Jerusalem | Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s political future could depend on the fate of several small parties that are barely clinging to their parliamentary seats, as two exit polls showed his right-wing Likud-led bloc with a slight edge over a former military chief’s alliance.
Netanyahu’s Likud and retired general Benny Gantz’s Blue & White each won about three dozen of parliament’s 120 seats. But together with other right-wing and religious partners, the Netanyahu-led grouping secured a total of 66 seats in one exit poll, and 64 according to another. A third poll showed the blocs tied. Both sides claimed victory ahead of the release of preliminary results.
Complicating the outcome is the relatively large number of parties that are in parliament but won’t necessarily win enough votes to make it into the next legislature. That’s made it difficult to predict how potential coalition governments could shape up.
“There’s no way to know because of the smaller parties,” said independent pollster Mitchell Barak. “All the people who said they weren’t going to sit with Gantz — that’s all off.”
A Likud party spokesman said Netanyahu has already launched coalition talks with heads of other parties, without identifying them.
About 6.3 million people were eligible to vote for the 120-member parliament, or Knesset. Final results will be announced Thursday, and a week later President Reuven Rivlin will assign a party to build the next coalition. That task won’t necessarily go to the party with the most seats, but to the one deemed best able to form an alliance of at least 61 Knesset members. If Netanyahu prevails, he’s poised to become Israel’s longest-serving leader in July, surpassing founding father David Ben-Gurion.
Read the article by Amy Teibel in The Australian Financial Review.