Follow Al Rai
The camp of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu secured 53 seats, compared to 48 for the opposition and 19 for Arab parties, after 88.6 percent of votes were counted in the Knesset elections held on Tuesday.
According to the Hebrew Channel 12, Netanyahu's camp obtained 53 seats, compared to 48 for the "Change" bloc led by "Yashar" party leader Gadi Eisenkot, while the Arab parties won 19 seats.
Thus, none of the parties were able to secure the majority required to form a government, which is 61 seats out of 120 in the Knesset (parliament).
At the party level, the "Likud" party, headed by Netanyahu, topped the results by obtaining 26 seats, maintaining its position as the largest party in Israel.
The "Yashar" party, headed by Eisenkot, came in second by obtaining 21 seats.
The "Ma'an" party, headed by Naftali Bennett, obtained 12 seats, as did the Joint Arab List led by Yousef Jabareen.
Meanwhile, the "Democrats" party, headed by Yair Golan, won 8 seats, and the "Yisrael Beiteinu" party, led by Avigdor Lieberman, won 7 seats.
The religious "United Torah Judaism" party obtained 7 seats, as did the "Shas" party, headed by Aryeh Deri, and "Otzma Yehudit," headed by Itamar Ben-Gvir.
The United Arab List, headed by Mansour Abbas, also obtained 7 seats, while the "Religious Zionism" party, headed by Bezalel Smotrich, obtained 6 seats.
It is noteworthy that this distribution, whether regarding parties or political blocs, remained the same without change when it was announced earlier on Wednesday that 85 percent of the votes had been counted.
The counting of the remaining votes is scheduled to continue this evening, while the counting of the sealed envelopes—expected to range between 430,000 and 480,000 votes, or 8 to 9 parliamentary seats—will begin at 1:00 AM Thursday and continue until the evening of the same day, according to the Hebrew newspaper "Israel Hayom."
The "double envelope" voting mechanism was designed to enable citizens who are unable to cast their votes at the polling stations where they are registered to exercise their right to vote.
This includes, among others, Israeli army soldiers, security personnel, prisoners, and patients in hospitals, according to Hebrew media.
These envelopes are called double because they contain two envelopes for each voter; the inner envelope contains the ballot paper without any data, while the outer envelope contains the voter's information.
On Wednesday morning, Eisenkot (a former Chief of Staff) vowed to form a "Zionist government," but did not clarify how to achieve this without the participation of Arab parties.
According to the partial results, Netanyahu's camp needs 8 additional seats to reach the majority required to form a government.
The results remain non-final as the counting of the remaining votes continues.
Netanyahu and Eisenkot agree on rejecting the establishment of a State of Palestine, despite United Nations resolutions that stipulate its establishment under the "two-state solution" principle.
On Tuesday evening, the Election Committee announced that the voter turnout reached 77.7 percent, an increase of 7.1 percent over the 2022 elections, stating it was the highest since 1999.
Know more about this story?Send us a tip
Ask about this report — answers stay grounded in its text.
