JERUSALEM (The Thursday Times) — The head of Israel’s election committee has said last week’s results will stand even if suspicions of foreign funding aimed at swaying the vote are proved, rejecting claims by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud that the election was “stolen”.
Justice Noam Sohlberg, chairman of the Central Elections Committee, made the statement in a video on Sunday, appearing alongside Shin Bet chief David Zini and Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara. “Suspicions are suspicions,” he said, adding that solid evidence would be needed to challenge the outcome. The election, he said, was run properly and the results reflect the will of voters.
Official results will be published and handed to President Isaac Herzog on Wednesday as scheduled, he said, when consultations on forming the next government are due to begin.
Sohlberg said the suspicions were serious and could have a security dimension, but that the inquiry was covert, relied on classified intelligence and that most reports about it were inaccurate. A joint team led by the Shin Bet, police and prosecutors will investigate. He also said nothing in his remarks was meant to cast doubt on voting by Arab citizens.
Likud called it puzzling that he could describe the suspicions as serious yet conclude that they would not affect the results before the investigation had ended, and said a “black cloud” hung over the vote. It has accused Arab parties of stealing the election without providing evidence, and police have said they have no support for the wider claim. The party also pointed out that only 4,612 votes separated Ra’am from losing a seat. A one-seat shift would lift Netanyahu’s bloc from 53 to 54, still short of the 61 needed for a majority.
Opposition leader Gadi Eisenkot, whose bloc won 48 seats, welcomed the statement. The attempt to deny the result and “smear an entire community” had failed, he said.
Arab-led parties won a record 19 seats. Qatar has rejected claims that it funded efforts to raise turnout, and Ra’am has denied receiving money from it. In a separate police case that has not been publicly linked to the Shin Bet inquiry, two of the three men arrested on election day on suspicion of bribery were released on Sunday.
