Israeli election yields no clear winner

The Boston Globe

TEL AVIV, Israel — After a bruising campaign focused on his failings, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel seemed to emerge from Tuesday’s elections in the best position to form a new government, though he offended many voters and alienated allies in the process.

While the results were still incomplete, exit polls and partial returns suggested that Netanyahu’s Likud Party was likely to claim 27 or 28 of the 120 seats in Parliament, and his chief rival, the center-left Zionist Union alliance, to take 26 or 27.

Netanyahu and his allies seized on the early numbers to create an aura of inevitability, celebrating with singing and dancing. While his opponents vowed a fight, Israeli political analysts agreed that he had the advantage, with more votes having gone to the right-leaning parties likely to support him.

It was a turnabout from the last pre-election polls published Friday, which showed the Zionist Union, led by Isaac Herzog, with a four- or five-seat lead and building momentum. To bridge the gap, Netanyahu embarked on a last-minute scorched-earth campaign, promising that no Palestinian state would be established as long as he remained in office and insulting Arab citizens.

Netanyahu, who served as prime minister for three years in the 1990s and returned to office in 2009, exulted in what he called “a huge victory” and said he had spoken to the heads of all the parties “in the national camp” and urged them to help him form a government “without any further ado.

In Israel’s history, no single party has ever won an outright majority, meaning governments are formed through coalitions of parties.

“I am proud of the Israeli people, that in the moment of truth knew how to separate between what’s important or what’s not and to stand up for what’s important,” he told an exuberant crowd early Wednesday morning at Likud’s election party at the Tel Aviv Fairgrounds. “For the most important thing for all of us, which is real security, social economy and strong leadership.”

But it remained to be seen how his divisive — some said racist — campaign tactics would affect his ability to govern a fractured Israel.

Herzog also celebrated what he called “an incredible achievement,” noting that his Labor Party had not won as many seats since 1992. He said he had formed a negotiating team in hopes of forming “a real social government in Israel” that “aspires to peace with our neighbors.”

“The public wants a change,” he said at an election-night party in Tel Aviv. “We will do everything in our power — given the reality — to reach this. In any case, I can tell you that there will be no decisions tonight.”

If the exit polls hold up, Netanyahu may be able to form a narrow coalition of nationalist and religious parties free of the ideological divisions that stymied his last government. That was what he intended when he called early elections in December. But such a coalition, with a slim parliamentary majority, might not last long.

In the coming days, President Reuven Rivlin will poll party leaders to see whom they prefer as prime minister and then charge Netanyahu or Herzog with trying to stitch together a coalition, though Rivlin said Tuesday night that he would suggest they join forces instead.

“I am convinced that only a unity government can prevent the rapid disintegration of Israel’s democracy and new elections in the near future,” he told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.

Both camps rejected that option publicly, saying the gaps between their world views was too large. Netanyahu and Herzog started working the phones immediately after the polls closed, calling party heads to begin the horse-trading and deal-making in hopes of lining up a majority of lawmakers behind them.

The biggest prize may be Moshe Kahlon, a popular former Likud minister who broke away — in part out of frustration with Netanyahu — to form Kulanu, which focused on pocketbook issues. Kahlon leans to the right but has issues with the prime minister, and said Tuesday night that he would not reveal his recommendation until the final results were tallied.

Kulanu — Hebrew for “All of Us” — is likely to win nine or 10 seats, according to the exit polls, enough to put either side’s basic ideological alliance over the magic number of 61 if they also win the backing of two ultra-Orthodox parties, which appear to have a total of 14.

“The clearest political outcome is that Kahlon is going to be the kingmaker, and it really depends on how he is going to play his cards,” said Yohanan Plesner, president of the Israel Democracy Institute. “It very much depends on Kahlon.”

Silvan Shalom, a Likud minister, told reporters that the prime minister would reach out first to Naftali Bennett of the Jewish Home party and to Avigdor Lieberman of Yisrael Beiteinu, two archconservatives, and “of course Moshe Kahlon,” predicting a coalition “within the next few days” of 63 or 64 seats.

