Israel's election has produced a Knesset with no clear majority for either side, and the path to power now runs through an unlikely alliance: Arab-led parties joining forces with former military chief Gadi Eisenkot, even as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party pushes unsubstantiated claims that the vote was stolen, according to Al Jazeera's reporting on the coalition talks.

Netanyahu's Likud-led bloc of Jewish conservative and far-right parties holds 53 seats in the 120-member Knesset. Eisenkot's opposition "Change" bloc has 48. The Joint List and Ra'am, the two main Arab-led parties, together hold a record 19 seats after Arab voter turnout roughly doubled to about 80%. Neither side can reach the 61 seats needed for a majority without them.

Ra'am leader Mansour Abbas has said his party would join an Eisenkot-led government outright if given the internal security portfolio. Joint List leader Yousef Jabareen said his party won't formally join a government but would back Eisenkot's agenda in parliamentary votes — potentially enough to let him govern with a minority coalition. "As long as the occupation of our people in the West Bank continues, we cannot be part of a government," Jabareen said.

Netanyahu Alleges Fraud, Officials Push Back

Likud has amplified claims, without evidence, that Arab-led parties "stole" the election with foreign backing, an allegation that spread quickly after results showed Netanyahu's bloc losing its majority. Likud has pointed to the arrests of three activists accused of bribing voters whom it links to Ra'am — allegations Ra'am denies. Central Elections Committee head Noam Sohlberg referred the fraud claims to the Shin Bet security agency but said he could not personally verify them, and committee officials have since called reports of a serious probe "entirely unfounded."

"THEY ARE DOING THIS BECAUSE THEY LOST."

Eisenkot, profiled extensively as the race tightened, has set his own conditions for working with Arab parties, including that they accept Israel as a Jewish state, back mandatory army conscription and denounce Hamas as a terrorist group — conditions Jabareen says apply mainly to formal coalition partners, not to parties simply voting with him in parliament. The arrangement carries real political risk for Eisenkot: dozens of protesters gathered outside his home over the weekend objecting to any reliance on Arab-party support.

Israel's election results are due to be certified Wednesday. President Isaac Herzog will then meet with leaders of all 11 parties elected to parliament in a livestreamed process to determine who has the best chance of forming a government — likely Netanyahu or Eisenkot. Whoever Herzog taps gets 28 days to build a coalition, extendable by two more weeks. Newly elected lawmakers are sworn in November 10 regardless of how the talks are going.

A unity government bridging Netanyahu and the opposition is considered unlikely but not impossible, and Likud has reportedly been working the phones trying to pry away opposition lawmakers — an effort Eisenkot's Yashar party described as Likud operating in a state of "hysteria."