From Lex Stewart
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Likud Party, and its coalition partners expressed outrage as the Central Elections Committee (CEC) approved last Tuesday’s election results on Wednesday despite allegations of widespread voter fraud in the Arab sector and amid reports that the attorney general was blocking the Shin Bet’s investigation of Arab Knesset members who may have been involved in the scandal.
“The reports tonight are an earthquake for Israeli democracy,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu posted to X on Tuesday night.
According to reports, foreign states, namely Qatar and Turkey according to some Hebrew-media outlets, provided tens of millions of shekels to influence the Arab-Israeli vote. Few details have been made public and it is not clear how the funds were used.
In a separate investigation overseen by the Israel Police, several people were arrested in connection with direct payments to voters.
On Oct. 28, the Likud, in an X post, said it was “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—
- thousands of envelopes with cash and [Arab party] Ra’am voting slips,
- threats and violence against polling station members,
- multiple voting behind the curtain,
- voting under double identities,
- discrepancies between the number of envelopes and the number of voters,
- use of prohibited mobilization software, and more.”
However, on Nov. 1, Sohlberg (Chairman of the CEC) issued a joint video statement, accompanied by Zini, Baharav-Miara and acting director-general of the CEC Dean Livne, in which he said that while the “suspicions are serious … Our position is that even if the suspicions are substantiated, this would not undermine the integrity of the electoral process … The results will be published on schedule.”
According to a Channel 12 report published on Wednesday, Zini and Sohlberg agreed during their Tuesday meeting that the election as a whole was carried out in a normal manner.
The Shin Bet estimated that only a few thousand potential voters had been affected by improper influence.
