He did it again, big time. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu started his third election campaign of the past year with the odds against him, weighed down by an indictment on three serious corruption charges and facing an opposition party led by generals spoiling for a fight and surging with deadly momentum. Between the first elections, in April 2019, and the second round, in September, Netanyahu lost five Knesset seats for his right-wing/ultra-Orthodox bloc and appeared to be fading into political irrelevance. In recent weeks, however, Netanyahu executed a perfect turnaround, achieving a huge, perhaps unprecedented, personal victory.
With 90% of the votes counted, Netanyahu’s Likud has a four-seat advantage over the opposition Blue and White, although it is unclear whether this will suffice to form a coalition government. TV exit polls and the votes counted give the right-wing/ultra-Orthodox bloc 59 seats, two short of the required 61-seat Knesset majority, out of 120 Knesset seats.
Netanyahu is convinced that unlike the situation in April after the elections, when he failed to form a government despite heading a 60-seat bloc, this time he will succeed in tempting renegades from the center-left bloc onto the victory bandwagon and cull the missing Knesset votes needed to swear in his next government. The other side of the political divide is convinced that this will not happen and is closing ranks to ensure no one jumps ship.
The only logical solution is to revert to a previous proposal, rejected at the time by Blue and White, to form a unity government comprised of the Likud and Blue and White. For that to happen, Blue and White Chair Benny Gantz and his party’s mangled leadership will have to go back on their firm pledge to voters that they are “done doing business” with Netanyahu and will not join a government he leads while standing trial for bribery, fraud and breach of trust. Still, violating that pledge appears, for now, their only logical way to break the persistent logjam that has crippled the country for the past year.
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