Benjamin Netanyahu has thanked the voters of Israel for making his Likud the largest party after the country’s fourth election in two years but
Exit poll projections by the three main Israeli TV networks point increasingly towards a period of renewed political deadlock in the Zionist entity.
The three TV networks published their exit poll projections within a minute of polling stations closing, forecasting a slim majority of 61 seats in the 120-seat parliament for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s preferred right-wing and religious bloc.
But within four hours, as results started to come in, all three channels had revised their forecasts away from the Israeli leader, with two forecasting 60 seats for Netanyahu’s bloc, while a third had it on just 59, the CNN reported.
Likud itself was forecast to win 30 seats by two of the channels, putting it twelve seats ahead of its nearest challenger, centrist Yesh Atid, led by former TV news anchor Yair Lapid.
Addressing Likud supporters in Al-Quds (Jerusalem) at 2:30 a.m. Netanyahu was defiant, saying he would do everything in his power to build a stable right-wing government and prevent the country from being dragged to fifth elections.
“I rule out nobody in the Knesset who believes in these principles,” he said, making a clear appeal to Gideon Saar – who quit Likud at the end of last year to launch his own New Hope party in opposition to Netanyahu – to come back into the fold.
Even though final result projections have been slipping away from Netanyahu, his fractured opponents appear to face an even tougher job to build a workable coalition, according to the CNN.
“On paper, an alliance of seven parties spanning the spectrum from right to left including Arab parties, could find itself with more than 60 seats, but given the history of Israeli politics, where no Arab party has ever sat in government, it is hard to imagine such a coalition being easily formed,” the US news network reported.
Source: CNN
