Arab Parties Nearly Double Their Seats. Israel's Election Judge Orders Shin Bet to Probe Foreign Money

Israel's election has a new investigator: the Shin Bet, the country's domestic security service. The judge who runs the vote, Supreme Court Deputy Chief Justice Noam Sohlberg, has ordered it to find out whether foreign money was used to sway Tuesday's election, and to report back within a week.

The order landed the same day the final count came in. Arab-led parties won 19 of the Knesset's 120 seats, nearly double the 10 they won in 2022 and the most in Israel's history. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's bloc fell to 53, eight short of a majority. His Likud party says the vote was stolen.

What the judge wrote

Sohlberg chairs the Central Elections Committee. In a letter to Shin Bet chief David Zini dated Wednesday, he wrote that "serious suspicions have been brought before me concerning improper influence on the elections through foreign funding provided by external actors operating against Israeli interests," according to the text published by ynet.

He was careful. "I cannot attest to the substance of these suspicions," he wrote. But because they involve foreign actors, he said, "there is an obligation to investigate them properly." He told Zini to use the agency's powers "to uncover evidence that would substantiate or refute them," and asked for findings within a week because of the legal deadlines for election appeals.

Think of it as the head of the Federal Election Commission asking the FBI to chase suspected foreign cash two days after Election Day.

The Shin Bet said Thursday the intelligence came from its own work tracking foreign influence, not from any party or politician, and that no one outside the agency except Sohlberg saw it before the polls closed. Zini briefed Netanyahu, opposition leader Yair Lapid and Gadi Eisenkot, whose Yashar party came in second. "Only those who acted unlawfully will be dealt with," the agency said.

The country everyone is naming: Qatar

Neither the letter nor the Shin Bet named a country. Israeli media did. Ynet reported that the suspicion involves Qatar sending tens of millions of shekels to influence the vote, and that election committee officials called the intelligence "solid." Channel 12 reported that the money moved through channels that closely resembled ones used to fund terrorism in the past, according to The Times of Israel. Ynet also reported the Shin Bet held the intelligence for several days and waited to see whether the suspected vote-buying actually happened.

Netanyahu went right at it. Thursday morning he posted a Likud graphic with a still from an Al Jazeera interview of Joint List lawmaker Ahmad Tibi, asking: "Why did Ahmad Tibi visit Qatar four days before the elections?" (Translated from Hebrew.)

Qatar flatly denies it. "We categorically deny allegations that Qatar has interfered in Israeli elections or funded any activities intended to influence their outcome," foreign ministry spokesman Majed al-Ansari posted. He told reporters the accusations were "ridiculous and dangerous in equal measure."

Worth knowing: Qatar owns Al Jazeera, the network that aired Tibi's interview, and has long hosted Hamas's political office.

The numbers behind the fight

The committee's count gives Likud 27 seats, still the biggest party, ahead of Eisenkot's Yashar with 21. Turnout hit 77.9%, with 5,716,665 ballots cast.

Here's the twist. Netanyahu's bloc actually won about 83,000 more votes than it did in 2022, ynet's analysis found. It lost 11 seats anyway, because the electorate grew around it. The biggest jump came from Arab voters: Ra'am and the Joint List together won about 835,000 votes, up from about 511,000 for the three Arab parties in 2022, a rise of more than 63%. Sakhnin, an Arab city in the Galilee, posted the highest turnout of any city in the country at 86.4%.

Those 19 seats are what both sides are fighting over. Neither Netanyahu nor Eisenkot can get to 61 without the Arab parties, either inside a coalition or backing one from outside.

Likud: 'They stole the election'

Likud fired first, on Wednesday, before anyone knew about the letter. "The elections in the State of Israel were stolen by Arab parties that support terrorism and the destruction of the Jewish state," the party said in a statement Netanyahu posted, citing "thousands of envelopes with cash and Ra'am slips," threats against polling-station staff, double voting and banned voter-mobilization software.

Sagi Keizler, who runs Likud's election-integrity effort in Arab towns, told ynet the party filed 1,183 complaints on Election Day, including 38 suspected bribes, 66 reports of violence or threats and 115 suspected double votes. "Neither the police nor the Elections Committee called a single witness," he said.

When the Sohlberg letter surfaced Thursday, Likud called it "Ra'amgate," after the Islamist party Ra'am. "This is an earthquake. They stole the election in Israel!" the party said, calling it "an attack on democracy" aimed at "a foreign takeover of the Knesset." Its demand: no Zionist party should partner with Ra'am or the Joint List.

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said Arab party leaders "must be questioned by the Shin Bet today." It wasn't only the right. Avigdor Liberman, whose Yisrael Beytenu sits in Eisenkot's bloc, called the letter "a dramatic and unprecedented development" and urged authorities to move fast.

What the other side says

Eisenkot's office said every complaint should be investigated, but warned that no one should use the probe to delay swearing in the new Knesset. Joint List chairman Yousef Jabareen accused Netanyahu of a "racist blood libel." Ra'am leader Mansour Abbas said he would welcome a fair investigation.

Israel Police told Likud there was "no investigative or intelligence evidence" behind its broader fraud claims, and said election-integrity incidents fell by nearly 40% compared with 2022. In the overnight statement, the committee's acting director general, Dean Livne, said press reports about the intelligence were "entirely unfounded," that the probe "does not concern any particular community" and that it won't change the results going to President Isaac Herzog.

The election-morning bribery case is still open, though it has weakened. Police arrested three Negev men the night before the vote with cash envelopes and Ra'am ballots, as we reported Tuesday. A court released one, a doctor, over police objections, and held the other two for five more days. Ynet reports four more suspects were picked up Thursday, bringing the arrests to seven. That case is run by the police fraud unit, not the Shin Bet, and nothing public ties it to the Qatar suspicion yet.

What happens next

The committee says the results, "subject to minor corrections," go to Herzog on Wednesday, Nov. 4, and the new Knesset is due to be sworn in Nov. 10. The Shin Bet's findings are due to Sohlberg within about a week, right in that window. He alone decides what they mean for the vote.

So the question isn't whether foreign money was suspected. Israel's own election judge says it was. The question is how much, who sent it, and whether it moved enough votes to matter in a parliament where 19 seats now decide who governs.