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Netanyahu Within Range of Forming Government on Third Try

Netanyahu Within Striking Distance of Forming Govt: Exit Polls

(Bloomberg) -- Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is within striking distance of forming Israel’s next government, exit polls showed, an outcome that bodes well for his efforts to stay out of court but less so for the prospects of Israeli-Palestinian peace.

Recently indicted in three graft cases, Netanyahu had gambled on repeat elections to win a majority in parliament and possibly keep himself out of jail. In the third election in less than a year, the strategy finally may have paid off.

Exit polls released by three television stations showed Netanyahu’s Likud party and its religious and nationalist allies eclipsing the opposing camp led by former military chief Benny Gantz. Public opinion polls had suggested that Netanyahu’s prospects improved in the final stretch ahead of Monday’s race, and Likud appears to have won as many as 37 seats in parliament, five more than it did in the September vote. Gantz’s Blue and White bloc appeared roughly steady around 33 seats.

With Israel’s political landscape so fragmented, it’s camps, not individual parties, that ultimately count. According to the exit polls, Netanyahu’s alliance captured 59 of parliament’s 120 seats, while Gantz’s opposing camp won 54 or 55. Former Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman’s six to eight seats could allow Gantz to pull even, but any government Blue and White formed would have to rest on the support of the Joint List of Arab parties, something both factions have ruled out.

Netanyahu Within Range of Forming Government on Third Try

Netanyahu is close to victory after plunging his country into a yearlong political crisis while he maneuvered to stay in power and postpone his trial.

“It’s a victory against all odds,” he told jubilant supporters cheering and waving flags of the country and of the premier’s Likud party. Some supporters chanted, “Mandelblit go home,” a reference to Attorney General Avihai Mandelblit, who indicted the prime minister in November.

Trial Due

Channel 12 reported that Netanyahu has already reached out to potential partners, who have agreed to join him in government. Channel 13 reported that Netanyahu’s lawyers will ask to delay the start of his trial from March 17.

“He’s been hinting that there’s a couple of Blue and White members who will join his government,” said Simon Davies, a Tel Aviv-based pollster at Number 10 Strategies. “It looks pretty likely that he’ll form a government.”

The exit polls were met with silence at Blue and White headquarters. The mood turned a bit more upbeat when Gantz addressed supporters.

“These were not the results we expected,” he said, while urging his followers “not to be broken.”

“I vow, and we vow, to continue to put the State of Israel above all, because this is not about us, it’s about our country,” Gantz said, promising to do whatever possible to advance peacemaking with Israel’s neighbors.

Late Surge

Netanyahu had consistently trailed Gantz in polls throughout the campaign until the last leg, when the discourse turned nastier and more personal. The prime minister insinuated the former military chief was unstable, and his campaign was hurt by a leaked tape of a Gantz adviser calling his boss a potential “danger” to Israel. A close Netanyahu aide was heard in a leaked recording saying “hate is what unites” the right-wing camp, a comment Netanyahu called “unacceptable.”

After official results are in later this week, President Reuven Rivlin will begin consultations with the various parties that made it into parliament to see who they recommend be given the first chance to form a governing coalition.

If borne out in the final tally, the results would take Israel back to where it was in May 2019, when Netanyahu could have formed a tenuous, 60-seat government after the April ballot, but instead disbanded parliament and engineered the September re-vote seeking a more stable mandate. That re-vote delivered another inconclusive result.

The political uncertainty has spooled out across a year in which Israel has confronted Iran-backed militants in the Gaza Strip, Lebanon and Syria. Decisive action has been put off on many fronts, and while the economy has been robust, risks are piling up.

A narrow government of about 60 seats would set the stage for a potentially rocky term where Netanyahu would have to navigate his legal woes, confrontations with Iran and its proxies, and the Trump administration’s proposal for Middle East peace. That blueprint heavily favors Israel, which would be allowed to annex chunks of West Bank territory over the objections of the Palestinians, who want the territory for their hoped-for state and have rejected the Trump plan.

But the plan’s call for Palestinian statehood -- no matter how limited -- will anger some of Netanyahu’s nationalist allies.

Palestinians were upset by the apparent outcome.

“It is obvious that settlement, occupation and apartheid have won the Israeli elections,” Saeb Erekat, secretary-general of the Palestine Liberation Organization, said on Twitter. “Netanyahu’s campaign was about the continuation of the occupation and conflict. Which will force the people of the region to live by the sword: continuation of violence, extremism and chaos.”

Fawzi Barhoum, a spokesman for the Palestinian Hamas group that controls the Gaza Strip, said “the identity of any upcoming Israeli government will not change the nature of the conflict with this occupier,” which must be defeated.

While Gantz shares many of Netanyahu’s views on security, Palestinians -- despairing of the prospect of another Netanyahu term -- had said they were willing to give the general a chance.

Netanyahu has been anxious to hold on to power in hopes of winning a reprieve from trial on bribery and fraud charges. The prime minister has been weakened by what he says are baseless graft allegations cooked up by left-wing opponents. A fifth term would give him the opportunity to try to push through legislation shielding an incumbent leader from prosecution.

Netanyahu is accused of illicitly accepting about $290,000 in gifts over a decade from wealthy friends, and scheming to win sympathetic press coverage by shaping rules to benefit media moguls. The prime minister and his backers say he’s the victim of a politically motivated witch-hunt by opponents who deplore his nationalist agenda. He’s the first sitting Israeli leader to face criminal charges.

“Israelis voiced their support for the man they perceive to have brought them security and prosperity,” said Yohanan Plesner, president of the Israel Democracy Institute research center. “At the same time, the country is heading toward constitutional uncertainty. On March 17th the prime minister’s trial will begin and the country will find itself in the unprecedented situation in which the man in charge of institutions of law and order will begin his fight to clear his name in court.”

--With assistance from Alisa Odenheimer, Yaacov Benmeleh, Ivan Levingston, Saud Abu Ramadan and Fadwa Hodali.

To contact the reporter on this story: Amy Teibel in Jerusalem at ateibel@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Benjamin Harvey at bharvey11@bloomberg.net, Michael S. Arnold

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