Israelis went to the polls on Tuesday in remarkable numbers, with tens of thousands reportedly flying in from abroad to cast their ballots. By Wednesday afternoon, the count had produced a familiar result in an unfamiliar shape. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud remains the largest party in the Knesset, yet neither he nor his rivals has an obvious route to a governing majority.

With 85.6 percent of votes counted, partial results from the Central Elections Committee gave Likud 26 of the Knesset’s 120 seats. Yashar, the party led by former IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot, took 21. Naftali Bennett’s B’Yachad and the Arab-led Joint List followed with 12 each.

Netanyahu’s bloc of Likud, Otzma Yehudit, Shas, United Torah Judaism and Religious Zionism stands at 53 seats, eight short of the 61 needed to form a government. The opposition parties headed by Eisenkot, Bennett, Yair Golan’s Democrats and Avigdor Liberman’s Yisrael Beytenu hold 48.

The remaining 19 seats belong to the Joint List and Ra’am, a record for Arab-led parties. The two held 10 seats in the outgoing Knesset, and their previous combined high was 15, in 2020.

That leaves the opposition with difficult arithmetic. Together with the Arab parties, it would control 66 seats. Without them, it cannot reach a majority. During the campaign, Eisenkot, Bennett and Liberman each pledged not to rely on Arab lawmakers to form a government.

Ra’am chairman Mansour Abbas has said he is open to joining a coalition led by Eisenkot, and told Channel 12 that Likud had also reached out to him. The Joint List, which has historically stayed out of Zionist-led governments, offered on Wednesday to support an alternative coalition from outside. Golan has urged his prospective partners to drop their objections.

There is precedent for such an arrangement. In 1993, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin governed with just 56 coalition members, relying on outside support from Arab parties. More recently, Bennett’s 2021-2022 government, which included Ra’am, collapsed after defections by right-wing lawmakers.

If no deal emerges, the remaining options are a unity government that would include Netanyahu or another round of elections, either of which would keep him in office for now.

The count is in its final stages, and seat totals could still shift before results are certified.