Israel Elections: Why Building a Majority Is So Hard

Israel is heading into another election cycle, and the central challenge remains the same as it has been for years: no single party or leader can win enough seats to govern alone, making coalition-building an exhausting and often unpredictable process.

Benjamin Netanyahu, the longtime leader of the right-wing Likud party and former prime minister, is once again attempting to stitch together a coalition that can command a majority in the Knesset, Israel's 120-seat parliament. At the same time, Gadi Eisenkot, a former Israeli military chief of staff who has moved into politics, is working to position himself as a credible alternative at the head of a centrist bloc.

The difficulty both men face comes down to the structure of Israeli democracy. The country uses a proportional representation system, meaning votes are counted nationally and seats are allocated based on each party's share of the total vote. This tends to produce a highly fragmented parliament, with a dozen or more parties often winning seats. A governing coalition must hold at least 61 of the 120 seats, which typically requires assembling four, five or even six parties whose leaders agree on a shared agenda.

For Netanyahu, the path to 61 seats depends heavily on support from ultra-Orthodox religious parties and far-right nationalist factions. These allies often have competing demands on issues such as military conscription exemptions for religious students, judicial reform, and policy toward Palestinians. Satisfying all of them simultaneously without losing other potential partners is a political balancing act that has derailed Israeli coalition talks repeatedly in recent years.

Eisenkot, who served as Israel Defense Forces chief of staff from 2015 to 2019, entered politics with a reputation for pragmatism and military credibility. He has aligned with centrist and centre-left forces, but faces the challenge of consolidating that space when multiple parties are competing for the same voters.

Israel held five national elections between 2019 and 2022, largely because no bloc could secure a stable majority. The country eventually formed a government under Netanyahu in late 2022, backed by the most right-wing coalition in Israeli history. That government has since faced enormous domestic pressure over its judicial overhaul proposals and over its handling of security crises.

What this means for international observers: Israeli elections rarely produce a clear winner on election night. The real contest happens in the weeks of coalition negotiations that follow, where smaller parties can wield outsized influence by threatening to withhold their support. The outcome shapes not only domestic Israeli policy but also the country's approach to diplomacy, security agreements, and its relationships with allies and neighbours in a volatile region.

For Mauritians and the broader diaspora following global affairs, Israel's political instability is a reminder of how proportional voting systems, while inclusive, can make stable governance difficult in deeply divided societies.

Source: Le Defi Media