Netanyahu wins decisively in Israel
JERUSALEM — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s conservative Likud Party won a decisive victory in Israel’s elections, according to results tallied Wednesday, putting him on track to forming a rightist governing coalition and an unprecedented fourth term in office.
With 99 percent of the votes counted, Likud had 30 parliamentary seats as compared with 24 for the center-left Zionist Union led by Netanyahu’s challenger, Isaac Herzog. An alliance of Arab parties won 14 seats, making it the third largest bloc in the 120-seat
legislature.
Netanyahu’s triumph, following a bruising campaign in which he rebounded from a deficit in the polls, threatened to deepen a rift in relations with the Obama administration and the impasse in peace efforts with the Palestinians.
In a frantic blitz in the final days of the race, Netanyahu had veered to the right, renouncing his acceptance of a two-state solution to the conflict with the Palestinians, lashing out at what he called a global effort to topple him, and warning that the political left was about to seize power with the help of Israeli Arabs.
His effort appeared to have drawn voters drifting to other rightist parties, boosting Likud at the expense of those factions, whose seat tallies dropped.
Televised exit polls late Tuesday had shown the two major parties in a virtual tie, and pre
election sur- veys had given the edge to Zionist Union.
The near-final results gave Netanyahu the ability to form a majority coalition in parliament with rightist and ultra-Orthodox parties who have been his traditional allies, along with a new center-right party, Kulanu, led by Moshe Kahlon.
A former Likud member and Cabinet minister who campaigned on pocketbook issues such as affordable housing and reducing the cost of living, Kahlon said Wednesday that he had already spoken with Netanyahu and would hold formal coalition talks on joining the next government.
With 10 parliamentary seats, Kahlon’s support is essential for Netanyahu to obtain a majority in the legislature.
Herzog, the Labor Party leader who formed the Zionist Union alliance with Tzipi Livni, who heads a small centrist party,
conceded defeat Wednesday, saying that voters had “pronounced our verdict.”
“We will continue to serve the people in any way,” he added, indicating that he was headed to the opposition.
Hours earlier Netanyahu celebrated victory before cheering supporters, promising to tackle the cost-ofliving and housing issues that had preoccupied many Israeli voters. He said he had contacted potential allies to join him in “forming a government in Israel without delay.”
After consultations with parliamentary factions that could take several days, President Reuven Rivlin is expected to formally tap Netanyahu to form the next government, a process Netanyahu said he wants to complete in two to three weeks.
Along with Kahlon’s faction, the coalition is expected to include the pro-settlement Jewish Home party, which dropped to eight seats after losing voters to Likud; Yisrael Beiteinu, the party led by the ultra-nationalist foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, which fell to six seats, and two ultra-Orthodox parties, Shas, with seven seats, and United Torah Judaism with six.
Herzog will likely be joined in the opposition by Yesh Atid, a centrist faction focused on socio-economic issues that dropped to 11 seats from the 19 it won as a new party in previous elections in 2013.
The party leader, Yair Lapid, was fired by Netanyahu from his post as finance minister after weeks of squabbling in a move that precipitated Tuesday’s election.
The leftist Meretz party, which barely cleared the four-seat threshold for entry into parliament, will also be in the opposition.
Commentators called Netanyahu’s final push to win back voters a go-for-broke scare tactic that tarred Israel’s Arab minority and risked further alienating foreign governments with an unabashed rejection of any concessions to the Palestinians.
On voting day Netanyahu warned supporters that Israeli Arabs were “going in droves to the polls” in buses provided by left-wing groups, and that the “rule of the right is in danger.” His comments were denounced as racist by liberal politicians.
“His strategy was to say, ‘I’m also radical right-wing, I’m not going to give the Palestinians a state and I hate Arabs too’ ” said Gadi Wolfsfeld, an expert on political communication at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya. “He appealed to his right-wing base and it worked. It was scorched earth. Now he’ll tell the Europeans he didn’t mean it, and the United States that he wasn’t serious.”