Israel\u2019s elections were too close to call on Tuesday night as both Benjamin Netanyahu and the former general trying to unseat him claimed victory, reports The Telegraph.<\/p>\n
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“It’s a night of tremendous victory,” Mr Netanyahu told his own victory rally. “I was very moved that the nation of Israel once again entrusted me for the fifth time, and with an even greater trust.”<\/p>\n
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Former army chief Benny Gantz countered that he was the real winner and appealed to Israel\u2019s president to give him the first chance to form a government.<\/p>\n
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“Elections have losers and elections have winners. And we are the winners,” Mr Gantz told a victory rally shortly after midnight.<\/p>\n
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Even as the votes were being counted, both Mr Gantz and Mr Netanyahu were expected to begin contacting smaller party leaders and asking them to recommend that they lead the government.<\/p>\n
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Mr Netanyahu said he had already begun talking to fellow right wing and religious parties about forming a new coalition.<\/p>\n
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“I want to make it clear, it will be a right-wing government, but I intend to be the prime minister of all Israeli citizens, right or left, Jews and non-Jews alike,” he said.<\/p>\n
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As voting stations closed around the country, two early exit polls showed Mr Netanyahu\u2019s Likud party tied with Blue & White, the centrist coalition led by Mr Gantz. Both parties had won around 36 seats.<\/p>\n
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But as results trickled in throughout the night, the Likud appeared to be gaining strength. Two stations projected Likud to win 35 seats in parliament, compared to 34 for Blue and White. With about 60 percent of the votes counted, Likud held a narrow lead.<\/p>\n
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Though both parties were well short of a majority in the 120-seat parliament, the polls showed Likud and its religious and nationalist allies controlling a solid majority.<\/p>\n
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After all the votes are counted Reuven Rivlin, Israel\u2019s president, will call all the party leaders for consultations before deciding who to task with forming the government.<\/p>\n
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Whoever is given the job will spend weeks haggling and negotiating with other parties to try to form a 61-seat majority in Israel\u2019s parliament.<\/p>\n
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Mr Rivlin may urge the leaders of Likud and Blue & White to come together in a Centre-Right national unity government.<\/p>\n
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If Mr Netanyahu is able to cling to power he will be on course to overtake David Ben Gurion, Israel\u2019s founding father, as the longest-serving prime minister in Israeli history.<\/p>\n
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But his hold on the prime minister\u2019s post is still threatened by pending criminal corruption charges against him, which will be finalised after a hearing this summer.<\/p>\n
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Israeli prosecutors allege that Mr Netanyahu changed telecommunications regulations in return for more favourable media coverage and accepted bribes worth 1 million shekels (\u00a3200,000) in the form of lavish gifts from businessmen.<\/p>\n
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Mr Netanyahu denies all wrongdoing and claims the prosecutions are part of a politically-motivated witch hunt against him and his family.<\/p>\n
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Mr Netanyahu\u2019s main campaign message was that he was an indispensable prime minister, whose personal relationships with world leaders like Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin had lifted Israel to a stature far beyond its small size.<\/p>\n
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He also tacked hard to the Right, promising to annex Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank and antagonising Arab voters by saying Israel is \u201cnot a state of all its citizens\u201d but only a nation state of the Jewish people.<\/p>\n
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In the final days and hours of the election, Mr Netanyahu issued feverish warnings that he was in danger of losing and called on all Right-wing voters to rally around his Likud party.<\/p>\n
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His warnings appeared to have succeeded as Likud’s share of seats grew at the expense of smaller Right-wing parties.<\/p>\n
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However, Blue & White also appeared to have expanded by taking seats from the Labour party and others on the Left. \u00a0Mr Gantz, who over the course of 40 years in uniform rose from a commando to the head of Israel\u2019s military, presented himself as a unifying figure with vast security<\/p>\n
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Israel’s elections were too close to call on Tuesday night as both Benjamin Netanyahu and the former general trying to unseat him claimed victory, reports The Telegraph. “It’s a night of tremendous victory,” Mr Netanyahu told his own victory rally. “I was very moved that the nation of Israel once again entrusted me for the fifth time, and with an even greater trust.” Former army chief Benny Gantz countered that he was the real winner and appealed to Israel’s president to give him the first chance to form<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":18252,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[30,18],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18251"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18251"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18251\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18253,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18251\/revisions\/18253"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18252"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}