November 12, 2026 | Breaking: After Israel's Deadlocked Vote, What Now for Gaza and Iran?

1. The certified result: an election with 77.9 percent turnout and no winner

🟢 Israelis voted on October 27, and the Central Elections Committee certified the final count on November 4. Turnout was 77.9 percent, the highest since 1999. More than 5.7 million people voted. Some 25,789 ballots were disqualified, and 306,679 votes went to parties that failed to clear the 3.25 percent threshold.

🟢 Netanyahu's Likud remains the largest party with 27 seats. Behind it came Yashar, the new party of former military chief of staff Gadi Eisenkot, with 21 seats, and B'Yachad, the new party of former prime minister Naftali Bennett, with 12.

Note: outlets differ on the split of the 19 Arab-led seats, giving the Joint List 11 or 12 and Ra'am 7 or 8. The combined figure of 19 is consistent across sources.

🟢 The shape of the result is this. Parties that made up the outgoing government lost 11 seats between them. Jewish opposition parties gained two. Arab-led parties gained nine, reaching a record 19. A surge in turnout among Arab citizens of Israel was the single largest change this election produced.

🔵 Netanyahu did not lose, and he did not win. Fifty-three against 48 looks like an incumbent's advantage until you remember the number that matters is 61, at which point both figures are equally useless. The balance is held by the 19 seats neither bloc has ever treated as coalition material. That structure governs everything that follows.

2. Government formation: the mandate goes to Eisenkot, the clock runs to early December

🟢 Herzog consulted every party on November 4 and 5. The Religious Zionist Party and Shas recommended Netanyahu. Avigdor Liberman's Yisrael Beytenu backed Eisenkot. On November 5 both Arab-led lists, the Joint List and Ra'am, said they would recommend Eisenkot as well, without committing to join his coalition.

🟢 The tally came to 67 recommendations for Eisenkot and 46 for Netanyahu. Yashar said it was the largest figure any candidate had received since 2015. Herzog still declined to decide immediately, saying that although the results of the consultations might look clear, there were mutual vetoes between the blocs and within them that made it hard to say who could actually assemble a government.

🟢 On November 8 he gave Eisenkot the mandate. Under the Basic Law on the Government, that means 28 days, extendable by up to 14 at the president's discretion. Counting from November 8, the deadline falls around December 6, or around December 20 with the full extension. If the attempt fails, Herzog can task another member of the Knesset, and failing that, Israel faces another election early next year.

🟡 The central obstacle is military conscription. Yashar broke with Netanyahu partly over his coalition's failure to pass legislation exempting ultra-Orthodox men from service, and preserving those exemptions is now the Haredi parties' main demand. On November 11 United Torah Judaism submitted a bill allowing yeshiva students annual draft deferrals until age 26, followed by full exemption. It is not considered likely to pass.

🔵 Eisenkot has said Likud is welcome in a government he leads, provided it comes without what he calls extremists. But if he buys the Haredi parties with exemptions he undercuts his own base, and if he leans on the Arab-led parties he draws fire from inside his bloc. Having 67 recommendations and building a coalition of 61 are two different problems.

3. Netanyahu: the swearing-in speech, and "I cannot share everything I know"

🟢 On November 10 the 120 members of the 26th Knesset were sworn in. In a speech traditionally used as a toast welcoming the new parliament, Netanyahu, now caretaker prime minister, turned on the Arab members instead. He said the Arab parties seek the destruction of the Jewish state and must not be part of a government, and accused his opponents of preparing to entrust Israel's future to what he called terror supporters and haters of Israel. The chamber filled with heckling. Outside, protesters demonstrated against the growing influence of Arab politicians.

🟢 Eisenkot called the speech delusional, divisive, full of hate and shameful, and cancelled the negotiating session his party had scheduled with Likud for the following day. Yashar cited the divisive speech and the contempt shown for the swearing-in ceremony. Joint List leader Yousef Jabareen and faction chairman Ahmad Tibi said they would work to remove Netanyahu after what they described as a racist address.

