Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has launched a campaign asserting that Arab citizens fraudulently influenced the recent Israeli elections in an effort to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the outcome. The push for delegitimization involved briefings with security and legal officials, including Shin Bet head Zini, Police Commissioner Danny Levi and Election Committee Chair Solberg. Evidence of the alleged fraud was provided to these officials by Sagi Keisler, Likud’s director of election purity in the Arab sector, who is described as a political campaigner specializing in Arab voter suppression rather than a legal professional.

The effort follows a strategy in which the newspaper Haaretz found that half of the Netanyahu campaign’s election posts targeted Arab citizens. These claims coincide with reports that the ruling Likud party spent millions of shekels to deploy paid teams to nearly every polling station in Palestinian communities to gather evidence for possible legal challenges. Additionally, Al-Quds reported that armed settlers entered polling stations in towns like Tira to intimidate voters and block Palestinian citizens from casting ballots.