Benjamin Netanyahu leads the count in Israel with 86% of the votes counted

Former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu He seemed to be heading to electoral victory This is Wednesday. With 86% of the votes counted in the general election, he and his far-right allies will achieve a stable majority in parliament.

According to data from the Central Election Commission, which counted about 3.8 million votes in Tuesday’s elections, the right-wing party Likud Netanyahu will be the first force with about 31 seats, and he will have a large majority of 65 seats to return to power with the support of his allies.

The counting is still ongoing and the results are not final. But if the initial indications are correct, it is likely that Israel will have one of its most right-wing governments, buoyed by the strong performance of ultra-nationalism. religious zionist partywhose members use incendiary rhetoric against Arabs and the LGBTQ community.

Preliminary results indicated a continuing shift to the right in the Israeli electorate, further eroding hopes for peace with the Palestinians, and paving the way for a potential conflict with the US government and its supporters there.

Lapid centrist party, What are you going to do?, it would continue as a second force with about 24 seats, but the allied left-wing Meretz formation now only crosses the threshold of 3.25% of the vote for representation. This would subtract 4 seats from the anti-Netanyahu bloc.

The census also showed that Netanyahu would have outdone his critics, who claimed he was unfit to rule while he was Tried for corruption They refused to form a government with him. His colleagues have promised to help him avoid possible conviction.

“We are on the cusp of a very big victory,” Netanyahu, 73, told supporters at a rally in Jerusalem early on Wednesday. “I will establish a national government that will take care of all Israeli citizens without exception“.

Electoral authorities worked through the night, and by early Wednesday morning nearly 80% of the vote had been counted. The vote, like the previous one, was very close, but indications showed that Netanyahu will return as prime minister with a large majority out of the 120 seats in the Israeli parliament.

With Netanyahu and his allies expected to win the more than 61 seats needed to form a government, the protracted political crisis could end even though the nation is as divided as ever.

If Netanyahu’s allies win, the talks to assemble one government coalition Stable may last for weeks.

Netanyahu was Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, ruling for 12 consecutive years and 15 years in total, before he was replaced last year by a diverse, centrist-led coalition. Yair Lapid.

But the group formed by Lapid, which included the first Arab formation in an Israeli government, was affected by internal conflicts and collapsed after just over a year in power. According to opinion polls, these formations will get only 54 seats.

Early on Wednesday, Lapid insisted to his supporters that the election race had not yet been decided.

“Until the last envelope is counted, nothing is finished and nothing is final,” he said.

The best result for tonight was that of the religious Zionist party, far-right MP Ben Gvir, which appeared to be the third most powerful in terms of voting.

On Tuesday, November 1, Israel held its fifth elections in less than four years, seeking to break out of the political paralysis and vicious cycle that has led to one election after another since 2019.

(With information from AP and EFE)

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