported by Africanews put Netanyahu's bloc at 55 seats and Eisenkot's opposition bloc at 49, with Arab parties holding 16 — arithmetic that would give the opposition a majority with an Arab coalition agreement.

But Eisenkot said during the campaign he would not govern with Israeli Arab lawmakers, and only one Arab party has ever joined an Israeli governing coalition, in 2021.

Eisenkot nonetheless declared to supporters, "The public wants change," and warned Netanyahu not to use his caretaker role or Israel's security for political needs.

The most striking result was a surge by two Arab-led parties, the United Arab List (Raam) and the Joint List, projected by exit polls to win as many as 17 to 19 seats in the 120-seat parliament — their strongest showing ever, according to The New York Times and PBS.

Record Arab turnout, driven partly by anger at Netanyahu's far-right allies, could make the parties kingmakers, but also harder to partner with: "With these numbers — there are too many Arabs to lean on," commentator Aviv Bushinsky told PBS.

Raam leader Mansour Abbas told a television interviewer that voters had channeled frustration into "hope."

President Trump, who endorsed Netanyahu and appeared in election-night videos urging Israelis to reelect him to "finish the job that we started," now faces prolonged uncertainty over who will lead Washington's closest Middle East ally, Reuters reports via The Japan Times.

The deadlock comes as Israel contends with wars in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran, a diplomatic isolation driven by the Gaza campaign and West Bank settlement expansion, plummeting US public support, and an international arrest warrant for Netanyahu that Israel's government denies ground for.

Final official results are expected Thursday or Friday, once soldiers' and special ballots are counted, NPR election officials told OPB. President Isaac Herzog will then invite the leader he judges best placed to assemble a coalition, with six weeks to do it.

Options include a Netanyahu minority-dependent deal, an Eisenkot coalition with Arab participation he has resisted, a unity government both leaders' voters would view as betrayal, or a fresh election next year with Netanyahu staying on as caretaker prime minister.

Israel's internal divisions, the stalemated result suggests, are deeper than ever.