Arab voters turned out in unprecedented numbers in Tuesday’s Knesset election, nearly doubling the Arab parties’ representation and leaving Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s bloc eight seats short of a governing majority. Now Israel’s Shin Bet security agency is investigating whether Qatar, the Gulf emirate that hosts Hamas’s political leadership, paid to produce that surge. Hebrew media, citing sources in the security establishment and the Central Elections Committee, reported that Qatar is suspected of sending significant funds to Arab organizations to influence turnout and voting through illegal means.
The Numbers Behind the Deadlock
Arab turnout reportedly soared from 53.2% in the 2022 election to approximately 80% on Tuesday. Right-wing lawmakers demanding a criminal probe noted that turnout in the sector stood at 44.6% in 2021 and had never risen above 64.8% in the previous 25 years.
The surge translated directly into seats. Ra’am and the Joint List won 19 seats between them, nearly double the 10 they hold in the outgoing Knesset. The previous record was 15 seats, set in 2020. Netanyahu’s bloc, which holds 64 seats in the outgoing Knesset, fell to 53.
The trade-off was visible as the count progressed. With roughly 85% of votes tallied, Netanyahu’s bloc dropped a seat to 53 while the Arab parties gained two to reach 19. The certified results gave Likud 27 seats, Yashar 21, Together 12, the Joint List 11, the Democrats 8, Ra’am 8, Yisrael Beytenu 7, Otzma Yehudit 7, United Torah Judaism 7, Shas 6 and Religious Zionism 6. That leaves Netanyahu’s bloc at 53, the Zionist opposition at 48, and neither side with the 61 seats needed to govern.
The arithmetic of Israel’s proportional system magnifies turnout. The higher the overall turnout, the more votes every party needs to win each seat, so a wave of new Arab voters raises the price of a Knesset seat for everyone else. Overall turnout reached 77.9%, with 5,716,665 votes counted, the highest since 1999.
Israel has seen this pattern before. In March 2020, Arab turnout of nearly 65% was credited with depriving Netanyahu and his allies of a majority, with analysts pointing to two additional Joint List seats as the margin that kept his bloc short of 61.
The surge also reshaped the coalition math. The 19 Arab seats put the Arab parties in a potential kingmaker position, while most Zionist parties have ruled out allying with them. Ra’am leader Mansour Abbas said he hoped the final results would allow the opposition bloc and his party to reach 61 seats together.
Money Along Terror-Financing Routes
The investigation was ordered by Central Elections Committee chairman Justice Noam Sohlberg, who also serves as deputy president of the Supreme Court. “Serious suspicions have been brought to my attention,” Sohlberg wrote in a letter to Shin Bet Director David Zini dated Wednesday, describing improper influence on the elections through funding from foreign entities acting against Israeli interests. He gave the agency one week to deliver its findings, citing the timetable for election appeals. The letter did not identify particular countries or political parties.
Channel 12 reported that the channels used to send the funds closely resembled those used to send money for terrorism in the past, and that the Shin Bet tracked the information for several days and waited for the planned illegal action to be carried out before informing Sohlberg. Channel 13 reported that investigators were examining whether money passed through currency exchangers and local institutions along routes previously used to transfer terrorist funds. Israeli media have named Turkey as another possible source, and Channel 12 reported that additional foreign countries may be involved.
According to N12, Zini presented information to the committee on Wednesday night that was “extraordinary in its seriousness.” An unnamed security official told the Kan public broadcaster the probe was opened in the past two weeks and is based on solid intelligence. “We understand that there is something problematic,” the official said, adding that matters would become clear in the coming days.
Other sources downplayed the scope. Unnamed officials told Ynet and Kan that the alleged Qatari interference was far smaller than other reports suggested, with one source saying it had crossed a threshold of evidence requiring investigation.
The Shin Bet issued a rare public statement Thursday evening. The agency said its intelligence came from its own collection and “did not come from a party or political entity” on either side of the political map. It stressed that the investigation is narrow and does not target Arab voters as a community. “Only those who acted unlawfully will be dealt with,” the Shin Bet said. Zini personally briefed Netanyahu, Yashar chairman Gadi Eisenkot and opposition leader Yair Lapid on the main suspicions.
Cash Envelopes in the Negev
Police are running a separate bribery investigation. Police reported finding cash and Ra’am voting slips during searches, arrested three residents of southern Israel on Election Day and four more men on Thursday, and transferred the case to the Lahav 433 National Fraud Squad. Among Thursday’s detainees were three school principals from Bedouin communities in the south. Police have not linked that case to the suspected foreign funding. Right-wing lawmakers said one of the men detained in the Negev was a senior figure in Sawa 48, a nonprofit they describe as Ra’am’s parent organization, and noted that the Registrar of Nonprofits recommended dissolving Sawa 48 in July 2025 for transferring funds to terror groups. The lawmakers wrote that “the unprecedented scale of voting did not happen on its own.” Ra’am has denied the bribery allegations.
A Record of Fraud and Foreign Cash
Qatari money has turned up in an Arab party’s campaign before. Police suspected that in 2013 the Balad party deposited about NIS 3.2 million from an unidentified source and disguised it as private donations using more than 1,300 forged documents. According to the police investigation, Azmi Bishara, the former Balad leader who fled to Qatar after being suspected of spying for Hezbollah, provided Balad with over 2 million shekels that year. A Balad official told investigators the funds came from Jordan and Qatar and were smuggled in suitcases, and three activists were arrested in 2012 and early 2013 entering Israel from Jordan with suitcases full of money. A police source said the party allegedly received campaign donations from enemy states during the period. The Justice Ministry described the scheme as a “systematic and meticulously planned act of fraud.” In October 2021, former MK Hanin Zoabi and 12 others were convicted in a plea agreement of fraud and forgery of receipts, while senior Balad officials were never prosecuted.
