Benjamin Netanyahu has won a decisive victory in the country’s fifth election in under four years, pulling off a political comeback by successfully uniting his right-wing and religious nationalist bloc.
Mr Netanyahu rode a wave of ultranationalist sentiment a little over a year after violence erupted between Arabs and Jews in the streets of Israeli cities. Mr Netanyahu rallied his base in daily campaign appearances across the country, often from the back of a delivery truck outfitted as a mobile campaign stage called the Bibi-bus, reinforcing his message that his opponents were a threat to the safety of Jewish Israelis.
Mr Netanyahu thanked his supporters in a statement Thursday night. “Together, we brought about a huge victory for the State of Israel,” he said.
Yair Lapid, the centrist caretaker prime minister who took over after the previous government collapsed in the summer, couldn’t unite a group of centrist, left-wing and Arab parties, two of which didn’t win enough votes to pass the electoral threshold required to sit in parliament.
Mr Lapid conceded Thursday night to Mr Netanyahu. “I wish Netanyahu success, for the sake of the people of Israel and the State of Israel,” he said in a statement.
Mr Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud party won 32 seats and his right-wing religious and nationalist bloc in total won 64 in the 120-seat parliament, or Knesset, according to Israel’s Central Elections Committee.
Read the article by Shayndi Raice in The Australian.