Tel Aviv: Israel’s Central Elections Committee Chairman Justice Naom Sohlberg has asked the chief of Israel’s internal security and counterintelligence service Shin Bet to probe foreign funding allegations in elections held Tuesday.
This comes at a time when the election verdict is hanging, with Arab parties emerging as possible king makers after they garnered their highest ever tally of seats.
In a letter to Shin Bet Director David Zini, the Central Elections Committee chief has said that serious suspicions have been brought to his notice regarding “improper influence on elections, exerted through funding provided by foreign entities acting against Israeli interests”.
No country or organisation has been named in the letter, written Wednesday morning. But, Israel’s Election Committee chief’s letter points to Arab entities funding a campaign aimed at influencing the outcome of Israel’s elections.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party has said that judge Solberg’s statements about the involvement of foreign entities allegedly interfering and bribing voters in favour of the Arab parties come as a shock.
The party’s statement, posted by Netanyahu, termed it an “attack on democracy, whose purpose is to lead to a foreign takeover of the Knesset, the Islamisation of Israel, and the overthrow of right-wing rule in order to lead to retreat and defeat of the IDF in all arenas— and primarily Iran”.
Gadi Eisenkot, who leads the anti-Netanyahu bloc, said that the State of Israel must guard the purity of the elections with utmost vigilance against any attempt at interference, spin, and bias, and thoroughly investigate every complaint. Eisenkot, who is Netanyahu’s challenger, also said that political actors were expected to exploit the situation and influence the timing of the inauguration of the 26th Knesset.
The election committee’s move came hours after the statement by Netanyahu-led Likud party Wednesday, where it alleged that the elections were “stolen by Arab parties that support terrorism and the elimination of Jewish state through serious criminal offences of bribery, threats, violence, forgeries, and the use of prohibited software to mobilise voters”.
Calling it a serious blow to Israeli democracy and voting rights of Israeli citizens, the Likud party said that 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 Ra’am slips (an Arab-majority political party in Israel), threats and violence against polling station members, multiple voting behind the curtain, voting with double identities”.
Arab parties have secured 19 seats in Israel’s 120-member Knesset (Parliament), almost double of what they received (10) in the last elections in 2022. Both parties have put out an anti-Netanyahu statement, hinting at support for the ‘change bloc’ (anti-Netanyahu bloc) led by Gadi Eisenkot to topple Israel’s longest serving PM.
The two Arab parties have emerged as game changers, with both the Netanyahu bloc and the ‘change bloc’ failing to cross the majority mark (61). The joint list has secured 12 seats, while the Ra’am has got seven.
Israel held elections to choose 120 members to the Knesset, with a record 77.7 percent turnout, the highest since 1999. The turnout in Arab-dominated regions increased sharply in this year’s election. In Nazareth, which has almost 100 percent Israeli Arab population, over 80 percent voter turnout was reported.
(Edited by Viny Mishra)
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