Israel probes election after Netanyahu alleges Arab rigging

Alisa Odenheimer, Galit Altstein and Fadwa Hodali, Bloomberg News on Oct 29, 2026

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Israel’s election monitor called for an investigation into possible meddling by foreign entities, after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and some far-right allies decried the high turnout among Arab citizens.

The head of the Central Elections Committee wrote to Shin Bet — Israel’s domestic intelligence agency — asking it to look into alleged funding by “external actors operating against Israeli interests,” according to a copy of the letter seen by Bloomberg.

Noam Sohlberg, the CEC’s head, cited “serious suspicions,” adding that “I am not in a position to attest to the validity of these suspicions.”

Shin Bet declined to comment on whether it would start an investigation, which the CEC wants carried out within a week. The police, in a statement, said it would investigate any complaint of election irregularities.

Arab parties, who look set to have won about 19 seats in the 120-seat parliament after Tuesday’s election, have denied allegations of vote-rigging and fraud.

Ra’am, one of the two main Israeli Arab parties, has “no connection whatsoever to the discussed affair or to other affairs, and we will fully cooperate with all law enforcement authorities to ascertain the truth,” Mansour Abbas, the party’s head, said in a statement.

Abbas accused Netanyahu of working with “Qatari agents,” while some Israeli media including The Jerusalem Post said Doha is suspected of helping the Arab parties. “We categorically deny allegations that Qatar has interfered in Israeli elections or funded any activities intended to influence their outcome,” the Qatari ministry of foreign affairs said in a statement.

There was an unprecedented jump in voter participation among Israeli Arabs, who make up about 20% of the population. In the 2022 election, turnout among the demographic was roughly 53%, while this time participation in some Arab localities rose to well over 80%.

Arab party leaders had made a concerted effort to bring out the vote before the election, saying the last four years under Netanyahu’s far-right government had made life intolerable.

Some votes are still to be counted. Netanyahu’s Jewish nationalist bloc is leading with a projected 53 seats, still short of winning a majority in parliament. The oppositon under ex-general Gadi Eisenkot is on track to get 48 seats.

Netanyahu’s Likud party has said it will provide Shin Bet and police with “hundreds of testimonies and pieces of evidence regarding the theft of the election at numerous Arab polling stations.”

During Tuesday’s vote, Netanyahu used social media to make incendiary comments about Arabs voting in large numbers and telling his supporters that if they didn’t rush to the polls, Israel may cease to be a Jewish state.

“There were no violations in the election, and the Likud allegations are the words of sore losers,” Ahmad Tibi, a leader of one of the groups that make up the Joint List, the other Arab party that contested the vote, told Al Jazeera.

Sami Abu Shehadeh, another Joint List member, called the allegations “racist blood libel,” according to Israel’s Nas Radio.

The Arab parties, long at loggerheads with Netanyahu due to ideological differences, could give Eisenkot a parliamentary majority if they find enough common ground. While the claims won’t necessarily stop negotiations over a coalition, they might make it less likely that Eisenkot’s supporters accept Arab parties being in any government.

Eisenkot said Netanyahu is “helming an illegitimate influence campaign on the Israeli public aimed at delaying the publication of election results and delegitimizing the future actions” of the next parliament.

He said that while Shin Bet must investigate the suspicions, “the attempt to exploit information, which has not yet been investigated, to undermine the official election results is unacceptable.”

Israeli law allows for the annulling of election results from any polling station where tampering is found to have taken place, after which the voters there must cast ballots anew.

—With assistance from Dan Williams.