Netanyahu starts hunt for possible coalition allies after shock win
BENJAMIN NETANYAHU last night began trying to lure Israeli opposition MPS into joining his Right-wing coalition after a surprisingly strong election result saw him fall just short of an overall majority in parliament.
With 90 per cent of the vote counted, the prime minister’s Likud party was on course to win 36 parliamentary seats compared with 32 for Blue & White, the centrist party led by Benny Gantz, a former army general.
Mr Netanyahu and his Right-wing allies looked likely to take a total of 59 seats – just two shy of the number needed for an overall majority.
The outcome was a remarkable comeback for Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, who had been trailing in the polls for much of the campaign, and whose trial on corruption charges is due to begin on March 17.
“It is a victory against all the odds, because we had to face enormous forces,” Mr Netanyahu told Likud delighted supporters at a victory rally in Tel Aviv. “This has been a great victory for the Right-wing camp, and particularly a great victory for us Likudniks.”
There were similar celebrations after the election in April 2019, when the Right-wing bloc won 60 seats, but the prime minister was unable to form a government, and the country had to hold two more elections in the 11 months that followed.
Hours after polls closed, Mr Netanyahu was already at work drawing up strategies on how to get a coalition to 61 seats. There will likely be several weeks of negotiations before any final political deals are announced. Likud officials said one option was to try to win over Right-wing members of Blue & White, an unwieldy centrist coalition.
In an election night speech to dejected supporters, Mr Gantz pledged he would hold his party together and not allow Mr Netanyahu to poach his MPS. The party would stay “strong, united and loyal to our path”. He added: “I realise and share your feelings of disappointment and pain, for this isn’t the result that we wanted to happen.”
Another route for Mr Netanyahu could be to woo Avigdor Lieberman, a maverick secular-nationalist who
‘It is a victory against all the odds, because we had to face enormous forces … and a great victory for us Likudniks’
served as his defence minister before turning against him. However, Mr Lieberman is bitterly opposed to the ultra-orthodox Jewish parties allied with Mr Netanyahu. He said yesterday that he would not join any coalition that included those parties.
Mr Netanyahu may also target Gesher, a small party run by the daughter of a former Likud minister.
But Yariv Levin, a Likud minister, cautioned against complacency. “Anyone who thinks that it will be easy to form a government is wrong,” he said.
In his victory address, Mr Netanyahu
pledged to move ahead with implementing Donald Trump’s Middle East plan which would see Israel annex large swathes of the occupied West Bank. He is likely to wait until his coalition is fully formed, but could push ahead with annexation even during a transitional phase. Saeb Erekat, a senior Palestinian official, said: “Settlement, occupation and apartheid have won the Israeli elections. Netanyahu’s campaign was about the continuation of the occupation and conflict.”