🟡 By November 11 Netanyahu had changed register, saying a unity government was still possible. He said Israel was facing moments of testing and that he could not share everything he knows, without specifying what he meant, and argued that this made political unity more necessary. He met Shas figure Aryeh Deri the same day.

🟢 The corruption trial is moving too. Netanyahu was charged in early 2020 with bribery, fraud and breach of trust in three connected cases. On November 11, Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara declined the trial judges' proposal to meet them privately, but said with State Attorney Amit Aisman that the prosecution is open to direct dialogue over an arrangement, meaning a plea bargain. The judges have twice recommended dropping the bribery charge in the case known as 4000, most recently in June. Netanyahu's pardon request, filed in November 2025, was deferred by Herzog in April on the grounds that plea negotiations should be exhausted first.

🔵 This is the pivot of the whole situation. A caretaker prime minister in Israel retains full authority over national security. On November 11 Eisenkot publicly urged Netanyahu not to take security decisions during the transition, and separately asked the attorney general to intervene over aides who he said had failed to arrange security briefings for him. Israel is heading into December in a state where the man with the mandate has no power and the man with the power has no mandate.

4. Gaza: more than 1,600 dead under a ceasefire, and then the floods

🟢 The Gaza ceasefire took effect on October 10, 2025. Thirteen months later, the Gaza health ministry counts 1,613 to 1,615 Palestinians killed and 5,833 to 5,849 wounded by Israeli fire since that date. The cumulative toll since October 2023 stands above 74,600 killed and 175,900 wounded.

🟢 The Israeli figures belong in the same frame. Since October 7, 2023, Israel counts 1,806 dead and 3,004 wounded. Since the ceasefire it has lost seven soldiers and one civilian contractor. No new Israeli casualties connected to Gaza were recorded in the week of October 30 to November 5, and the Agence France-Presse count published on November 2 matches these numbers.

🟢 The main incidents since the start of November are set out below.

🟡 Gaza's interior ministry says more than 75 police officers have been killed by Israeli fire since the ceasefire began. The strikes of November 1 and November 3 both targeted security personnel, making two attacks on the enclave's administrative apparatus within three days.

🟢 Then came the winter's first storm, around November 7, which exposed how little the ceasefire protects. Roughly 70,000 tents flooded in a single night. More than 6,000 family shelters were destroyed and 17,400 damaged. Over 3,900 households were left with nothing over their heads. An infant drowned at a displacement site. Floodwater swamped the Nasser medical complex in Khan Younis, cutting thousands off from care. Initial losses were estimated at about three million dollars.

🟢 Aid flows have improved on paper. The Gaza crossings authority recorded 1,149 trucks entering in the week of October 30 to November 5, up 54 percent from 746 the week before: 808 commercial, 305 aid and 36 fuel. Kerem Shalom was open for goods all seven days and Rafah opened for passengers on three. Some 295 people left Gaza and 242 returned.

🟡 Gaza's government media office holds Israel, the United States and the international community fully and directly responsible for blockages on shelter and supplies. Save the Children says Israel has repeatedly blocked caravans despite the ceasefire deal. The Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor reported that as of November 9, some 1,134 children in Gaza have undergone amputation, with few receiving long-term rehabilitation.

🔵 Those two sets of numbers are not in conflict. A 54 percent rise in trucks and 70,000 flooded tents can happen in the same week, because when commercial goods are nearly four-fifths of what enters, durable materials such as tents and caravans do not increase. Truck counts are a poor measure of whether a ceasefire is being implemented.

5. The Yellow Line: a line of control that keeps moving

🟢 The line Israeli forces pulled back to in the first phase of the ceasefire is known as the Yellow Line. It has not stayed put. Israeli military control and access restrictions covered about 53 percent of the Gaza Strip when the ceasefire began and roughly 65 percent by October 2026, confining 2.1 million residents to a narrowing western zone.

🟡 Israel's position is stated plainly. Officials say the military will hold the Yellow Line and that there will be no further withdrawal whatsoever until Hamas has been completely disarmed and Gaza fully demilitarised.

