In any normal country, after the firm trend which emerged from counting showed the parties opposed to Prime Minister Netanyahu winning more than 61 of the parliament’s 120 seats, the opposition party leaders would hold a joint news conference and announce the formation of a government. But in Israel, racist psychosis has become normalised. Most of the Jewish opposition parties, with the exception of the Democrats, had already announced that they would not form a coalition with the Arab parties. The obvious consequence is that Netanyahu will either form a government through defections – and there is no shortage of potential candidates in Eisenkot’s party – or remain at the head of a caretaker government until the next election.This is an Israeli modus operandi: The country’s “hasbara” machine repeatedly insists that Israel is a democracy in which all citizens, particularly members of the Arab minority, can participate in elections. At the same time, racist politics deprives the Arab public’s votes of any meaningful political effect.The deadlock, which was foreseeable from all pre-election polls predicting that the opposition would fall short of a majority of 61 seats without the Arab parties, proved even more damaging to the Jewish opposition parties’ plans than expected. Despite efforts to suppress Arab voter turnout, the disqualification of the Balad party leader, and a campaign of incitement and delegitimisation — and contrary to polls predicting low turnout among the Arab minority amid a sense of existential threat — Arab citizens of Israel broke their all-time turnout record. Trends estimate that the Arab parties are winning roughly 19 seats.Voters cast their ballots at a polling station during Israel’s general election in Jerusalem Tuesday, Oct. 27, 2026. Photo: APThe Jewish opposition parties were not only thrown into disarray by the Arab parties’ record showing, but also by the fact that Netanyahu’s Likud is the largest party. Eisenkot had said relatively little about his concrete plans for after the election, but he built his campaign around the idea of becoming the “largest party,” arguing that whoever heads the largest party should be the one to form the next government. Now, in order to form a government, he will have to consider breaking two campaign promises — both his pledge not to form a coalition with the Arab parties and his commitment to the “largest party” principle.For the Arab parties, too, cooperation with the Jewish opposition parties is far from straightforward. The Jewish opposition parties favour continuing the occupation of Gaza, Lebanon and Syria, and perhaps renewing a direct war with Iran. None has a concrete plan to halt the accelerating ethnic cleansing in the West Bank, and some actively support it. Even if the Arab parties can use their electoral success to keep Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich out of the government, it is doubtful that they could publicly support an alternative government that might direct more funding to the Arab minority and invest more heavily in combating criminal organisations, but would continue, as “business as usual,” committing crimes against humanity against the Palestinian and Lebanese peoples.For example, Avigdor Lieberman and his far right party ‘Yisrael Beiteinu’, which is part of the opposition bloc, support dismantling the Palestinian Authority, scrapping the Oslo Accords and fully annexing Area C. And he himself has supported the transfer of Arab citizens of Israel for years. Throughout the election campaign, Lieberman repeatedly announced that he would not join a minority government that relied directly or indirectly on Arab parties.A man casts his ballot at a polling station during Israel’s general election in Haifa, Israel, Tuesday, Oct. 27, 2026. Photo: AP.For the Arab public, these are impossible choices, a matter of survival and physical existence. For the Jewish opposition parties, by contrast, the issue is primarily political. An opposition government reliant on the Arab parties would probably not last long. In the next election, Netanyahu could then argue that the Jewish opposition parties had broken their promises to voters and win decisively, as he did in November 2022, following the collapse of the short-lived Bennett-Lapid government.But the trends have exposed the more consequential lie embedded in the coalition promises that the Jewish opposition parties made to their voters — a lie that should have been obvious from the outset: that Israel can have any future without Jewish-Arab cooperation.To truly break the deadlock, Israeli politics, society and the media must undergo a process of de-Kahanisation, which the international community can accelerate by imposing sanctions. In the meantime, amid Israel’s grim reality and the nightmare the State of Israel is inflicting on millions of human beings around it, every day Netanyahu is weakened, even slightly, is a blessing.Eitay Mack is an Israeli lawyer and human rights activist.