Politics and Knesset
With some 95 percent of the votes counted, right-wing bloc holds a large lead over the left • New Right Moshe Feiglin’s Zehut Party fails to pass minimum threshold • Arab parties win nine total seats, fewer than in 20th Knesset • Haredi parties hold strong.
According to one poll, the New Right was hovering between life and death, barely crossing the minimum electoral threshold of four seats.
“This is an unimaginable achievement,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told jubilant supporters at Likud Party headquarters in Tel Aviv in the early hours of Wednesday morning.
“This is a historic day. More than a million people have chosen hope,” Blue and White Party leader Benny Gantz tells party supporters in Tel Aviv.
Blue and White Party Knesset member Boaz Toporovsky said “all options are on the table” when it comes to the next government, including a unity government with Likud. “We shouldn’t play this game right now. We should celebrate.”
“We have to save the right. There’s only a few more hours. Go out and vote, otherwise we get a leftist government,” tweeted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Likud.
“I’m hoping that people get out to there and vote, the numbers are not looking in our favor,” said Rachel Broyde, the head of Anglo campaign for the Likud Party.
Sources in Benny Gantz’s party welcome a decision by Israel’s Central Elections Committee to count ballots that had been vandalized; accuses Netanyahu of trying to manipulate elections.
“Jewish members of the Labour Party have come together in anger and frustration to make it clear to the leadership that enough really must be enough,” said Labour member Ruth Smeeth.
He seems worried, even stressed—a description he prefers for his enemies. One night last week, the Israeli prime minister was sitting with his campaign advisers, including expert pollsters, and after an in-depth review of the polls, they concluded that the problem on the right was insouciance.
“I am saying, not in an anonymous recording but openly and in my voice: I won’t sit with Netanyahu in the government!” declared Blue and White Party leader Benny Gantz.
In an 8-1 vote, the Supreme Court voted in favor of a petition to disqualify him as a candidate due to anti-Arab beliefs and incitement.
