US President Donald Trump has said he would accept the outcome of the American midterm elections despite Republican losses, but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whom Trump endorsed, has continued to dispute the results of his country’s recent election.
A week after Israel’s 27 October election, Netanyahu and his Likud party are still questioning the officially certified results, which stripped his political bloc of its parliamentary majority, reports CNN.
The controversy intensified after Shin Bet chief David Zini, a Netanyahu loyalist, sought to investigate leaders of Arab political parties.
However, Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara refused to approve the investigation without supporting evidence.
Official results show Netanyahu’s bloc lost 15 seats, falling from 68 to 53 in the 120-member Knesset.
The opposition, led by Gadi Eisenkot, secured 67 seats, including 19 won by the Arab parties Joint List and Raam following a historic voter turnout.
Their support is crucial to any attempt to remove Netanyahu from power, making the legitimacy of their votes central to the post-election dispute.
Likud submitted hundreds of testimonies to the Central Elections Committee seeking investigations and arrests. Netanyahu also shared a video by a right-wing activist alleging widespread ballot forgery and calling for the elections to be invalidated.
The committee dismissed claims of large-scale electoral fraud as baseless, saying there was no evidence of systematic irregularities. However, it asked the Shin Bet to examine suspicions that foreign funding had been used to influence the election campaign.
On Sunday, the committee chairman, Justice Noam Sohlberg, appeared alongside Zini and Baharav-Miara to reassure the public about the election’s integrity. They said the election had been conducted properly and that even confirmed foreign funding would neither overturn the results nor compromise the voting process.
On Wednesday, the Shin Bet informed the committee that its intelligence seemingly indicated extensive transfers of large sums of money into Israel from foreign sources. However, the agency said it needed further investigation to establish the scale of the alleged activity and presented no public evidence.
The attorney general’s office accused Zini of preventing the Shin Bet from sharing relevant evidence with her office or the police. It stressed that citizens and elected officials could not be investigated without sufficient evidence.
Likud accused Baharav-Miara of obstructing the investigation, while National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir urged Zini to investigate and arrest Arab political leaders without her approval.
The dispute reflects a wider confrontation between Netanyahu’s government and the attorney general. The government voted to dismiss Baharav-Miara in August 2025, but the Supreme Court blocked the decision.
Arab political parties rejected the allegations, accusing Zini of helping Likud undermine their community and its electoral representation.
“Netanyahu is clinging to power and trying to deny the legitimacy of the Arab public which voted en masse and decided against his government. Zini, appointed by Netanyahu, is acting as a political arm in his service,” the Joint List said.
Raam chairman Mansour Abbas described the move as “an unacceptable attempt to tarnish the Arab public”.
Opposition leaders accused Netanyahu and Zini of pushing Israel towards a constitutional crisis and undermining public confidence in elections. They are also preparing to use their parliamentary majority to replace the Knesset speaker.
Eisenkot described the situation as a crucial test of Israel’s future as a liberal democracy, urging security and law enforcement officials to remember that they “are servants of the kingdom, not the king”.
Former Prime Minister Yair Lapid called the developments an attempt to crush democracy and overturn the election with the help of government loyalists in the security system.
Yair Golan, chairman of the left-wing Democrats party, accused Zini of turning the Shin Bet into “a political tool in service of Netanyahu’s campaign to undermine the election results”.
The coming weeks will determine whether Netanyahu can use the dispute to prevent his removal from office. If he convinces right-wing parties and potential opposition defectors that relying on Arab parties is illegitimate, he could undermine the only available path to replacing him.
However, the move could also unite the otherwise divided opposition and accelerate the political outcome Netanyahu is seeking to avoid.
