Netanyahu’s response to the October 27 election has been extraordinary, even by his increasingly incendiary standards. Having failed to secure a governing majority, he and Likud have moved from contesting political opponents to questioning the legitimacy of the electorate itself.
Israeli Palestinian voters turned out in unprecedented numbers, helping the two “Arab-led parties”, as the Israeli government refers to them, win 19 seats. Netanyahu responded with allegations of widespread fraud, bribery and foreign interference, without producing a shred of evidence of systematic electoral manipulation.
The distinction matters. Israel’s Central Elections Committee said there was no basis for claims that the integrity of the vote had been systematically compromised. The Shin Bet likewise stressed that its narrowly focused investigation into possible foreign interference did not implicate Israeli-Arab voters collectively. President Isaac Herzog warned against tarnishing an entire community. Yet Netanyahu’s political machinery continued to portray the result as a “stolen election” and an “assault on Israel.”
It was a new low to a shrewd veteran politician who has sustained his career on incendiary campaigns. But this is not simply a sore loser refusing to leave the political stage. It is an attempt to redefine legitimate democratic participation according to ethnic and ideological criteria – and to pre-tarnish those Israeli parties willing to cooperate with the “Arab parties” and perhaps to set the stage for a new attack against Iran, to foster domestic support.
An Israeli Palestinian citizen’s vote is constitutionally valid when it supports Netanyahu’s political survival; apparently, it becomes suspect when it threatens it.
Qatar: Another convenient scapegoat
Netanyahu’s latest accusation introduces a familiar foreign villain: Qatar. Likud alleged that Doha, possibly alongside Turkey, financed organizations mobilizing Palestinian voters, thereby helping manufacture the electoral defeat of the Israeli right.
Like most calculated nonsense, the accusation is politically convenient. Qatar hosts Hamas’s political leadership, has mediated negotiations over Gaza, and has become an established target of Israeli nationalist rhetoric. Yet the evidence presented so far does not establish that Qatar financed electoral fraud or manipulated the Israeli vote.
Qatar categorically denied interference, describing the allegations as a disinformation campaign. More damaging to Netanyahu’s narrative, the Central Elections Committee’s acting director-general, Dean Livne, rejected claims of widespread electoral fraud as baseless. The committee stated that there was no basis for alleging systematic damage to the election’s integrity.
The Shin Bet confirmed that, while its foreign-interference investigation was limited, originated in its own intelligence rather than information supplied by political parties, it did not implicate an entire community of Palestinian voters.
Investigating possible foreign interference is legitimate; converting an unfinished intelligence inquiry into proof that its “Arab citizens” stole an election is political manipulation. Netanyahu has transformed a narrowly defined security investigation into an expansive political indictment.
Qatar may be a convenient suspect, but it cannot substitute for evidence. And foreign interference, even if established in individual cases, cannot invalidate the lawful votes of hundreds of thousands of Israeli citizens, which is what Palestinians are.
