JERUSALEM, Oct. 29 -- Anxious Israelis watched election results near completion on Wednesday, as no clear winner emerged and weeks of negotiating could lie ahead for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and an array of opposition parties trying to unseat him. Arab-led parties made a historic showing, but it's not clear if the other opponents of Netanyahu's far-Right government would form a coalition with them for a majority of seats in parliament. Issues around the Palestinians and their descendants remain incredibly sensitive in Israel. Netanyahu seeks to remain the country's longest-serving prime minister. In defiant comments after the vote - which showed his Likud party losing ground since the 2022 election - he dismissed the idea of partnering with Arab parties as treasonous. On Wednesday, Netanyahu warned against a "dangerous government" that might include them. He won't work with the Arab-led parties, whose constituents make up 20% of Israel's population, and they have also ruled out any partnership with him. His top challenger, centrist former military chief Gadi Eisenkot, has left the door open to partnering with Arab parties under certain conditions, including their recognition of Israel as a Jewish state and of Hamas as an extremist group. Israeli voters choose parties, not individuals. With 85% of votes counted, Netanyahu's Likud party has 20.8% and Eisenkot's Yashar party has 16.1%. Arab-led parties had 14.9%. Emerging results indicated that neither Netanyahu's nor Eisenkot's coalition blocs would reach the 61 seats needed for a majority in parliament, the 120-seat Knesset. Local media projected 53 seats for Likud and allied parties, 48 for Yashar and allied parties and 19 for Arab-led parties. Counting absentee ballots will last until Thursday evening, said Elad Naveh, control manager at the Central Elections Committee. There are an estimated half-million of them from military personnel and diplomats. Nearly 78% of eligible voters turned out, the highest since 1999. The most obvious path to a parliamentary majority could involve Eisenkot partnering with Arab-led parties - which have 14.9% of the votes counted - but that's politically challenging. Confronted with Arab parties' strong election showing, Israelis renewed a debate about identity. "We have no future here if we do not stop being afraid," said Yair Golan, whose Democrats party supports bringing Arab-led parties into a coalition. "We must no longer accept Netanyahu's racist division between Jewish votes and Arab votes." Israel's Arab citizens are descendants of Palestinians who remained in the state after its creation in 1948. They often face discrimination and are viewed with wariness because of their solidarity with the Palestinian cause. That suspicion intensified after October 7, even though Arab citizens were also among those killed and abducted. The mood was joyful overnight at the headquarters of the United Arab List, the lone Arab party to ever join a governing coalition, briefly, in 2021. "We are here, we are not on the sidelines," party leader Mansour Abbas declared. Some Israelis found that an unusual, if not uncomfortable, prospect. "We are little by little coming to a situation where we have to face reality," said Hanna Doukhan, a voter in Tel Aviv. "I don't see a possibility to form a government without the Arabs." Others were hopeful. "This would open the door to repairing our society" while preserving Israel as the national home of the Jewish people, said Eti Wissotzky-Cohen in Tel Aviv....