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Benjamin Netanyahu has quickly claimed “a huge victory” for his Likud party in Israel’s unprecedented fourth election in two years — but exit polls suggest he won’t have enough seats in parliament form a ruling coalition.
Israel’s longest-serving premier thanked voters, saying: “You gave a huge win to the right and Likud under my leadership. Likud is the biggest party by far. It’s clear most Israelis are right-wing, and want a strong, stable right-wing government.”
However, predictions published after voting finished on Tuesday night suggest the prime minister and his religious and nationalist allies will ultimately fell short of a parliamentary majority, meaning there is no clear winner in the tight race.
Exit polls on Channel 11, 12 and 13 show Likud winning between 31 and 33 seats out of 120 in the Knesset — nearly double the number of his main contender, the centrist Yesh Atid party, which came in second.
Although that places Israel’s longest-serving prime minister in a strong position to be tasked with forming the next government, overall his bloc has not secured enough to easily build a ruling majority.
Exit polls have been notoriously inaccurate in Israel in the past, but if they prove to correct the predictions raise the spectre of months of political wrangling and even the possibility of a fifth election.
No party in Israel’s history has every secured an outright majority, and so instead the faction with the most seats is given the mandate to try to build a coalition with allies. It means in a close contest like this one, exit polls and even election night results are only the starting point of frantic backroom talks to determine who ultimately takes power.
All three channels predicted that Mr Netanyahu could secure a knife-edge one-seat majority if he is able to woe right-wing party Yamina, which is headed up by former defence minister Naftali Bennett. The polls indicate with Yamina’s predicted seven to eight seats on his side, Mr Netanyahu could push his bloc up to 61 seats.
Mr Bennett, who has had a fraught relationship with Mr Netanyahu as an intermittent political partner, remained coy.
When asked whether he would forge a coalition with the prime minister, the “kingmaker” replied, “I shall do only what is good for the State of Israel.”
Israeli media reported that Mr Netanyahu called Bennett without further elaborating.
Without Yamina, the pro-Netanayhau bloc trails behind the anti-Netanyahu coalition of unlikely political bedfellows: left-wing, centre and rightist factions, nominally headed by Yesh Atid chairman Yair Lapid. All three main polls give the anti-Netanyahu bloc 59 of the seats, just two short of a majority. There will be huge pressure for any side to form a government after three previous inconclusive votes. Mr Netanyahu’s popularity has wavered as he campaigned under the shadow of a trial on corruption charges and the pandemic which his critics say he poorly handled.
Israel’s five-term premier was keen to point out the success of Israel’s vaccine roll out on the campaign trail. On Tuesday the authorities created hundreds of additional mobile Covid-19 polling booths for those infected while nurses took in ballot boxes to those who were too sick to get up form their hospital beds.
While many at the various party headquarters were subdued because of coronavirus restrictions, celebrations erupted in the party headquarters of the Joint List, a coalition of Arab majority parties.
A women votes for Israel’s parliamentary election at a special drive-in polling station for people who are in quarantine for coronavirus in Ramat Gan
(AP)
This is despite the bad news: the Joint List is expected to take just nine of the seats, a considerable drop from the 15 they secured in the last election.
The drop may in part be due to the creation of a new party Ra’am, which is headed by Mansour Abbas and broke from the Joint List. But according to the polls, Ra’am did not secure enough of the 3.25 percent of the votes required to push them over the threshold into the parliament.
Join List chief Ayman Odeh told Channel 13 tonight: “I’m not happy that Mansour Abbas has not passed – I am broken by the split between us.” At the same time, Mansour Abbas insisted: “By the morning we will pass the blocking percentage.”
Another loss was for centrist party Blue and White, which is headed up by the country’s incumbent defence minister Benny Gantz. In the last string of Blue and White had consistently swept more than 30 of the seats before ultimately forming an unpopular unity government with Mr Netanyahu which collapsed in December. According to the exit polls the party’s power in the Knesset had shrunk to around eight.
Gantz, who had signed up to a prime ministership rotation deal with Mr Netanayhu, struck a sombre note. “Starting tomorrow, I’ll do my best to unite the pro-change block,” he said of the alliance of Mr Netanyahu’s opponents. “And if we are forced to face a fifth round of elections, I will vigilantly protect our democracy, rule of law and security. Because Israel comes first.”
At the polling stations across the country, the unifying plea from the voters was the end of the nightmare cycle of elections. “This election will, I hope, be the last for 4 years,” said Esti, 60 who was leaning towards voting for Netanyahu in Jerusalem although she was disillusioned by his corruption trial.
“I wish everyone would come together and put an end to all of this …..it’s very hard on us citizens.”
Shahin Nasser, an Arab citizen of Israel in Haifa said people are very concerned by the staggering multibillion shekel costs of running four extraordinary consecutive elections in just a few years.
“I’m worried about the toll it will have on us the people. We are already paying a lot of taxes, and the economic situation isn’t improving as promised, given the pandemic effects are still felt,” he told The Independent. “Netanyahu keeps saying that we are in the best economic situation of all nations of the world, but he lies, and people know it. They are struggling to survive.”
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