Benjamin Netanyahu appears poised to keep his job as Israel’s Prime Minister, declaring victory Wednesday following a bitter campaign
punctuated by his last-minute appeals to right-wing voters.
For weeks, Netanyahu’s Likud party trailed in opinion polls to the Zionist Union alliance that characterized him as a divisive leader not up to the task of making the lives of ordinary Israelis better.
Those polls turned out to be wrong.
Instead, the Likud party grabbed at least 29 of the 120 seats in the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, according to unofficial numbers from the Israeli election committee, based on 99% of the vote. Its leaders will have the first chance at forming a coalition government.
The Zionist Union came in second, with at least 24 seats.
“Against all odds, against all odds, we achieved this huge victory for Likud,” Netanyahu told jubilant supporters not long after the polls closed Tuesday. “We achieved the huge victory for our people. And I am proud, I am proud for the people of Israel that in the moment of truth, knew to make the right decision and to choose the real material things over immaterial things.”
Rather than courting voters in the middle, Netanyahu pivoted more to the right with appeals concerning Israel’s security.
Two weeks ago, he made a controversial speech to the U.S. Congress warning of any deal with Iran on its nuclear program. Then, a few days ago, he declared there would be no Palestinian state so long as he’s Prime Minister — reversing an earlier position and putting him at odds again with the Obama administration’s support for a two-state solution.
On Tuesday, he released a video on Facebook claiming leftists were bringing “huge amounts” of Arabs by bus to vote against Likud. Arabs make up about 20% of Israel’s population.
“The right regime is in danger,” Netanyahu said. “We have an urgent wake-up call. Bring your friends, bring your family, vote for Likud.”
Those appeals appear “to have energized that right-wing base,” according to CNN’s Elise Labott.
Netanyahu still has to form a new government, a process that President Reuven Rivlin said he hopes will start Sunday. If the Likud leader does so — as expected — it will leave Israel not much different than it was before the election, with a conservative Netanyahu still the dominant force facing a dug-in opposition.
