Early exit polls show the Israeli election could be deadlocked. ( Reuters )
Two ironies have emerged out of Israel's election, where more than two-thirds of voters voted against Benjamin Netanyahu.
One is that the lack of a clear outcome means that Israel's prime minister will continue in power for the immediate future as caretaker, despite voters clearly rejecting him.
And the other is that Arab Israelis, whose voices and concerns were barely mentioned in the campaign, potentially hold the role of kingmakers despite having long been firmly rejected as partners in power by the major Jewish Israeli parties.
It will be up to Israeli President Isaac Herzog over the next couple of weeks to decide whether any of the parties can form what he regards as a workable coalition.
With just 50 seats out of the 120 in the Knesset predicted for his existing coalition, Mr Netanyahu will no doubt be seeking to peel off one of the parties aligned against him within the bloc led by former Israel Defense Forces (IDF) chief Gadi Eisenkot.
Netanyahu needs to secure 61 parliamentary seats to form a majority government.
Benjamin Netanyahu casts his vote in Jerusalem. ( Reuters: Yonatan Sindel )
One of his former colleagues, and indeed a former prime minister, Naftali Bennett, has already been mentioned as a target for such a deal.
His Together party is predicted to win 13 seats, which would take the Netanyahu block to 63.
Equally, the anti-Netanyahu forces have insisted throughout the campaign that they would not form a coalition with the Arab parties, despite the latter leadership signalling its willingness to cooperate with them.
Mr Bennett has been one of the anti-Netanyahu leaders who has been most insistent that he would not work with the Arab parties.
Another leader in the anti-Netanyahu camp, Avigdor Lieberman, has also poured water on the idea of any form of minority government, saying it would be better in such circumstances for Israelis to just go back to the polls.
Some elder statesmen of Mr Netanyahu's party have urged some of the members of the party, or parties in his bloc, to abandon him and join Mr Eisenkot in the interests of national unity.
Voters flocked to polling station during Israel's general election on Tuesday. ( AP: Ohad Zwigenberg )
Mr Netanyahu will remain in office while all these machinations play out, whether that is for weeks or months or if a government cannot be formed, until a new election is called.
There has been considerable anxiety expressed in Israel over the past week that Mr Netanyahu might seek to return Israel to war with Iran or escalate conflict with another of its neighbours.
The idea is that such an escalation would either influence the atmosphere in which coalition negotiations were being conducted, or add weight to arguments that wartime contingencies meant there needed to be a wartime unity government.
Under such a scenario, the prime minister would likely stay in power.
According to a story in the Washington Post , that is already an idea that Mr Netanyahu has floated with the Trump administration.
"What Trump wants is a stable and reliable Israeli government that can be formed as soon as possible after the election," an official from Mr Netanyahu's Likud party told the newspaper.
Yet, the Trump administration remains divided on what that looks like, those familiar with the matter said.
The anti-Netanyahu forces may find this the ultimate reason to learn to deal and work with each other.