Polling stations in Arab towns have also produced criminal cases. In 2006, then-committee chair Justice Dorit Beinish asked the attorney general to investigate alleged double voting at six polling stations in Peki’in, Taiba, Hura and Kafr Qasim. After the April 2019 election, committee chairman Justice Hanan Melcer asked the attorney general and police to investigate ballot forgery, especially in the Arab sector, after an examination found that polling committee minutes did not match the official voter lists or the ballots. Prosecutors charged that Mohamed Diab, one of the polling committee chairmen at a station in Tamra, added at least seven ballot slips after the polls closed. After the September 2019 vote, the committee identified 31 problematic ballot boxes nationwide, including 22 cases of double voting at stations in Jisr e-Zarka, Deir el-Asad, Haifa and Lapid.
The proven cases have been limited in scale. Kan reported in 2019 that police found enough evidence for a criminal investigation at only one of 140 polling stations Likud had flagged. One indictment from that year involved a Likud representative on the polling committee in the Arab town of Fureidis, charged with putting 56 forged slips into the ballot box.
Doha Denies, Mocks Israeli Politicians
Qatar’s Foreign Ministry rejected the allegations Thursday. Spokesman Majed al-Ansari cited past accusations that Doha bought influence over Netanyahu and the Israeli left, saying that if the claims were believed, “Qatar would apparently own all of Israel.” The ministry described the allegations as ridiculous and dangerous and accused Israeli politicians and media of an “excessive obsession” with Qatar. Turkey has also rejected allegations of involvement.
Qatar’s reach into Israeli politics extends beyond Balad. Several of Netanyahu’s close aides, including former spokesman Jonatan Urich, have been investigated over allegations they received millions of shekels for public relations work for Qatar while serving in the Prime Minister’s Office.
A Global Influence Machine
Israel is one target of a far larger Qatari spending operation. Qatar is the single largest foreign source of funding to American colleges and universities, according to a public database the US Department of Education launched in January, which shows $6.6 billion in Qatari gifts and contracts. That outpaces Germany at $4.4 billion, England at $4.3 billion, China at $4.1 billion and Saudi Arabia at $3.9 billion. Cornell University alone has received $2.29 billion from Qatar.
The pace is accelerating. Qatari funding to US universities more than tripled in a single year, from $396 million in 2024 to $1.2 billion in 2025. The money accounted for 20% of all foreign dollars that flowed to American universities in 2025. The five biggest recipients are Cornell, Carnegie Mellon, Georgetown, Texas A&M and Northwestern.
The campus money is matched by spending in Washington. Since Trump was first elected in 2016, Qatar has spent nearly $250 million on 88 lobbying and public relations firms registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). According to an analysis of FARA records by the Quincy Institute, the operation has worked both sides of the aisle, with more than a dozen high-level Democratic operatives on Qatar’s lobbying roster during the Biden administration. Qatar logged 627 in-person political meetings between 2021 and 2025, more than any other country.
The full footprint is larger still. A review cited by JNS put Qatari spending inside the United States at $400 billion, roughly $1.2 million for every Qatari citizen, and noted that the true figure may be as high as $1.2 trillion. Much of that sum is tied to aviation and infrastructure, including major Boeing deals, alongside higher education, lobbying, think tanks and real estate.
Qatar’s defenders say the university figures are misleading. A former US ambassador to Qatar affiliated with Georgetown noted that 97% of the money Qatar provided to American universities since 2001 went to six institutions, all of which operate campuses in Doha. Critics counter that branch campuses give Doha leverage over the home institutions. A congressional investigation found that the Qatar Foundation sought to influence messaging at US satellite campuses in Doha, citing Georgetown’s foreign service school in Qatar as an example.
Both Camps Target Qatar
Likud charged on Wednesday that the election was “stolen by Arab parties that support terror and the elimination of the Jewish state.” After Sohlberg’s letter became public, the party called the alleged foreign push an attack on democracy aimed at a foreign takeover of the Knesset and the Islamization of Israel, and said no Zionist party should cooperate with Ra’am and the Joint List on the basis of votes it said were bought for cash. Police said they had found no investigative or intelligence support for Likud’s broader claim that the election was stolen.
Eisenkot named Qatar directly. The opposition leader said foreign interference was unacceptable, particularly from “a state that funds terrorism and supports the terrorist organisation Hamas,” and noted that the same state had infiltrated the Prime Minister’s Office in recent years. Democrats MK Naama Lazimi called for another vote on declaring Qatar an enemy state.
President Isaac Herzog welcomed the investigation, saying the allegations must be investigated thoroughly and those responsible punished, while warning against blaming an entire community that exercised its right to vote.
What Happens Next
The Central Elections Committee said the investigation will not affect the final results submitted to Herzog on Wednesday, November 4. An investigation does not by itself overturn any result. Under Section 86 of the Knesset Elections Law, an election appeal must be filed with the Jerusalem District Court within 14 days of publication of the results, and a central requirement is that the alleged irregularity could have affected the outcome. Likud has said it will seek to invalidate results at polling stations where it suspects irregularities. The new Knesset is expected to be sworn in on November 10, three days after the Shin Bet’s deadline to report its findings.
