Former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his far-right and religious allies won a majority of seats in last Tuesday’s legislative elections in Israel, the Election Commission announced Thursday.
With the eyes of the world on Brazil’s presidential runoff, very few noticed the elections in Israel, where the right-wing bloc won 64 seats out of 120 in Parliament, divided between Netanyahu’s Likud (32), the ultra-Orthodox parties ( 18) and an alliance of far-right forces (14) in what was the fifth vote in four years. Now former Prime Minister Yair Lapid’s centrist bloc won 51 seats.
Lapid accepted his defeat in the legislative elections and congratulated Benjamin Netanyahu on his victory, said a statement from the office of the head of government. According to the document, Lapid has already instructed the cabinet to start preparing for a transition of power.
“The State of Israel is above any political consideration. I wish Netanyahu success for the good of the people and the State of Israel,” the outgoing prime minister said.
Lapid was interim head of government for four months and decided to announce the acceptance of electoral defeat after the vote count, almost 100%, showed that Netanyahu secured the parliamentary majority.
This outcome can end the political stalemate that has paralyzed Israel for the past three and a half years. But the new government’s agenda is expected to include overhauling the country’s legal system and taking a hard line against Palestinians. It promises to further polarize a deeply divided nation and risks antagonizing Israel’s closest allies abroad.
Israel held its fifth election since 2019 on Tuesday. The contest, like the previous four, was widely seen as a referendum on Netanyahu’s fitness to rule as he and his wife face corruption charges. While previous elections ended in a deadlock, Netanyahu ran a disciplined campaign that gave him an edge over a divided and disorganized opposition.
The choice largely focused on the values that should define the state: Jewish or democratic. In the end, voters favored Jewish identity.
Netanyahu’s main governing partner is expected to be religious Zionism, a far-right party whose lead candidate, Itamar Ben-Gvir, has built a career in confrontations with Palestinians and espouses anti-Arab views once confined. largely to an extremist fringe.
Ben-Gvir says he wants to end Palestinian autonomy in parts of the occupied West Bank and maintain Israel’s occupation of Palestinians, now in its 56th year, indefinitely. Until recently, he hung a photo in his home of a Jewish militant who killed 29 Palestinian worshipers in a West Bank mosque shooting.
In addition, he has called Arab lawmakers “terrorists” and called for their deportation. The far-right lawmaker, who recently brandished a gun while visiting a Palestinian neighborhood in east Jerusalem, aspires to be in charge of the police force.
Party leader Bezalel Smotrich, another West Bank settler who has made anti-Arab comments, has his sights set on the Defense Ministry. That would make him the overseer of Israel’s military and military occupation of the West Bank.
Party officials favor aggressive settlement building in the West Bank, something condemned for decades by the United Nations and the European Union among others.
These positions have threatened to antagonize overwhelmingly liberal Jewish Americans and put Israel’s next government on a collision course with the Biden administration.
The White House said Thursday that it looked forward to working with Israel on “our shared histories and values.”
But in a separate comment, State Department spokesman Ned Price said the United States expects Israel “to continue to share the values of an open and democratic society, including tolerance and respect for all in civil society, in particular by minority groups.
He also reiterated his support for a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians, an idea with little or no support in the incoming government.