6. The stabilization force: "What can 250 people do?"

🟢 On November 17, 2025 the Security Council adopted Resolution 2803 by 13 votes with China and Russia abstaining. It endorsed the comprehensive plan to end the Gaza conflict, welcomed a Board of Peace chaired by President Donald Trump as a transitional administration, and authorised a temporary International Stabilization Force. The authorisation runs to December 31, 2027. The force is not a blue-helmet peacekeeping operation and carries no enforcement powers under Chapter 7 of the Charter.

🟢 Major General Jasper Jeffers was named commander on January 17, 2026. The National Committee for the Administration of Gaza was established the day before. In July, Hamas announced it was dissolving its emergency governing committee to let that body take over administration.

🟡 On November 9 the Israeli outlet Walla reported, citing unnamed security officials, that the government had approved an initial deployment of roughly 250 foreign troops. American forces have moved vehicles and equipment to a base inside the Gaza Division's southern brigade area near the border. Indonesia, Morocco, Kazakhstan, Kosovo, Uganda and Albania have signalled willingness to take part. Neither Israel nor Washington has publicly confirmed the authorisation.

🟡 One unnamed Israeli security official told the outlet it was not inconceivable that the Gaza Division and Southern Command could wake up one day to find an international force larger than the division itself. The plan is to begin in Rafah and expand sector by sector across five designated zones, with an Emirati-backed residential compound planned on part of the ruins of Rafah. No timetable has been announced.

🔵 "What can 250 people do?" is a question regional outlets have put in their headlines, and it is a fair one. Hamas retains weapons and governing authority across much of Gaza. Israeli forces sit behind the Yellow Line. The force is meant to stand between them, but all three preconditions, disarmament, withdrawal and governance, remain unresolved, and each is held hostage by the other two. Until that sequencing problem is solved, 250 troops is a political signal rather than a military answer.

7. The West Bank: statistically the worst year since monitoring began

🟢 The United Nations humanitarian coordination office documented more than 2,060 settler attacks causing Palestinian casualties or property damage across about 300 communities between January 1 and October 12, 2026. The Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project said in September that 2026 had already become the most violent year for settler-related violence since its West Bank monitoring began in 2016.

🟡 The Palestinian Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission recorded 3,133 attacks in October alone, 1,764 by Israeli forces and 1,369 by settlers, describing the settler figure as a 111.6 percent rise on the previous month. The same body counts 1,182 arson attacks between October 2023 and September 2026. More than 600 Palestinians were arrested in the West Bank and Jerusalem during October, including 14 women and 42 children.

🟢 Set out in sequence, November shows a chain of violence overlapping with the olive harvest.

🟢 The violence does not run one way. Army Radio reported that on the night of November 9 Palestinians set fire to an Israeli vehicle near Mitzpe Shalem, a settlement overlooking the Dead Sea, and that retaliatory arson followed. The military imposed a curfew on the village of Azzun in the Qalqilya governorate. No arrests were reported.

🟡 Cumulative humanitarian office figures put the West Bank toll since January 2025 at 331 Palestinians and 21 Israelis killed, as published to September 30.

🔵 The West Bank is one of the few files where the election result could actually change policy. Several research institutions assess that Eisenkot would punish settler violence rather than shield those responsible, dismantle some illegal outposts, and release several billion dollars in tax and customs revenue that Netanyahu's government has withheld from the Palestinian Authority. But he opposes Palestinian statehood, opposes dismantling the Authority, and opposes handing Jordan a direct role. The offer is more orderly administration, not an end to occupation.

8. Testing the rumours of war with Iran

🟢 Start with the premise, because it is usually stated wrongly. The American and Israeli war against Iran began on February 28, 2026. Opening strikes killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, and Hezbollah resumed rocket fire at Israel on March 2. That war has not ended. What continues now is the Strait of Hormuz crisis and an economic isolation campaign, a condition Iran's parliament speaker calls no war and no peace. The correct question is therefore not whether war will start, but whether major military operations will resume.

