Jubilee Post News & Views
Special Desk
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu might not be able to secure majority to form the new government, the election exit polls have suggested.
Netanyahu’s Likud party and its allies are at least seven seats short of the 61 threshold in the 120-seat parliament, say the exit polls. Parties opposed to the prime minister staying in office look set to win 60.
Netanyahu who is Israel’s longest-serving leader has vowed to form a right-wing government led by his Likud party. A smaller right-wing party, Yamina, led by former Netanyahu loyalist Naftali Bennett, is forecast to win seven seats, but has not explicitly declared which side it will support and this is where the big question of forming a new government remains for Netanyahu.
Bennett in a statement after the exit polls were released has said, he will do only what is good for Israel. He added that he had told Netanyahu that Yamina would await the final results before deciding on its next steps.
Netanyahu thanked his supporters in a tweet late on Tuesday night. “You gave a huge win to the right and Likud under my leadership. Likud is the biggest party by far.”
Meanwhile the main opposition leader Yair Lapid, whose centrist Yesh Atid party is projected to win between 16 and 18 seats in the Knesset, said he was proud of his party’s achievement. Just over 67.2% of those eligible cast their ballots in the election, which was widely seen as a referendum on Netanyahu’s leadership.
In more than 14 years as prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu has become both Israel’s longest-serving leader and the first to face criminal prosecution while in office.
Lauded by his supporters as a magician for his knack of winning elections, the leader of Israel’s right-wing Likud party is fighting for his political survival as he prepares to stand trial on corruption charges.
He has taken a hard line towards the Palestinians, putting security concerns at the top of any discussion of peace, and long warned of danger from Iran. The 71-year-old prime minister has been in power continuously since 2009, having served an earlier three-year term in the late 1990s.
