(Oct 29): 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 (CEC) 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 win about 19 seats in the 120-seat parliament, have denied allegations made since Tuesday about vote-rigging and fraud.
There was an unprecedented jump in voter participation among Arabs, who make up about 20% of the population. In the 2022 election, turnout among Arabs was roughly 53%, while this time participation in some Arab localities rose to well over 80%.
Some votes are still to be counted. Netanyahu’s Jewish nationalist bloc is leading, though is set to fall short of winning a majority of seats in parliament.
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”.
On Tuesday, during the vote, Netanyahu took to social media, making 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, whose Joint List is one of the two Arab parties that contested, told Al Jazeera.
Sami Abu Shehadeh, the leader of a party that’s included in the Joint List, called the allegations “racist blood libel,” according to Israel’s Nas Radio.
A count of 94% of votes gave Likud and its coalition allies 53 Knesset seats versus 48 for Netanyahu’s main rival, centrist ex-general Gadi Eisenkot.
The Arab parties, long at loggerheads with Netanyahu due to ideological differences, could give Eisenkot a parliamentary majority if they find enough common ground with him contender. 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 was “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 impartially and imminently, “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.
Likud on Thursday condemned the alleged violations by Arab parties as “a terrorist attack against democracy designed to bring about foreign control of the Knesset, the Islamification of Israel, the toppling of right-wing rule.”
The party has not provided any evidence to back up those claims.
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