Israeli Elections: Netanyahu Seems On the Verge of Winning Despite Equal Result | News from the world

Benjamin Netanyahu was on the road on Wednesday morning to become Israel's oldest prime minister, despite the fact that his party, the Likud, won the same number of seats as its rivals.

With 97% of the votes counted, the Likud and the blue and white party, led by former army general Benny Gantz, won 35 seats on the 120-seat parliament, the Knesset.

However, the results showed that Netanyahu would be in a much better position to form a ruling coalition of nationalist, far-right and religious allies. Gantz had fewer potential factions with which to badociate.

The final results might not be known until Wednesday afternoon or later, and the coalition formation process could take weeks.

A few hours ago, the final result was clear: Netanyahu and Gantz proclaimed the victory to their supporters, encouraged by the results of polls taken out of the polls showing that they had solid figures.

Netanyahu said Tuesday was "a night of great victory" and that he had already started talking to the right-wing parties, which, he said, had agreed to recommend to the Israeli president to form the next government .

Less than an hour ago, Gantz had issued an equally premature victory cry: "In elections, there are losers; in elections, there are winners; and we are the ones who won. "

Seeking a fifth term despite indictments for corruption, the Prime Minister, aged 69, has faced stiff competition. Gantz had sought to present a unifying and centrist alternative to Netanyahu, who spent ten consecutive years in power.

The Prime Minister's campaign focused on how his government – in his view, ensured Israel's security and prosperity – risked falling into the hands of "leftists". Israeli leftist and centrist parties, including the formerly dominant Labor Party, all seemed to have lost their influence in the 2019 polls.

As in previous national elections, Netanyahu has also been accused of exploiting anti-Arab sentiment and standing side by side with extremist factions accused of racism against minorities.

Unlike Palestinians under military rule in the occupied West Bank, nearly one fifth of the Israeli population is Arab and has the right to vote. However, as a result of calls for electoral boycott in the community, the Arab parties appeared to have lost three seats in the Knesset.

The Likud was blamed Tuesday for sending observers equipped with body cameras to polling stations with Arab voters, which Arab politicians condemned for intimidating their voters. A Likud official defended the move, saying the cameras had been deployed to ensure that there would be no vote rigging.

According to the poll's partial results, the ultra-Orthodox Jewish parties seem to have won three seats, while a new alliance of far-right parties has won five seats. With a stable coalition, Netanyahu will beat this summer a record set by the country's founding father, David Ben Gurion, to become the most senior leader of Israel.

Prior to election day, Gantz had hoped that the prime minister might collapse under the weight of three separate corruption cases, Netanyahu's allegations described as "witch hunts".

But it was unclear whether the indictment appeals, supported by the Israeli police, were enough to convince the Israelis to turn away from "King Bibi," the leader who has held high office since 1996.

"I know that some things that Bibi has done are wrong. But I'm not looking for a rabbi. I'm looking for a leader, "76-year-old Yaakov Lemash told a Jerusalem polling station on Tuesday. "It was the first time in my life that I voted Bibi," said Yaakov, who had previously supported religious parties. "I want to say to Bibi, thanks … no government did what Bibi did for Israel."

To keep voters, one of Netanayhu's key messages was how he managed to get major concessions from Donald Trump. Over the past two years, the US President has implemented the main demands of the Israeli far-right lobby group, drastically reducing humanitarian aid to Palestinians, declaring the disputed city of Jerusalem as capital of Israel and by closing Palestinian diplomatic offices in Washington.

Trump recently recognized Israeli sovereignty over the occupied Golan Heights, which Israel captured in Syria in 1967, breaking with the global consensus that banned territorial conquest during the war.

In a pre-election interview, Netanyahu waved Trump's statement signed by Trump and said, "Look at this, look at what we just received … here's what I did in a week."

On the weekend before the elections, Netanyahu strengthened its right-wing ultranationalist base, pledging to wrap Israeli sovereignty over Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank, a move the Palestinians say would end their dreams of a state.

"From my point of view, any point of settlement is Israeli and we have the responsibility as an Israeli government," he said. "I will not uproot anyone and I will not transfer sovereignty to the Palestinians."

Zvi Pakter, a 64-year-old voter who lives in the Efrat settlement in the occupied West Bank, said the promise of annexation was "an electoral spin." But he added that recent events such as the statement by the Jerusalem embbady to Trump had made him think that Netanyahu could progress.

He said, "We have seen things that we would never have imagined.