Israel’s President Isaac Herzog has accepted the certified results of last week’s parliamentary elections and begun consultations with party leaders on whom to task with forming the next government.

The moves on Wednesday dealt a blow to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s efforts to discredit the vote, in which he and his allies lost their majority in the 120-member parliament, while Arab-led parties made historic gains.

“The elections are over. Now is the time to face reality,” Herzog said.

In the October 27 vote, neither Netanyahu’s coalition nor the bloc of his chief rival, opposition leader Gadi Eisenkot, secured the 61 seats required to govern. The prime minister’s coalition won 53, while Eisonkot’s got 48.

That leaves open the possibility of an alliance between the two men or an alliance between Eisenkot and the Arab-led parties – Ra’am and the Joint List – which had secured a record 19 seats.

Herzog began his consultations with party leaders on Wednesday night.

Three factions aligned with Netanyahu’s religious-nationalist base recommended that he be given a chance to form a coalition, while a fourth, led by a former Netanyahu ally turned rival, backed Eisenkot.

Eight more parties, including the two Arab-led factions, are scheduled to meet with the president on Thursday, with Eisenkot’s Yashar party and Netanyahu’s Likud going last.

Ra’am backs Eisenkot

Eisenkot’s prospects improved when Ra’am, a major Arab-led party, said it would recommend him. That brought his expected support to 56 lawmakers, according to the Israeli news site Ynet, which is still short of a majority.

The other Arab-led party, the Joint List, has not announced its position. Israel’s Channel 12 reported that the party was expected to coordinate with Eisenkot, endorsing him if asked or abstaining if he preferred. Its 11 seats could push him past 61.

Netanyahu’s 53-seat bloc, by contrast, may not yield 53 endorsements.

Degel HaTorah, which holds four of United Torah Judaism’s seven seats, said it would recommend neither candidate. The ultra-Orthodox faction broke with Netanyahu over his coalition’s failure to pass legislation exempting Haredi men from military service, The Times of Israel reported.

Once the consultations end, Herzog will choose the candidate he considers best placed to assemble a coalition, almost certainly Netanyahu or Eisenkot. He has several days to announce his decision, after which the nominee will have 28 days to form a government, with a possible 14-day extension.

If neither man succeeds, Israel would hold another election early next year.

‘No evidence of irregularities’

Netanyahu and his supporters meanwhile have repeatedly made unsubstantiated claims that the Arab-led parties had “stolen” the election, possibly with foreign assistance.

But Israel’s elections commission said earlier on Wednesday that it had conducted a thorough investigation of all parties’ claims of fraud and found “no evidence of irregularities that compromised the integrity of the election or affected its results”.

Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara also rejected a request to question elected officials without supporting evidence.

Herzog urged both camps to compromise to avoid a new election, saying they must accept that “not every commitment and promise can be fulfilled”.

“In the current reality, in which there is no clear winner after the elections, I ask for originality and creativity, courage and goodwill, so that the State of Israel emerges the winner,” he said.

He also backed investigating the suspected interference but warned against smearing Palestinian-Israeli voters, saying he had “great respect” for Israel’s Palestinian minority, which makes up about 20 percent of the population.

“I condemn the coarseness and racist expressions that we have heard recently,” he said.