Reverent Dilettante

Neither bloc can form a government, and Netanyahu stays in office while everyone tries: 1) Netanyahu has no realistic route to 61. His bloc is the four religious-right parties plus Likud, and every party outside it ran on replacing him. To get there he would need defectors from Bennett or Lieberman, which both ruled out, or Ra’am, which Smotrich and Ben-Gvir would veto. 2) Eisenkot’s only path to a government runs through the Arab parties. Ra’am alone gets him to 58. He needs the Joint List as well, at least abstaining or giving outside support. That is the 2021 Bennett-Lapid model, but with a bigger dependency. Bennett and Lieberman have both been wary of relying on the Joint List. 3) The other way out is the Haredim. Shas plus UTJ is 14 seats, which would put Eisenkot at 66. But the draft is the issue that defines Lieberman, Bennett and the Democrats. A deal on exemptions would break his bloc from the inside. 4) The anti-Netanyahu parties plus the Arab parties come to about 69. That is enough to elect the Knesset speaker, control committees, and pass laws without forming a government. A bill barring an indicted MK from forming a government becomes possible. 5) Likud’s overperformance is mostly cannibalization. Likud gained, but its bloc is at 50. The votes came from inside the right, not from the center. 6) Stalemate favors Netanyahu. He stays caretaker PM through coalition talks and any repeat election. If nobody gets to 61, he governs by default. The likeliest outcomes are a Bennett-Lapid-style government that depends on Arab support, or deadlock and another election with Netanyahu still in charge. The whole question is whether Eisenkot, Bennett and Lieberman will sit with Arab support. Exit polls here usually miss by a seat or two per party, so a small shift around the threshold could change the math.