“Israel said today a very clear ‘yes’ to Prime Minister Netanyahu and to the Likud to continue leading the state of Israel,” Shalom said. “We’ll do it with our allies. We’ll have a strong coalition that is able to deal with all the important issues.”

The Zionist Union said, essentially, not so fast.

“Both parties have the same number of mandates, so there is no reason to celebrate on the Likud side,” said Nachman Shai, a senior lawmaker from the Labor Party, which joined with the smaller Hatnua to form the new slate. “They’re trying to cash the check and create a certain atmosphere of victory. We’ll do the same.”

Shai said his team could still form a coalition — though he did not specify how — and advised the public to wait and see. Another Zionist Camp candidate, Shelly Yacimovich, said on Israeli television: “What I see is a tie; the game isn’t over.”

The murky results led to a murky reaction from the White House, where a spokesman said that President Barack Obama “remains committed to working very closely with the winner of the ongoing elections to cement and further deepen the strong relationship between the United States and Israel, and the president is confident that he can do that with whomever the Israeli people choose.”

If the exit polls are correct, the Joint List of Arab parties would be the third-largest parliamentary faction, with 13 seats, up from 11 currently held by its four component parts. The unity seems to have lifted turnout among Arab voters to its highest level since 1969, said the list’s leader, Ayman Odeh. Arab parties have never joined an Israeli coalition, but Odeh has indicated that he would try to help Herzog in other ways in hopes of ending Netanyahu’s tenure.

Yesh Atid, a centrist party that won a surprising 19 seats in the 2013 election, its first, earned 11 or 12 this time, according to the exit polls. The Jewish Home, hurt by Netanyahu’s swing to the right, is likely to end up with eight or nine, down from its current 12. The left-wing Meretz and ultranationalist Yisrael Beiteinu each polled five.

A new ultra-Orthodox faction apparently failed to pass the raised electoral threshold for entering Parliament, which means its votes will be discarded, costing the right-wing bloc.

Turnout was near 72 percent, 4 percentage points higher than in 2013, which analysts attributed to the surprisingly close contest between Likud and Zionist Union.

“For the first time in many years, we see a serious strengthening in the two major parties,” said Yehuda Ben Meir of the Institute for National Security Studies. “Both parties are higher up at the expense of the smaller parties, which is good for stability, and it’s a move to the center. The larger parties are always more to the center than the satellite parties.”

But Plesner of the Democracy Institute said the uncertain results showed the need for electoral reform because Israel’s “system is so fragmented, so unstable, so difficult to govern.”

Tuesday’s balloting came just 26 months after Israel’s last election, but the dynamic was entirely different. In 2013, there was no serious challenge to Netanyahu. That changed this time, when Herzog teamed up with Tzipi Livni to form the Zionist Union, an effort to reclaim the state’s founding pioneer philosophy from a right-wing that increasingly defined it in opposition to Palestinian aspirations.

They promised to stop construction in isolated Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank; to try to renew negotiations with the Palestinians; and to restore relations Netanyahu had frayed with the White House. Mostly, though, they — along with Yesh Atid and Kulanu — hammered the prime minister on kitchen-table concerns like the high cost of housing and food.

Netanyahu talked mainly about the threats of an Iranian nuclear weapon and Islamic terrorism, addressing economics only in the final days. That was also when he made a sharp turn to the right, backing away from his 2009 endorsement of a two-state solution to the Palestinian conflict, and sounding an alarm Tuesday morning that Arabs were voting “in droves.”

Many voters complained about a bitter campaign of ugly attacks and a lack of inspiring choices.

“I am happy today to be able to vote, but I know I’ll be unhappy with the result, no matter who wins,” said Elad Grafi, 29, who lives in Rehovot, a large city south of Tel Aviv. Sneering at the likelihood of any candidate being able to form a coalition stable enough to last a full term, he added: “Anyway, I’ll see you here again in two years, right?”

In the Jerusalem suburb of Tzur Hadassah, Eli Paniri, 54, a longtime Likud supporter, said he “voted for the only person who should be prime minister — Netanyahu.”

“I am not ashamed of this,” Paniri said. “He is a strong man and, most important, he stood up to President Obama.”