Exit polls published by Israel’s major TV networks show Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing bloc tied with the opposition grouping led by Gadi Eisenkot on 51 seats each, short of the 61 seats needed to form a majority coalition government. Exit polls released earlier on Tuesday evening had Eisenkot winning most seats in the Knesset by a slight margin. Israeli exit polls are often revised after publication and are notoriously imprecise, with the final count often swinging by several seats.
The Palestinian parties are projected to dramatically increase their representation in the Knesset , with predictions they could win as many as 18 seats , up from 10. Experts have said that if Eisenkot falls short of a majority, as the exit polls suggest, he would be obliged to sit down to talk to the Palestinian groupings, the Joint List and Ra’am, to try to form a government – which could take weeks. It is also possible that Eisenkot could try to govern as a minority government, with informal vote-by-vote agreements that would keep the new coalition afloat.
Netanyahu took the stage at a post-election rally in Jerusalem just after 3am, telling his supporters official results will show that “Likud is the largest party in Israel”. He told his supporters that the country must “establish a strong, right-wing national government” – adding that a government that relies on the support of Palestinian parties must not be formed.
Eisenkot told cheering supporters in Tel Aviv that the “Israeli public has voted against Netanyahu’s service as Israel’s prime minister … a worthy leader would have accepted the people’s non-confidence and announced today his retirement from politics.” In his speech, he also warned Netanyahu not to “use Israel’s security” for political ends, playing on fears that the prime minister could use this period of uncertainty to launch a new attack on Iran.
The exit polls were released after a last-ditch effort by Netanyahu and several other parties to keep polling stations open beyond their 10pm deadline was rejected by the Central Elections Committee. The prime minister suggested publicly that efforts were being made by the “left and Arabs” to steal the election, a claim rejected by the committee, which said it had seen no evidence of systematic tampering.
