Eisenkot backs election chief's ruling, says Netanyahu sought to undo the vote

Gadi Eisenkot, who leads the Yashar party, has praised a statement by Central Elections Committee chairman Noam Sohlberg affirming that last week's national election was run properly, and has accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of heading an effort to discredit the outcome. The Times of Israel reported that Sohlberg had also said most of the reported claims of interference in the election were false.

Writing in Hebrew on X, Eisenkot said an attempt to deny the results and to push Israel toward yet another election had failed. According to The Times of Israel, he was responding to allegations by Netanyahu and his allies that illegal activity had been used to raise turnout among Arab voters. Eisenkot described the effort as a "campaign of delegitimization" and said that only a side aware it had lost would pursue it, even at a cost to public confidence in state institutions. The Hebrew outlet News.co.il reported that Eisenkot called the results of the vote for the 26th Knesset clear, and quoted him as saying the public had decided that what he called the government of failure lacks a majority and had lost.

Who Eisenkot is and what Yashar means

Gadi Eisenkot is a former chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) who entered politics after leaving the military. He now chairs Yashar, a party whose Hebrew name translates roughly as "straight" or "upright." The Times of Israel noted that he spoke at the party's election headquarters in Tel Aviv after polls closed on October 28, 2026.

His post used a phrase that recurs in Israeli opposition rhetoric. The Hebrew word mechdal, rendered here as "failure," carries the sense of a grave lapse or negligence by those in charge, and opposition figures have used it as shorthand for their criticism of the current government.

What the Central Elections Committee does

The Central Elections Committee is the body responsible for organising and overseeing Israel's national elections, including the running of polling stations, the counting of ballots and the certification of results. Its chairman is a justice of the Supreme Court, which is intended to give the post independence from the parties competing in the vote. Noam Sohlberg holds the role for this election.

A statement from the committee's chair that a vote was conducted properly carries institutional weight because it comes from the official overseeing the process rather than from any party. That is the context for Eisenkot's reaction: he presented Sohlberg's finding as a rebuttal of the claims made by the prime minister's camp.

The dispute over the result

The Times of Israel described the outcome of the election as inconclusive. Eisenkot, by contrast, characterised the results as clear, arguing that the governing coalition had failed to secure a majority. The two descriptions are not necessarily in conflict: a result can deny the incumbent bloc a majority while leaving open who will be able to form the next government. Neither report gives seat totals or explains how coalition negotiations stand.

The allegations Eisenkot was answering concerned Arab turnout. According to The Times of Israel, Netanyahu and his allies had claimed that illegal activity was used to increase it. Eisenkot said the effort amounted to smearing an entire community, a reference to Arab citizens of Israel, and warned that it risked dragging the country into another round of voting. Israel has held repeated elections in recent years when no bloc could assemble a governing majority, and the prospect of a further vote is a live concern in Israeli politics.

What the reports do not say

Neither report quotes Sohlberg's statement in full, and neither specifies which allegations he found to be false or whether any claims were judged to have merit. The Times of Israel says "most" were false, which leaves open what happened with the remainder.

The reports do not include a response from Netanyahu or his Likud party to Sohlberg's statement or to Eisenkot's remarks. They do not give the final seat distribution, say whether official results have been certified, or indicate what steps, if any, the prime minister's allies intend to take next regarding their claims. The Times of Israel item was cut off in the material available to us, so any further remarks Eisenkot made in the same post are not reflected here.