Israeli Pres. Accepts Election Results 11/04 06:34

   Israeli President Isaac Herzog on Wednesday accepted as legally binding the 
certified results from last week's parliamentary elections and said he would 
begin consultations with party representatives on the formation of a new 
government.

   JERUSALEM (AP) -- Israeli President Isaac Herzog on Wednesday accepted as 
legally binding the certified results from last week's parliamentary elections 
and said he would begin consultations with party representatives on the 
formation of a new government.

   Herzog's acceptance of the results as valid dealt a blow to Prime Minister 
Benjamin Netanyahu's effort to discredit the vote in which his 
religious-nationalist bloc lost its majority in the Israeli parliament, or 
Knesset, while Arab-led parties made historic gains.

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

   The Israeli president is required now to sit down with various party leaders 
to determine who to name as prime minister-designate -- a process that could 
potentially bring Netanyahu's opponents to power.

   No fraud in Israel's election, commission says 

   Israel's election commission said earlier on Wednesday that after a thorough 
investigation of all parties' claims of fraud it had found "no evidence of 
irregularities that compromised the integrity of the election or affected its 
results."

   Netanyahu's Likud party did not respond to a request for comment.

   A separate investigation by the Shin Bet intelligence service, which is 
headed by David Zini, a Netanyahu appointee and loyalist, into allegations of 
foreign interference in the election is still ongoing.

   In a private meeting Wednesday of the election committee's members, its 
head, Supreme Court Justice Noam Sohlberg, read out an intelligence assessment 
from the Shin Bet saying the agency believed there had been a "widespread 
phenomenon involving the influx of substantial funds into Israel from foreign 
states," including from countries hostile toward Israel.

   The Shin Bet provided no evidence to explain its assertion. The Associated 
Press obtained a transcript of the assessment from a person who attended the 
meeting. The person requested anonymity to discuss a closed-door meeting.

   The committee has previously said that while claims about foreign actors 
seeking to influence the election are serious and under investigation, it does 
not believe that any such interference affected the results -- even if it had 
happened.

   Sohlberg reiterated that stance on Wednesday.

   "At this stage, these are merely suspicions, and even if they are 
substantiated, the scope of their potential impact is limited," he said during 
a ceremony to present the certified election results to Herzog.

   Sohlberg added that it was dangerous to cast doubt on the results and said 
they are legally binding.

   Public trust in the electoral process is "easy to destroy, yet very 
difficult to repair," he warned.

   What comes next for Herzog 

   In the Oct. 27 vote, neither Netanyahu's bloc nor the bloc of allies of his 
chief rival, opposition leader Gadi Eisenkot, secured a parliamentary majority 
needed to form a new government, raising the possibility of an alliance between 
the two rivals or an alliance between Eisenkot and some of the Arab-led parties.

   Israel's president is now expected to begin a series of sit-downs with 
political parties. The meetings are expected to unfold over the next several 
days.

   Herzog is then to choose the candidate -- most likely Netanyahu or Eisenkot 
-- who he believes is most likely to be able to form a coalition government, 
setting the stage for weeks of negotiations.

   If neither man can put together a government, the country would hold a new 
election early next year.

   Israeli intel service's request for separate interrogations is rejected 

   The Shin Bet had requested approval from Israel's attorney general on 
Tuesday to interrogate several elected officials as part of the agency's 
separate probe, including the Ra'am party leader Mansour Abbas and other senior 
Arab lawmakers, Israeli media reported.

   The request was sharply rejected.

   "It is not permissible to interrogate citizens or elected officials without 
evidence to justify such action," Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara said.

   The Joint List of Arab parties condemned the request, calling it a "campaign 
of incitement" by Netanyahu and his allies designed to delegitimize the Arab 
vote.

   A far-right ally of Netanyahu, Itamar Ben-Gvir, rejected the committee's 
findings that the elections were valid.

   He called on the Shin Bet, over which he has no jurisdiction, to "arrest all 
the leaders of the Arab political parties" and to interrogate them in "basement 
interrogation cells until these suspicions are fully clarified."

   Herzog said Wednesday that the Shin Bet investigation into possible foreign 
interference should play out. But he cautioned that Arab Israeli voters "must 
not be smeared."

   "I condemn the coarseness and racist expressions that we have heard 
recently," Herzog said.