JERUSALEM (AP) – Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s prospects for victory in Israel’s latest election on Thursday seemed out of reach as the near-full count of votes showed that he and his right-wing allies were failing a parliamentary majority.
With 99.5% of the vote counted, Israel’s election commission showed Netanyahu’s allies as well as those determined to overthrow him without a clear path to government formation. The remaining countless voices were unlikely to change the results.
Tuesday’s vote, Israel’s fourth parliamentary election in two years, was widely seen as a referendum on Netanyahu’s suitability to rule while under impeachment. But neither the pro-Netanyahu camp nor its highly fragmented opponents secured 61 of the required 120 seats in parliament.
Netanyahu and his allies were expected to hold 52 seats, compared to 57 held by his opponents. At the center are two undecided parties: Yamina, a seven-seat nationalist party led by a former Netanyahu lieutenant, and Raam, an Arab Islamist party that won four seats.Neither Naftali Bennett from Yamina nor Mansour Abbas van Raam have committed to either side.
Deep divisions between the different parties will make it difficult for either side to get a majority.
Arab parties have never joined a government coalition, and for nationalist parties such an alliance is anathema. Bezalel Smotrich, a Netanyahu ally and head of the far-right religious Zionist party, said Thursday that “there will be no right-wing government with Abbas’s support. Period. Not on my watch. ”
Gideon Saar, a defector of Netanyahu’s Likud who now heads a six-seat party committed to ousting him, said: “It is clear that Netanyahu does not have a majority to form a government under his leadership. Action must be taken now to realize the possibility of forming a government for change. “
The Likud, who won the most seats of all parties, fired back, saying such a block would be anti-democratic. It likened Netanyahu’s opponents to clerical leadership in Israel’s nemesis Iran, which examines candidates for senior positions.
Yohanan Plesner, president of the Israel Democracy Institute, said the stalemate is Israel’s “worst political crisis in decades.”
“It is clear that our political system is finding it very difficult to reach a decisive outcome,” said Plesner. He added that inherent weaknesses in Israel’s electoral system are exacerbated by “the Netanyahu factor”: a popular prime minister struggling to stay in power while being indicted. “Israelis are divided in the middle on this question.”
Several of Netanyahu’s opponents have begun to discuss bringing forward a bill to disqualify an accused politician from forming a government, a measure aimed at banning the long-serving prime minister from office. A similar bill was introduced after the March 2020 elections, but was never passed.
Netanyahu is on trial for fraud, breach of trust and bribes in three cases. He has denied any wrongdoing and dismissed the charges as a witch hunt by biased law enforcement and media.
Despite the charges against him, Netanyahu’s Likud party received about a quarter of the vote, making it the largest party in parliament. In all, 13 parties received enough votes to join the Knesset – the most since the 2003 elections – representing a variety of ultra-Orthodox, Arab, secular, nationalist and liberal factions.
A final vote count is expected to be completed by Friday.