Israel just cleared its election of fraud and Netanyahu has no case left

Israel just checked Benjamin Netanyahu's fraud claim. And the answer is no.

The Central Elections Committee looked at last week's vote. It found nothing wrong.

So this morning, the results got certified.

For a week, Benjamin Netanyahu has been saying the election was stolen. His bloc lost its majority on 27 October. 53 seats. Not enough.

Gadi Eisenkot's opposition got 48 seats. Also not enough.

So who actually gained? Arab-led parties. The Joint List and Ra'am won 19 seats between them. That's a record. Up from 10 last time. And they're now the group everyone needs to remove Netanyahu from power.

That's the motive behind the fraud claim.

Here's what the committee actually did. It audited 9,069 polling stations. That's about 75 per cent of every station in the country.

And its statement is direct. It says quote "the review found no evidence of irregularities that compromised the integrity of the election or affected its results".

Dean Livne runs the committee day to day. He says the results accurately reflect the choices voters made at the ballot box.

So what was Netanyahu's evidence? There wasn't any.

He pointed to people caught with envelopes of cash on election day. He said lawmakers took money from Qatar. No proof for either claim. Qatar has called the whole thing a disinformation campaign.

His own party, Likud, filed around 1,200 complaints about voting in Arab communities. The committee reviewed every one. It dismissed them all.

Gadi Eisenkot is the man Netanyahu is trying to stop from forming a government. His answer to the fraud claim is simple. He says they're doing this because they lost.