Yesterday ALL the media reports had Israeli Prime Minister winning his fifth election race since 2019…..
THAT is NOT the case right now…
As in all the elections ….
Benjamin Netanyahu now must try to cut deals with small political parties to get enough Kanesst seat to form a new government….
Things over there ARE complicated….
Netanyahu has been under indictment for corruption for a while….
Israeli voters are poling leaning to Right away from any peace overtures that their Prime Minister had started with a now gone President Trump’s backing….
New American President Biden was stiffed by the Israeli leader on settlements a decade ago…
Like I said….
It’s complicated….
Former defense minister Naftali Bennett, a Netanyahu rival who hasn’t ruled out bringing his Yamina party into the prime minister’s bloc, was beseeched by pleas from both sides, but he remained mum on his intentions a day after Tuesday’s election.
Netanyahu’s Likud party, in the meantime, pressured other former members who had joined a new right-wing party called New Hope to return to the fold. “It won’t happen,” declared Ze’ev Elkin, one of the targeted New Hope party members, in a radio interview.
The biggest reach may be the suggestion by some Likud members that a partnership with the small Islamist party United Arab List could put Netanyahu’s coalition into the majority and eliminate the need for Israelis to return to the polls for the fifth time since the spring of 2019…..
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….by the time he addressed his supporters after 2 a.m., the early vote count had begun instead to suggest that further deadlock was to come. He called for an end to the stalemate, saying, “We cannot in any way drag the country to a fifth election. We must form a stable government now.” …..
…
At the far right of the political spectrum, a controversial fringe party entered parliament for the first time thanks to an embrace by Netanyahu. The party of Itamar Ben Gvir, whose anti-Arab politics are rooted in the ultranationalist Kahanist movement, won seats in the Knesset as part of the ticket of the right-wing Religious Zionist Party, whose leader describes himself as a “proud homophobe.”
If Netanyahu is able to form a majority with these partners, political observers say, it would be the most conservative in Israel’s history. “Netanyahu will be in the hands of the most extreme elements,” said Plesner….
image….DW
There were no reports that claimed he won based on exit polls.