🟡 The rumour is traceable. On November 1, Axios reported, citing one Israeli and one American source, that Netanyahu was urging Trump to strike Iran immediately after the November 3 midterm elections while the president preferred to let negotiations run. Israel's ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon, denied it and dismissed suggestions that a nuclear strike was under consideration. Around the same time, Ynet reported that Israel was preparing for another round of fighting right after the midterms.

🟢 Public statements point the same way as the rumour. Defence Minister Israel Katz said on November 8 that the mission against Iran has not been completed. In his Knesset speech on November 10, Netanyahu declared that the only way to permanently eliminate the threat is to overthrow the ayatollahs' regime. Trump said in early November that talks were going fine but not very reliable, adding that Washington still had one or two sites to deal with, including the suspected underground complex at Pickaxe Mountain. On Veterans Day, November 11, he claimed the United States had already won the war and now wanted total victory.

🟢 Diplomacy is running in parallel. Qatari mediation continues, and on November 11 Iranian parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said Tehran had delivered a clear response to Washington but had received no official reply. Iran's seven conditions include lifting the blockade and oil sanctions, releasing frozen assets, ending the war on all fronts including those involving the resistance front, formally declaring the war over rather than agreeing a ceasefire, and refraining from interference in its internal affairs. A six-member committee of the Supreme National Security Council runs the talks, with Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi among them. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on November 8 that negotiations had made no progress.

🟡 The threats continue as well. Iran's security chief Mohsen Rezaei warned that starting a war would bring a devastating response and referred to new weaponry. On November 11 Iran said it would strike American bases in Europe if they were used against it. American media report that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Central Command chief Brad Cooper have been pressing Trump to resume attacks. The House rejected an impeachment resolution against Hegseth over his handling of the war, though Democrats take control of both chambers in January.

🔵 Here is where the verification lands. The resumption rumour rests on anonymous sourcing and has been officially denied. But the public statements of the decision-makers, the military preparations and the stalled mediation all point in one direction. What matters most is that the decision does not sit with the side the voters chose. The transition in which a caretaker holds full security authority overlaps precisely with the window in which renewed operations are being weighed. Eisenkot's call for restraint on November 11 was aimed at that overlap, and several observers have raised the possibility that conflict could be used to disrupt government formation.

🔵 It would be a mistake, though, to assume an Eisenkot government would reverse Iran policy. He supported the war and the strikes on nuclear facilities. What he rejected was Netanyahu's attempt to force regime change by military means, which he called unrealistic. Analysts expect that an Eisenkot government would neither push Trump to resume hostilities nor try to talk him out of a settlement. The difference lies in authority and procedure, not in strategy.

9. Lebanon and Syria: where the election changes least

🟢 War has continued in Lebanon since March 2, 2026, and Israel occupies part of the south, the seventh such occupation since 1978. Strikes have been near-daily through November. On November 4 the health ministry reported one person killed by a strike on a motorcycle. On November 5 a strike on a car between Aynata and Aitaroun killed three girls aged ten to fourteen and their grandmother, prompting national outrage. Between November 5 and 10, strikes, shelling or demolitions were recorded at Kfar Tebnit, Al-Mansouri, Bint Jbeil, Al-Tayri, Bani Haiyyan, Zawtar ash-Sharqiyah, Qantara and Majdal Zoun.

🟡 In November, Israel reportedly asked the Lebanese government to prevent Hezbollah from attacking Israel if the war with Iran resumes. The request reveals Israel's own working assumption that the Iranian and Lebanese fronts are linked.

🟢 In Syria, the dispute is over the buffer zone Israel occupied after the fall of the Assad government in December 2024. Speaking in New York on September 23, President Ahmed al-Sharaa said the two sides had reached roughly 90 percent of a security framework before Israel withdrew from the talks or added new conditions. Damascus wants Israel back to the 1974 disengagement lines, or at least to its positions before December 8, 2024. Syria has not dropped its claim to the Golan Heights. On November 6 an Israeli artillery shell landed on farmland near the village of Al-Samdaniyah al-Sharqiyah in the Quneitra countryside.

