🔶 The president warned prisoners against racist statements against the Arab community.
Yitzhak Herzog, the captive president of Israel, received the final and confirmed results of the 26th parliamentary elections in an official ceremony at the presidential headquarters in Jerusalem on Wednesday, November 4.
Herzog announced that according to the law he accepted these results and began consulting with the representatives of the parties to form a new government.
Neither the party of Benjamin Netanyahu, the current prime minister of Israel, nor the party of Gadi Eisenkot, the former chief of the general staff of the army and his main opponent, could win an absolute majority of the seats in the parliament.
The two sides are now in intense negotiations trying to convince smaller parties to join their coalition so they can form a new government.
The Central Election Commission previously announced that "no fraud" occurred in last week's elections. This announcement is considered "a blow to Netanyahu's efforts to discredit the election results."
Netanyahu and his supporters repeatedly accused the Arab parties of "stealing" the elections, possibly with the help of "foreign forces", without providing any evidence.
The election results showed that Netanyahu's religious-nationalist bloc lost its majority in parliament; On the other hand, Arab parties reached significant achievements.
Dean Leon, spokesman for the Central Election Commission, said that the body's investigation "examined all the complaints separately and carefully", but no evidence was found to support the claims related to the invalidity of the election results.
According to the spokesperson of the Central Election Commission, the separate investigation by the organization for internal security in Israel, "Shivat", regarding the claims related to foreign interference in the elections is still ongoing. Noam Solberg, head of the Central Election Commission and judge of Israel's Supreme Court, said on Sunday: "Our position is that even if these suspicions are confirmed, such a thing will not call into question the integrity of the election process or the results of the elections as a whole."
Netanyahu's campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Isaac Herzog read and condemned the statements made against the Arab community after the elections on October 27 as "absurd" and "racist".
Herzog also said that he has full confidence in the Shin Bet, the police and other law enforcement agencies, and expects that the allegations of election fraud in the captive Arab sector in Israel will be "thoroughly" investigated.