Netanyahu alleges fraud as Arab parties reach record gains in Israeli election

TEL AVIV, Israel: Israel’s two Arab parties are in a position to have a say in who the country’s next prime minister and government will be — but not if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has anything to do with it, after he alleged serious criminal activities took place during voting in the Arab areas of the nation.The two parties were projected to win a combined 19 Knesset seats, according to preliminary results.Both Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud-led right-wing bloc and the opposition leader Gadi Eisenkot’s centrist bloc fell short of the 61 seats needed for a parliamentary majority.On Wednesday, Prime Minister Netanyahu wrote on X that Israel’s election had been “stolen by Arab parties that support terrorism and the elimination of the Jewish state,” alleging serious criminal offenses, including bribery, threats, violence, forgery and the use of prohibited software to mobilize voters.“The Likud party is transferring to the police, the Shin Bet, and the Central Elections Committee hundreds of testimonies and pieces of evidence regarding election theft in many Arab polling stations,” he wrote.He cited allegations of thousands of envelopes containing cash and Ra’am ballot slips, threats and violence against polling station staff, multiple votes cast behind the voting curtain, voting under multiple identities, discrepancies between the number of ballot envelopes and the number of voters, the use of prohibited voter-mobilization software and other offenses.“We demand from the police and the Shin Bet a thorough investigation into the election theft by the Arab parties and the full prosecution of the criminals.

We demand from the Central Elections Committee an immediate response to investigate these criminal offenses that have severely damaged the integrity of the elections in Israel and the election results,” he added. In a letter addressed to Yesh Atid lawmaker Vladimir Beliak, Acting Central Elections Committee Director-General D...