🔵 These are the two fronts a change of government would alter least. Analysts assess that Eisenkot also wants the military to keep degrading Hezbollah in south Lebanon and regards the Lebanese Armed Forces as too weak to act alone. He may be readier than Netanyahu to work with Beirut on disarmament, but he would not withdraw immediately or unconditionally. On Syria, he is likely to keep the security zone established after Assad's fall, despite American encouragement to negotiate permanent arrangements with Damascus.

10. Jordan, Turkey, Europe and Washington

🟢 Opening Jordan's parliament on November 2, King Abdullah said there can be no security or stability in the region without upholding the Palestinian people's right to their homeland, and that Israeli expansionist ambitions remain the greatest threat to the region's future and hopes. He pointed to the continuing humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza and to attacks in the West Bank and Jerusalem despite international calls for them to stop. He was speaking days after the Israeli election.

🟡 At the same time, Jordan has confirmed that the king received an invitation to join the Gaza Board of Peace. Condemnation and engagement are proceeding together.

🔵 For Amman, annexation of the West Bank is a national security question rather than a diplomatic one. One strategic reason for the 1994 peace treaty was to fix the borders with Israel and the Palestinian territories and bury the idea of an alternative homeland for Palestinians in Jordan. The king has hinted more than once that annexation, particularly of the Jordan Valley, could put that treaty in question. That red line survives whichever government forms in Jerusalem.

🟢 Relations with Turkey remain frozen. Ankara issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu in August, and Israel called President Recep Tayyip Erdogan an anti-Semitic dictator. The foreign ministers of Turkey, Egypt, Indonesia, Jordan, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates jointly condemned the settlement project east of Jerusalem known as E1 as a dangerous escalation, and declared Israeli measures in the West Bank illegal and void. Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian travelled to Turkey on November 11 for the United Nations climate conference.

🟢 The European Union called the expansion of Israeli control in the West Bank a step in the wrong direction, and Israeli television reported that Brussels was preparing a sanctions package should construction begin at E1. France, Germany, Britain and Italy have condemned the project.

🟡 Washington's position is two-edged. A White House official said the president has clearly stated that he does not support Israel annexing the West Bank, and the State Department has repeated its longstanding opposition, while pointedly declining to comment on E1 itself.

🟡 United Nations findings go considerably further. A report published in November 2026 accused Israel of war crimes and crimes against humanity in the occupied West Bank, including extermination, torture and other grave abuses, and said the Israeli government and its armed forces are perpetrating genocide in Gaza despite the American-brokered ceasefire. Israel consistently rejects such findings.

11. What to watch: December 6 and December 20

🟡 Israel's internal security service is also investigating suspected foreign interference in the election, reportedly including allegations involving the Palestinian Authority and senior Arab political figures. Running alongside coalition talks, that investigation could make the position of the Arab-led parties harder still.

🔵 If one conclusion holds across all of this, it is that for the region, a change of government in Israel does not mean a change of policy. Dismantling Hamas as a governing and military force is a shared objective. Iran is treated as a threat to be confronted by both camps. Every Jewish-led party opposes Palestinian statehood. What could change is the handling of settler violence, the release of withheld revenues to the Palestinian Authority, and the degree of cooperation with the Board of Peace. That is not nothing, but it is not structural.

🔵 The sharper risk is not about policy content but about where authority sits. The mandate belongs to a man backed by 67 recommendations. The power to order military action belongs to a man who received 46. That arrangement will last three weeks at minimum and six at most. While people are killed daily in Gaza, while arson continues in the West Bank, and while renewed strikes on Iran are under consideration, Israeli decision-making is in its least accountable configuration. That, more than any policy platform, is what Israel's neighbours are watching.

Note: casualty figures are as published by the respective authorities and vary with the date of compilation. Reporting places the start of the Gaza ceasefire on either October 10 or October 11, 2025.